Stephen Hunton Photography : The Home Depot, The Olympics...lucky me

Most of you know that I work for an advertising agency by day and on occasion will also take pictures as a side profession.  Well, recently I had both jobs collide into one.  It was basically the perfect storm of one of the coolest advertising projects I will EVER get to work on, and in the midst of that I was able to play the role of the photog throughout the week.

A little background.

My Client, The Home Depot, is a major sponsor of The Olympics.  In fact, they actually have a program (OJOP - Olympic Job Opportunity Program) where they employ athletes who dream of making the games. These athletes work in stores around the country and then travel around the world in search of their Olympic dreams.  It's really a cool program.  They've employed over 660 athletes throughout the years!

So..... on 8/8/08 the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics kicked off.  Somewhere in that program you saw a 60 second spot and a :30 spot that features a few of our incredible OJOP athletes.  I use the word "incredible" not only because of their athletic ability....though it's pretty impressive....but because of their character. Each of these athletes were SO COOL to work with. So appreciative of the OJOP program and just full of excitement to be there.  A.G. Kruger, the hammer thrower, was pretty intimidating to look at, but the second he started talking to you, you realized that his heart was twice as big as he is...and that's BIG.   He was so pumped to talk about the summer track camp he is working at, teaching kids how to throw the hammer. 

The spots will run throughout the games and it will be a project I'll never forget...OH...about

 the photography!  So, over the 5 day shoot, we filmed 12 different sports.  My Client asked that I take some pictures of the athletes in their Home Depot aprons and then I was also able to run around like a giddy school kid taking pictures of the action.  The coolest part was that everything was lit so well.  The only bad part was that the director was always putting his camera right were the best shot was! ;)  

So there we were...me (the brand manager) and both of the creatives...all with our own cameras snapping away.  It was so cool.  And I came away with well over 1k pics...of which I think I gave 60 to the Client.  You can see some of the online advertising that was created with it on facebook and nbc.com (the Olympics page), but here are a few of my favorites ( you can see more @ http://www.stephenhunton.com ):