Some Really Big Prints

For this entry, I wanted to talk about a photo shoot I did a few weeks ago. It was for a new ad campaign for the Texas Turnpike Authority’s TxTag. The Texas Turnpike Authority is a division of the Texas Department of Transportation and they oversee the State’s toll roads. The ad campaign is designed to inform the public that they can now purchase TxTags in the lanes at toll booths as they stop to pay their tolls. It’s an interesting idea that they wanted to promote using billboards in the Austin area. That’s where I come in.

A few weeks ago, working with the Turnpike Authority and Sherry Matthews Advocacy Marketing, I went out to an actual toll plaza on Loop 1 in Austin and shot the campaign. We started at around 10:30 a.m. and by 11:15 a.m. I had taken over 200 images from every conceivable angle. I immediately went back to the office and edited them, choosing the best of the bunch to send to the art director. By 4:00 p.m. that same afternoon, the talented folks at Sherry Matthews had two mock ups of possible billboards ready for review. The next day TxDOT had selected the one they wanted to use and within a week, the billboards were up. The neat thing about shooting billboards is that the images are HUGE. They are 14 feet tall by 48 feet wide. Those are some really big prints!

From over 200 images, this one was chosen for the TxTag ad campaign.

It depicts a driver pulling up to a toll booth to purchase a TxTag

from a toll attendant. This image is now featured on two billboards in Austin.

One is located on Loop 1 at Parmer and the other is on Hwy 71 near the airport.

In addition to this most recent work, I have done several other things for TxDOT. In fact, my pictures are also featured as banners on some of their web pages, specifically pages for the Loop 49 toll road in Tyler, Texas.