One of the best things about our job is we never know where it’s going to take us or who we will get to meet next. Recently we were tasked with capturing the stars of the History Channel’s American Restoration: Rick and Kelly Dale.
Rick got his first taste of reality tv stardom by being a local expert for the show Pawn Stars, but soon he and Kelly and the rest of their crew at Rick’s Restoration were offered their own show. After six seasons, the Dale’s are internationally famous not only for their charming personas, but more importantly, the mind-blowing restoration work that their company produces every day.
Milkable, a design firm in Australia, reached out to us Squares to capture images of the Dale’s for their upcoming appearance at the Big Dream Expo in the land down under. On October 15th & 16th, Rick and Kelly will be meeting and greeting with their fans for the first time in Australia amongst the hundreds of tools, vehicles, hobbies and technologies that will be available to those who dream big. And lucky for us, they called on Square Shooting to create some new images of the couple for Milkable’s designs and marketing materials advertising the upcoming expo.
We love the creative element shooting environmental portraits allows us, so we already knew this assignment would be great fun to work on. Matching a personality to their environment, and highlighting both to tell a story about that person, is a challenge we quite enjoy. So when we factored in that our subject’s would be the well known duo of Rick and Kelly, and the backdrop for our shoot their amazing unique workspace that is filled with treasures at every turn, we just knew we were in for a treat.
After a quick scout of Rick’s Restorations new location under the Spaghetti Bowl, we set our shoot date for bright and early a few days later. This allowed us to avoid the sweltering heat in the middle of the day, as well as avoid interrupting the droves of tourists who flock to the shop to catch a glimpse of the work and stars of American Restoration. With our formidable crew of by our sides to make sure the shoot went slick and smooth, we captured a series of portraits in a variety of locations around Rick’s Restorations. The favorite shot of the day was the one out front of their shop, where a couple of rare, vintage, and extremely well restored cars (that is kind of their speciality after all) sat behind their proud owners Rick and Kelly lending themselves as one of the prettiest backdrops we have encountered. Definitely the prettiest we have found under an expressway underpass.
One might think that being a tv star changes a person, but as far as Rick & Kelly are concerned, they couldn’t have been nicer, more welcoming, or down-to-earth to us and our team. They accommodated our every request and were more than happy to make sure we got what our client needed to highlight their upcoming appearance in Australia.
Thanks for the fun project Milkable, and for the great shoot Rick & Kelly!
