The making of: SHOCK DOCTOR

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Recently a company called Shock Doctor, which specializes in technological sport clothing with hardcore body protection, wanted to substitute part of the human body with some robotic parts for their latest advertising campaign. They decided to commission us with this task. It has been a fun collaboration between our studio in London, where the CGI elements were created and the one in New York, where the final retouching was made.

The most challening (and fun) part was to design a robotic skeleton that is based on human body parts and recognisable as such by only showing small areas at a time.

The Making of: Moody & Farrell lookbook

… and here we have another great collaboration between milliner Eloise Moody, photographer Madame Peripetie, make-up artist Marina Keri and us at Recom Farmhouse!

We have known Eloise for over 5 years when she first moved to Mentmore Studios in Hackney, London, one of our beloved headquarters. It is not the first time that we all meet together to produce the lookbook for Moody & Farrell. We did so last year when we played with little red lights. For this lookbook the main concept running through the images is the repeated pattern between the hand woven straw and the hand drawn tattoos on the model. Read more

The making of: UHU glue

Some time ago agency Kolle Rebbe with art director Jörg Dittmann asked us to help with an UHU glue gun advertising campaign. The idea was to represent some iconic souvenir figurines such us a Nutcracker, Cupid, Buddha and Ramses as if they were about to be threatened by the glue gun. The headline for this wonderful project was “Hands Up”. Photographer Bernd Westphal, modelmaker Arndt von Hoff and Jörg started searching for the figurines in all kinds of touristic shops. The problem? They all looked perfect and never had their arms up! Read more

NEWS, THE MAKING OF
CGI, Still Life, UHU

The making of: The dark side of Los Angeles

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These are only the first three pictures of an ongoing project made in collaboration with automotive and landscape photographer Markus Wendler. We have worked together many times on commercial jobs and we are often on the phone chatting about life and work and it’s one of those relationships that seems to be working on the same wavelength, particularly creatively. So it came natural that we decided to finally collaborate together on something different than advertising; something where we did not have the pressure of showing the cars at particular angles and light, but rather the opposite. Read more

The making of: ‘The Impossibility of Love’

Kila Rusharc Impossibility of Love Retouching by Recom Farmhouse

‘Teetering on the Precipice of Your Mistrust’, Kila & Rusharc

We are finally back after a long period of absence…herrr sorry for the big gap! So it is now overdue to post this still life series which has been finalised by our retouchers before summer and shot, styled and art directed by photographers Kila & Rusharc, who are only at the beginning of their collaboration. Behind this mysterious name there are Philip and Alessandra, with the latter being also a contributor to this blog and my other half. Read more

The making of: The Weight of Words

Driven by commitment to solve customer needs, Franck Allais

Franck Allais, whom we have been collaborating with for many years, is a conceptual photographer who ‘likes disrupting the habitual way of seeing and questioning everyday visual references’. In ‘The Weight of Words’ series he highlights how brands pollute our everyday landscape. The images and video, recently exhibited at KK Outlet, have all been retouched in our London studio. Read more

The making of: A TWIN PEAKS STORY

Twin_Peaks editorial retouched by Recom Farmhouse

What a great concept photographers Wilcox – Johansson together with super creative retoucher Kate Booker had for this fashion editorial published on I Love You magazine. Wilcox-Johansson shot the Twin Peaks inspired series mimicking the poses and style of soap operas and American dramas (which David Lynch was also making references to). The “Twin Peaks” theme was reinforced in post-production by Kate, who was amazing in creating different colour moods and effects, which very subtly enhanced the concept. Read more

100% : HOLGER POOTEN

Client : 125 Magazine Photographer : Holger Pooten

An old project I’m still very fond of is this fireman series of Holger Pooten.
After we brainstormed for a while together, Holger shot the real model on location and we then spent a day in the studio of setbuilder Carmel Said, setting mannequins on fire. Since I’m a little obsessed with fire anyway, it was an insane amount of fun despite a five-meter high wall nearly collapsing on us.

We kept putting mannequins on fire until we had enough flames and smoke to work with in post-production in order to retouch them onto the real model. Each flame had to be masked and composited with a mix of different blending modes as one of the tricky things about compositing fire is that it can’t just be screened or multiplied!

This project has also been published in 125 Magazine.

Click on the images to enlarge 100%

Posted by Christoph

The making of: Playing inside a box

This series of portfolio images originates from a project we did together with artist Tom Price, who asked us to do some liquid simulations for him (part of it can now be viewed as a 15m high sculpture on Gloucester’s Kimbrose Square). We ended up with some really beautiful shapes of liquid matter, which I thought to show in a different context than it was originally thought for. Read more

The making of: FORD MONDEO

As it’s often impossible to show the amount of work and detailing that goes into an image, by posting the result on our website, I am starting a new section in the blog called 100%. Here we would like to post all those images which can be best appreciated in all their details when enlarged. I thought to post some close-ups of the Ford Mondeo campaign which we realised together with Damien de Blinkk for Ogilvy. This was a couple of years ago, but I am still very fond of looking at some of the qualities that only start to show when zooming in all the way. Read more

100%, THE MAKING OF
Automotive, Blinkk, CGI, Ford, special effects, X-Ray