Accor Hotels Photography

When Accor Hotels announced an exclusive partnership with TEG and Cirque Du Soleil, I received a commission request for a quote. Accor had just become the official accommodation partners for Cirque Du Soleil. I was briefed to capture 2 of the performers outside the Pullman Sydney Hyde Park and get some interior shots with one of the performers. These photos would be used for general media releases and marketing purposes. One of my photos was published in the ETB Travel News. What made the photos more interesting was that one of the Cirque Du Soleil performers was dressed up as one of the Avatar characters. It was a new Cirque Du Soleil show ” Toruk: The First Flight” inspired by James Cameron’s blockbuster film “Avatar”.

For the shoot outside The Pullman Sydney Hyde Park there is a great garden wall full of plants. This made the perfect background setting to photograph an Avatar character. The natural backlighting on the garden wall made everything work much better.

For the interior my brief was to capture the atmosphere of the hotel reception and friendly staff with some branding in the background. When photographing interiors I would always use a tripod but on this occasion there was limited space and we did not have much time. With interior photography it is really important to keep vertical lines going straight up and down and not converging at the top and bottom. A tripod and spirit level would have worked perfect for this. Fortunately my Canon 5D Mark 111 has a built in electronic level which can be viewed either on the LCD monitor or in the viewfinder. This helped a huge amount when hand holding the camera. A few minor corrections in Lightroom and some basic retouching in Photoshop was all that was needed.