Lot 44 CORPORATE OFFICE 104 Shockoe Slip Lower Level Richmond, VA 23229 Phone: (804) 225-8976 www.lot44.com	HOURLY RATES: Per project PRIMARY EQUIPMENT: Mac studio “with all the bells and whistles” SPEED OF TURNAROUND: “Whatever it takes to meet the deadlines handed us.”	SAMPLE CLIENTS: The Martin Agency, Arnold Worldwide Boston, Saatchi & Saatchi, Mullen, Work/The Syndicate. CONTACT FOR RETOUCHING SERVICES: Meredith Ott/Studio Manager meredith@lot44.com Jeff Satterthwaite/Creative Director jeff@lot44.com

LOT 44

Founded five years ago as Liquid Pictures Richmond around the talents of creative director/head retoucher Jeff Satterthwaite, the studio was renamed Lot44 last year to convey its growing national reputation, built in large part on its award-winning 2000 print campaign for the Virginia Holocaust Museum. Studio manager Meredith Ott says that the campaign—marked by its moody, organic style—established the studio’s style. The style, she says, is due to the studio’s commitment to use photographs for as many of the base elements of a finished composite as possible.

Recently, Lot44 was charged with handling both the photography and retouching for a series of ads for SpiderLine fishing line. Produced by The Richards Group agency of Dallas, the campaign would feature images of old, fading, peeling signs erected on bodies of water frequented by only the most serious fishermen. Satterthwaite explains, “Art director [Benji Vega] wanted the lighting of the images to be a combination of [the movies] The Matrix and Sleepy Hollow with a little Scooby-Doo lighting thrown in. This was the basis for the colorization and mood I created.”

Satterthwaite began by working with regular Lot44 photographer Karl Steinbrenner and a prop stylist to create and shoot the actual signs, with plans to alter composition, color, style and type in postproduction.

One of the images shows a weather-beaten “No Wake Zone” sign attached to an old wooden pylon in a lake. Satterthwaite used three shots to create the background of the lake, blurring each for depth of field. On top he added the image of the pylon, shrinking the metal bands holding the sign and enhancing their rustiness. He created the type by hand and placed it on the sign, mimicking the white paint from above. Then, to inject an aura of age, he says, “I shot an old metal pan and used it to lay over the image, adding scratches and smudges.”

Another image is of an even more corroded “Warning” sign in an even more remote fishing locale. Creating the image, Satterthwaite desaturated and altered the color in the swampy background taken from an existing stock image. He then used a blur technique to give the illusion of haze on the water. “I moved moss around and got rid of some of the leaves to emphasize the lifeless feel of the swamp,” he says. Then he inserted the posted sign, enhanced the bullet holes and aged the sign overall. Lastly, he hand-created the type and changed it to look aged and peeling.

The SpiderLine campaign featured five Lot44 images in total, all running in consumer fishing publications.

— John Courtmanche

Before and After © SpiderLine/photos by Karl Steinbernner.