Photography and music are two very, very different art forms. Photography is entirely visual: even if it evokes sounds and songs it doesn’t deliver them directly. Music is entirely auditory. Again, if there is visual stimulation from music it’s not a part of the music, it’s a part of the experience. So when We Are The Rhoads were asked by Pandora to create their latest campaign it posed a unique challenge of bringing a visual language to music. “Image making is a two-dimensional output,” says Sarah Rhoads. “You really have to portray so much in just a moment in time.” When Chris and Sarah Rhoads shoot they always use music in their process so it was no-brainer for them to lean heavily on music when communicating with their subjects. It helped them create a crucible of sensation. “This campaign was all about the different emotions that music can draw out of us,” says Sarah. “It was really fun to be able to work from that place for this campaign because it really freed us up to explore a range of different emotions that music makes us feel.” The music and styles that they chose really set the temperature in the room to get their models in the exact head spaces they wanted, to communicate exactly what they needed. “It was cool to actually be able to change the soundtrack, like actually put on some ‘chill vibes’ and embrace that different tone,” says Chris. “Something that we do when we direct is really get people into the character and it’s cool to see that translated even in print as well; that the change in tone really helps facilitate an end result.” The relationship that the Rhoads have with music is already critical to their style, so this blending was seamless.  In addition to the still campaign, they created a short film to highlight how this vision came together. But they wanted to offer something unique. “We wanted to bring in this real rawness into the imagery that felt almost cinematic,” says Sarah. “We wanted that through not just the images but also the film, so we decided to shoot it on actual film.” They reached for a 16mm camera and shot actual film. It was going to give them a look that has become popular, but usually something that’s faked. The Rhoads wanted to do it legit. “If we want to recreate this, why don’t we just shoot it this way?” says Chris. “It’s really cool to see the natural character of film. It’s so rarely done anymore, and it’s always imitated but it’s really cool to actually get in there and see how the colors reveal themselves just as they are instead of using post effects to affect and manipulate that.” They took their thousand feet of exposed film (yes, really, one thousand feet) (and used the same processor that Christopher Nolan used for Interstellar), and turned it into a video that gets to the heart of what the campaign is all about: Emotions. Energy. Music. And loving the relationship between expression and art.

Cars are a reflection of their driver. They’re an extension of the life that the driver leads, representing who they are and where they are in their lives. No one knows that better than He & Me. The German photography duo, Tom Mennemann and Yona Heckl, have photographed dozens of cars for a huge array of brands, each with their own unique identities. Most recently He & Me teamed up with Scion to show off how the relationship between driver and car coalesces into a reflection of lifestyle. For the campaign they headed to southern California, taking advantage of the easy and bright energy there to play off what it is Scion is representing in the FR-S, one of their latest additions to the line.  Southern California offered the right kind of energy, but also the perfect visual setting to show off the Scion FR-S’ features. The agile, racing inspired car was created to handle squirrely roads perfectly, just like the roads that any driver would find outside of Los Angeles. “It was in LA, and most of the pictures you see were in the mountains of the Los Angeles area,” says Tom. “It was a nice mountain road, which was great.” They were able to close down the entire road so they could create exactly the right feel and exact total control over the aesthetic execution. The result is a hugely diverse collection of imagery that captures all sorts of driving experiences with a particular eye. But within that diversity is a very specific point of view directed towards a particular energy. The colors that Tom and Yona used for this Scion campaign are almost dream like, with warm light and strong awareness of shadow. They employed these techniques to reflect the energy of Scion and who Scion is talking to when they create their designs.  “Scion is a young spirit, so we decided to have a freshness of color,” says Tom. “At the same time that they’re drivers they’re still people living in the city and show the open spirit of that. So that’s the mixture. We tried to mix that up with the color and the kind of flourish they have.” Yona and Tom remind us that even though they’re creating a car campaign it’s crucial to remember that a driver is only a driver when they’re in the car. Outside of the car they have their own dreams and goals, and bring that lifestyle into the car with them. The car, and therefore the work that Tom and Yona creates, must reflect that reality. So that’s exactly what they do.

