Anna Goodson gave us a call and asked if we could create the look of Antarctica for an ad Sid Lee was working on for Pratt & Whitney.  The concept was a severe snowstorm with two lonely figures attempting to cross the frozen ground.  Of course we said no problem, then went about trying to figure out how. 

First off, we knew their were no trees in Antarctica so our local Rocky Mountains would require some Photoshop.  We scouted locations and determined a frozen lake was the best bet for foreground and shots of various skies and mountains could make up the rest. 

Now creating the snowstorm was tricky since there was no storm to work with.  We packed up with two assistants (models) in tow along with Dale’s leaf blower.  The thought was that we could blow snow in front of the camera to create the storm. As it turned out, this particular leaf “blower” also has a leaf “sucker” switch which is used to suck up leaves and spit out small little bits of leaves. Well, sucking up snow and spitting it out sure works for covering clothes with snow and also works for creating a snowstorm.  In total, we put five images together to create the final image(s). We shot both a far away and closeup so the client had choices.

snowstorm in ‘antarctica’ from roth and ramberg on Vimeo.

And that kids, is how you create a snowstorm in April.