In Bangkok with David Beckham

“Washing lettuce laughing” — three words you don’t expect to read on a shot list for an advertising campaign starring world-famous athlete and humanitarian David Beckham. If we weren’t careful, this concept pitched by the advertising agency could have been confused with the stock photo meme “women laughing with salad”, but we knew there could also be a tasteful way to pull it off. We just had to channel our cinematic energy together towards the concept.

Editor’s note: You can follow Joey’s work on his Instagram. Joey’s lighting and Photoshop tutorials can be viewed at LearnFromJoeyL.com. This article was originally published on Joey’s blog.

Washing lettuce laughing was the second image we made during our day-long shoot with David in Bangkok. So, I added some gunk in the foreground and used a painterly key light with a desaturated earth tone background so that I could achieve a more dramatic look. When we saw the first test photo pop up on the monitor on set, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief. Everyone was in good spirits. The shoot had begun.

We were photographing David Beckham in Bangkok for AIA, a pan-Asian life and health insurance company. The purpose of the campaign was to portray David engaging in healthy activities, such as exploring local markets, preparing fresh foods and exercising.

After seeing some of my photos of the burning oil wells in Qayyara, Iraq, David’s people reached out to me to see if I might want to document a humanitarian trip David was planning in Africa. That particular project never materialized, but David and his team would eventually connect with me again for this specific project in Bangkok.

Before the shoot in Bangkok, I spoke with David and his team over the phone to see how David likes to work. They told me that David doesn’t like to stop or to take breaks—that he prefers a go-go-go photo session. This aligned precisely with my work ethic as well. When I get in the zone photographing, I don’t want to stop. I just have an innate urge to continue working until we create the images everyone envisioned.

With David’s and my work ethic in mind, I knew we needed the shoot to move as efficiently as possible. This encompassed seamlessly moving quickly from one setup to the next — all while we put our best efforts into preserving time on our set. This meant that we had to avoid wasting time with lighting arrangements or pre-lighting. Fortunately, the budget was generous enough for me to hire a large local Thai team for assistance, in addition to my familiar dream team — Jesse, Caleb, and Hector.

Two days before the shoot, we did a full scout of the city, to select potential locations. We did this while keeping Beckham’s fame in mind, we could only select locations that would allow us to set up public barricades. The day before the shoot, we used a stand-in test subject to rehearse our lighting.

Thanks to our thorough pre-shoot work, the day with David ran very smoothly. Caleb was one step ahead of us the whole time, moving packs to the next set-up area and getting everything into place. So all I had to do at each location was make a few quick tweaks before diving into my photography.

When you’re doing a day-long shoot with a person as in-demand as David Beckham, you want to make the most of your time, and you want to shoot as much as you can, as it’s the best thing for you and your client. The challenge of a day-long shoot in the outdoors is that the quality of the light is always changing. But just because you don’t like to shoot in harsh afternoon lighting, it doesn’t mean you stop shooting entirely.

To make the most of both our time and lighting for David, we diffused the natural light over our setups. For example, early in the morning, hours before making the image of David in the market, our grip team went to that alleyway and rigged the location with diffusion materials. That way, regardless of the time of the day David would reach the set with soft lighting.

For the image of David in the tuk-tuk, we had a huge scrim arranged over the whole scene. With the entire area covered in the scrim, the light would be soft no matter where David went. I still used a flash, so there was some degree of control, but the scrim softened that harsh afternoon sunlight.

All in all, the project ran very smoothly. It was an honor to work with David, whom I’ve admired for his humanitarian efforts, and the pace of the shoot seemed to please him.

The icing on the cake for this project was definitely working alongside Wally Pfister, who directed the commercial for the AIA’s ad campaign. I am a huge fan of Pfister’s, and to be on the same tier of importance- in a sense of running the stills while he’s doing the video- is so damn cool. I don’t think I could articulate how honored I am. Wally Pfister is the man. He’s the David Beckham of cinematography.

I would like to thank everyone who made this shoot possible. In no particular order:

Our creative production team and lighting assistants: Patricia McMahon, Laura Gonzalez Murphy, Caleb Adams, Jesse Korman, Hector Adalid and Jirathit “Nut” Saengavut.

The team at David Beckham: Sara Hemming, Simon Oliveira, Helena Cowpland, Helen Hodgson, Ken Paves, Sally O’Neill, Cathy Kesterine, Ben Canares, Grace Medford, Toby Toms, and Ben Sole.

AIA, BBDO and Arthur and Martha: Catherine Gibbs, Stuart Spencer, Scott Walker, Spru Rowland, Amber Clayton, Ann May Chua, and Emily Mabley.

Our Thailand production team at Living Films: Fred Turchetti, Jeab Indageha, Obb Apinat Siricharoenjit, Kerk Pisanu Takasiyanan, Tip Thumvittayakul, Egor T, Gai Kuladee and Warakarn Waruttamangkoon.

Post-production: Nick Leadley, Ryan Cleary, and Pratik Naik.

About the author: Joey L. is a Canadian-born photographer and director based in Brooklyn, New York. Since the age of 18, Joey’s work has been consistently sought out by a number of prominent advertising clients, including the National Geographic Channel, U.S. Army, Lavazza for their 2016 calendar, Canon, Summit Entertainment, and many others.