In the United States, we don’t really understand tea. We drink it from time to time and line our pantries with boxes of tea while we sip our coffee, but it’s not an institution like over in the UK. So when Taiwanese tea company Xie Xie Tea was looking to completely reconfigure their brand identity, they knew to go to a Brit, so they linked up with Craig Ward. “I’m British. It’s not something to drink, it’s something to do for us,” says Craig. “It’s a different thing, you know. The British, we have kettles and tea cups in our tanks.” Craig is best known for his typography and projects that combine surprising reality with expression, but with Xie Xie he directed every angle of repackaging, from ideation to font and logo design to photography. It was an entire ground-up operation. As a design conscious tea brand, Xie Xie wanted to make sure that they were moving in the right direction. They came to Craig with an idea that they could make a space for themselves in a higher fashion plane. They had already been tapped by a high-end fashion house and wanted to use it as a jumping off point to help people think about their brand and drinking tea in a new way. “They were going to be giving boxes away in Alexander Wang’s Fashion Week gift bag, which was sort of going to the right people,” says Craig. “They wanted a bit more of a premium, fashion focused identity and pack design.” They have since been picked up by stores all over the world, including Colette in Paris one of the hotbeds of creative, contemporary style. And now Xie Xie fits right into that space. The look that Craig created for Xie Xie is incredibly clean, with elegant lettering and sleek graphic elements with some added chaos. For Craig, it’s all about creating a balance. “The majority of the ingredients, even though they were dry, are very interesting shapes. And because the look we were going for was so clean and grided and designed, I wanted to introduce a little chaos,” says Craig. When water is poured into a pot of tea, everything swirls together in a steeping torrent, and Craig’s design reflects that moment that’s often hidden in the shadows of a mug. “I like the idea that it sort of washes around in there in the teabag, kind of floats around in the water,” he says. “So I wanted to get a little bit of that, the motion to go against a really clean design.” It required someone like Craig thinking about this brand and what they do to interpret it the way it needed to be interpreted. The best stories always come from the root of what a brand does, and Xie Xie tea is all about pouring water into that pot and making a great cup of tea.

Motherhood is hard. It's complicated. Every child has different needs and offers different challenges, and mothers take on that burden while maintaining and building their own lives. It's an impossible challenge but one we expect of every mother who parents a child. That's why we're sure to take at least one day a year to appreciate what mothers do. Every spring we celebrate Mother's Day as a culture to bring attention to these sacrifices and generosities. This year VH1 put together a concert that celebrates mothers that they called "Dear Mama," after the Tupac Shakur song that celebrated his own mother, Afeni. VH1 invited musicians and stars to celebrate their own mothers on stage and brought in Jonathan Mannion to photograph the performers and attendees in a unique way while they were heading into the event. He met and photographed Alicia Keys, Swizz Beats, Queen Latifah, Rito Ora, Alessia Cara, and the Smith Family, as well as Lucia McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis. “It was amazing to spend that time with that level of talent and to hear the performance that Alicia gave to her mom was spectacular,” says Jonathan about the experience. “It’s an honor to work with this level of brilliance in so many different categories. And to celebrate women and celebrate mothers.”  In a despairing twist of fate, the day of the Dear Mama show Mrs Shakur passed away. The coincidence was lost on no one, least of all Jonathan whose own photograph was used as memorial for Tupac's mother. As Mannion remembers, she was so much more than a mother to one of the most significant rappers in history, she was an activist herself and her work for social justice was worthy of note on its own. He photographed Mrs Shakur years ago in a shoot that he describes as “beautiful,” and that image became the unofficial image of her memory that day and still is. ‘Dear Mama’ was a celebration about all mothers and Jonathan wouldn’t give up the opportunity to express gratitude for his own. “My Mom is the most incredible Mom on the planet. Period,” says Jonathan. “I know many people feel that way about their Mom but pound for pound I’m putting my Mom up against any Mom that has ever lived.” Being a mother is a tireless, impossible job, so the least we can do is thank and remember the Moms that have touched our lives. Thank you.

The legend goes that if you go out and party in New York City enough you’re bound to hang out with Bill Murray eventually. He has a tendency to show up at random clubs throughout weekend evenings, sometimes getting behind the bar and doling out shots like a party monster’s favorite grandfather. He’s the unofficial mascot of the City, something that becomes quite evident in the cover story for this month’s Esquire with a shoot groomed by Elisa Flowers. What’s important to remember about Bill Murray is that his career is a veritable map of historic laughs, each one writ on his face. Elisa was sure to allow that personality to shine through so we can see the man who has contributed to the soul of American humor. A comedian wrestles laughter out of truth, and the truth of Bill Murray is that he isn’t the conventional idea of perfect. His hair is never all in the right spot, the lines of his face are always clearly visible. But that is who Bill Murray is, and what Elisa made sure to show us. She helps us to see the man that we are familiar with and love, leaving embellishments aside and showing the real story.

