As I mentioned in the introduction to this post a short while ago, “What do you do?” my commission to shoot Royal Navy recruitment advertisements for Y&R Rainey Kelly was far and away the most complicated shoot I have ever done. There were 6 print ads that we shot all over the UK starting on the Isle of Skye in Scotland and including the beaches of Cornwall, the bridge of the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal in Portsmouth and finishing on the canals of Camden in London. In this post I am going to show how we took the ‘Navy Sub’ from a line drawing to a finished ad.

I’ve been going through a lot of old work recently as 2009 was a bit of a milestone, 20 years of taking photographs.

I shot this for The Sunday Times, they were producing an Abbey Road Special magazine.

We had a wee tour bus with about 20 extras and the crew and we drove all over London to previously scouted locations to shoot different versions of how to cross the road safely whilst wearing fancy dress…

We didn’t shoot on Abbey Road itself by the way, it was more of a tribute to the original.

Fun fact: Michelle is in there wearing a wedding dress 6 months before we were married! (It wasn’t her dress so thats ok, isn’t it?)

Abbey Road Tv Ad for The Sunday Times from Conor Masterson on Vimeo.

TV ad I shot for The Sunday Times.

Photography and production by Conor Masterson
Agency Clemmow Hornby Inge & Partners
Creative Director Mickey Tudor

Aired September 2009

We casted a lot of extras who travelled across London with us on a coach recreating the famous Beatles cover on a variety of crossroads. (We steered clear of the actual Abbey Road crossing!)