Photographer Philippe Roy (Kore Studios Partner and co-founder) has been shooting with Volvo Construction Equipment since 2012. During this long history we have had a chance to work on a number of projects creating visual content for brochures, posters, banners and billboards. We have braved the cold, the heat, the dust and the wet to create a series of exciting images for the construction vehicle company. Shooting a range of vehicles including excavators, wheel loaders, compactors and pipe layers.

There are numerous challenges to each machine. Sometimes it’s about shooting in sub-zero temperatures for an entire week, while other times it’s the exact opposite where we shoot in temperatures reaching 40 degrees with strong sunlight to contend with.

One of the largest challenges during one of these assignments is just how remote some of the locations can be. Several require driving for extended periods of time through pretty hard terrain. Needless to say we usually have no electricity while on set. We’ve usually remedied this by finding a good balance between natural light, using reflectors and bring a generator to provide power to a couple of flash heads that we use for creating highlights or filling shadows.

Once again, many of these photos are hard to achieve “in the box” in one shot. So we have to usually take several shots for different parts: main light, highlights, bucket dump,… and compose it all together into one photo in post-production.

…a continued cooperation that keeps going. We continue to shoot for Volvo CE to this day and find new and exciting ways to make the images speak out more and louder each and every time.

Technical details

Client: Volvo CE

Services: Production, photography and post-production

Gear: DSLR cameras, fuel generators and professional on-location lighting kit