The BBC’s wildly popular car show ‘Top Gear’ started in 1977 and has become the most widely viewed non-fictional show in the world. In the show, that’s mostly centered around car reviews and the personalities of the hosts, an anonymous test driver known only as “The Stig” comes and goes as needed, his identity almost always hidden away. Illustrator Rod Hunt has worked with Top Gear on a series of ‘Where’s Stig’ illustrations, including a book published in 2009, that plays on the fandom of Top Gear and the fun of searchable illustrations. On display is Rod’s incredible ability to bring together dozens of elements into a single image, which is central to his style. In a piece entitled ‘You Never Know What You'll Get,’ a test for a confectionary campaign, Rod brought the curiosity of complexity into a cross section of the earth and imagined everything we could discover under a pristine lawn. He talks about his process: “Adequate thinking time at the start of a project is vital, it’s good to have the head space to come up with little jokes and visual puns,” Rod says. “All this is worked out in my sketchbook and in the pencil rough. I still love, love working with a pencil and paper, I could never go over to 100% working digitally. At the rough stage I feel it gives me more energy and freedom to explore.” As you can see in the development video for the ‘Where’s Stig?’ piece, when Rod starts translating the sketch into the final piece, it breathes in a way. As each element is completed and brought together into the final composition, pieces move around and shift based upon how they’re going to fit together best. It’s slight, but each of those shifts is important. “Everything starts with the pencil rough which I follow quite closely,” says Rod. “Using the pencil drawing as a guide I aim to block in the main structural elements in Adobe Illustrator as quickly as possible before moving on to the more detailed parts. As all the elements are created the composition can start to change, things move, can be scaled and edited. Overall the composition doesn’t usually change radically but I don’t need to be rigidly committed to the rough drawing. If a better solution comes up or the composition can be improved as I’m working I will change things.” When you work at the complexity of imagery that Rod works at, and juggle as many elements as he does, each one requires precise placement Part of what makes Rod’s work so fun to look at is the space he makes for visual jokes. The intricacies draw you in initially, but part of the experience is chasing down new moments to discover. These two pieces are no exception. The ‘Top Gear: Motorsport Madness’ illustration offers fun along the way of trying to find Stig, but ‘You Never Know What You'll Get’ is packed with these visual jokes. “There are lots of little jokes to find, but two of my favorite ideas in the piece include the fox in his den with his trophy wall and the jihadist in the bathtub with his rubber ducky.” There’s always something fun to see wherever you look, but if you’re lucky you’re looking at something like a Rod Hunt illustration where there’s a laugh in every square inch. 

In the last six months Tom Corbett has been whisked between London, Paris, and Detroit (The Paris of the West) photographing high fashion stories in the world’s hot beds of creativity. Models all their own, the cities are the perfect settings to explore beauty in action, and an environmental context for a gorgeous vision. Most recently, Beyond, the magazine by St Regis Hotels, asked Tom to join them in Rome to show off what they see as the perfect blend of classic elegance and a modern spirit. “It was just an amazing opportunity to shoot in Rome, to get out there,” says Tom. “A great opportunity to do another one of those high fashion luxury stories that I love doing so much.” The blend of classic and modern makes for an interesting aesthetic challenge that offered Tom a unique and exciting technical exercise. To get high value images quite often it requires high value production, with huge teams and lighting rigs, and a mess of complications. But Tom has found that his clients are looking for a simpler look, a natural grace in the face of complication. It’s something that Tom is really excited about and employed in this Roman shoot. “They wanted to shoot all daylight, to have a real natural look to it, which we’re finding more and more,” Tom says about the vision created with Vanessa Arnaud, the Art Director. “I love shooting daylight. I love the freedom that it gives me. So we basically didn’t use any lights. We were a little creative sometimes using what was available, but we didn’t flash anything up.” With natural light, Tom can move around freely, and collaborate with the models in a 3D space, offering flexibility and improvisation, revealing images that are perhaps more than could have been anticipated. The natural challenge ends up making for unique images that Tom loves. This kind of process wasn’t even possible just a couple years ago, but because of the advances in technology, Tom is able to capture his vision more readily. At night there is so little ambient light that older cameras wouldn’t be able to pick up any subjects which would require Tom and his team to set up lights. But, what he’s working with now helps him achieve what he’s looking for as naturally as possible. “Shooting at night with no lights was really interesting,” Tom says. “One of the shots we actually went out while it was nighttime and used the available light. I hadn’t done that in a long time. With the cameras the way they are these days you can actually walk down the street and take a picture, whereas in the past it would have been a lot different, which is kind of amazing. I just love that the clients seem to be asking for this look. This uncomplicated, natural light seems to be the trend so I’m excited about that.” Elegance doesn’t have to be complicated, heavy, or confusing. The beautiful styling by B&A Stylist Shelly Vella, balanced by makeup and hair by Lisa Valencia prove that, and that elegance is something Tom will follow no matter where in the world it takes him.