The Highlands - Winter content camp

Thursday 29th Feb - Thursday 7th March 2024

7 days of winter lifestyle content creation with 7 outdoor brands. Here is my winter content camp round up… With all of the valuable lessons and experiences I’ve accumulated, this following content opportunity was a platform for consistency and adaption for creating inspiring content to support brand campaigns. This included showcasing my journey with products in an active style, complimenting brands and bringing products to life. In the form of video and stills, the goal was to capture the natural, the believable lifestyle moments and the breath taking views that we faced along the journey. A product test and a true story.

7 briefs, 7 brands and 3 creators. This was a jam-packed week that I was not expecting. How I thought the trip was going to go, was not how the trip went but alas, we delivered successfully despite not completing the NC500.

The trip started by collecting our home for the week… an INEOS Grenadier built by MaxTraxx Adventures. Equipped with a roof tent supplied by Latitude tents and cooking facilities built into the rear. It had everything we needed for the week despite it being a little chilly outside. The option to sleep on the fold out bed inside the INEOS wasn’t really an option with the amount of photography equipment and products we had to bring with us however, with a few thermal layers and a Dryrobe (one of our brands) to sleep in, we were snug! The plus side to the roof tent, unzipping the windows to beautiful mountain views every morning.

This was the first time exploring the Highlands and thinking back, I think this was the downside to creating content here. I was unable to truly prepare for a specific route, like most experiences, exploring new areas uncovers new places and this was what I was planning on going on. However, little was I aware of how time passed so quickly and with 7 briefs, that was a day per brand. The plan was to travel the NC500 but with limited daylight hours and a lot to photograph, I made the decision to find an area West that covered a wide range of terrains and environments to make the most of our time. SkyFall road and the Glencoe area managed to provide good coverage and a mixture of lakes, rivers, forests and mountains as well as beautiful roads to cater for everyone’s deliverable requirements.

I asked Grace to join us on Day 4 to support our film requirements creating a mixture of short films and reels to support the Stills delivery. With 4 different briefs we had to capture a mixture of sunrise and sunsets as well as the adventurous part of our trip. This also involved myself capturing stills for each narrative set up and also a group scenario where I had to use a tripod to capture the entire group adventure.

This was a really good opportunity to offer outdoor lifestyle brands the chance for extra Winter content to support their campaigns for next year. Planning these trips and the expectations I had was different from how the trip went but overall brands and myself were very happy with what we delivered. Scotland in February was providing unpredictable conditions, light and occasional harsh weather. The idea of this content trip was to not hide away from this but to show all of the elements that we faced and tell a true story using brands and their products and kit to get us through. The mood of the deliverables was to be dark in colour, moody conditions and a sense of winter to give outdoor lifestyle plenty of photography and video content for the following years winter season.