With more than 70 subject boats to shoot and weeks spent on the water – the annual Nautic Global Group photo shoot is one of the big projects each year at Adventure Studios. For the 2012 model year, our hard-working crew photographed the Hurricane, Rinker, PolarKraft, SanPan, PartiKraft, Sweetwater and AquaPatio brands. We shot at multiple locations in Michigan and Indiana, and in the end delivered more than 750 print-ready images to Nautic Global Group for their 2012 catalogs and advertising needs.

When: Friday, February 10th, 4 pm  to 1 am
Where: 4850 35th Street West, Minneapolis
Visit adventurestudios.com for directions.

Our goal was to capture the authentic human moments while boating. Those moments that make it “So Worth It” to own a Bayliner. Solid client direction and great teamwork made this a very successful project. So successful in fact that the photographs, along with others in Bayliner’s portfolio, were recently compiled into a stunning new photo book that was just printed and released.

Adventure Studios™ began in Brainerd, MN in 2005. Since then we’ve shot from east to west; from Canada to Mexico. And now we’ve expanded with another studio in the West Lake Calhoun area of Minneapolis. The location lets us tap into the cities’ creative culture, people and resources to better serve clients located in the metro and nationwide.

We share the space with SixSpeed, a firm that has relied on Adventure Studios for several photo shoots. This is a new location for both companies. Together, we’ll throw an open house party in mid-February. Invitations to join us in the City of Lakes will be mailed out in the coming weeks.

Leave it to Red Bull to create something like the Mississippi Grind Tour! Built on a massive barge, this floating skatepark traveled 1,705 miles from St. Paul to New Orleans. Our colleagues at Six Speed helped Red Bull produce and promote the event, and Adventure Studios handled the photography at stops in Davenport, St. Louis and New Orleans.

At each stop, we got great shots of professional Red Bull boarders showing off for thousands of spectators. Some of the big names included Zered Bassett, Ron Deily, Steven Webb, Ray Maldonado, Ryan Decenzo and Kenny Anderson. We also photographed amateur riders competing in Red Bull’s “Ticket to Grind” contest.

In addition to capturing action on the barge, we shot at an Iowa farm with a barn converted into a skate park. In St. Louis we got permission to ride in the City Museum for some very unique skateboarding images. And in New Orleans, we photographed pro riders as they took their skills down Bourbon Street.

You can see a wide selection of Mississippi Grind images at http://www.adventurestudios.com/work/detail/red-bull-mississippi-grind-tour. In addition to USA Today and other national news spots, these images continue to appear in skateboarding magazines and are distributed to media outlets through the Red Bull Content Pool (https://images.redbullcontentpool.com/).

In the bicycling industry, Park Tool is the king of tools. The brand loyalty among bike mechanics and do-it-yourself cyclists is huge. So when Park Tool needed photographs to break through the clutter and communicate their brand essence, this image left the strongest mark. It’s a nice example of how we combine marketing strategy, great photographs and masterful retouching to create brand ambassadors.

Adventure™ recently added intern Lane Mimmack to their expanding staff. Lane is a senior at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN where he studies marketing. As a summer intern at Adventure, Lane has performed a wide array of on-the-job duties – assisting the traffic director, account executives, and Adventure Studios’ photographer John Linn. In addition to duties as Linn’s second assistant, Lane drives the Adventure Studios photo boat during boating shoots. 2011 marks his fourth year behind the wheel of the photo boat.

When not on shoots, Lane shadows different Adventure staff to experience the ins and outs of every aspect of the advertising business – from client meetings to internal strategy and creative meetings. His eagerness to learn and contribute in any way is the characteristic that earned him the internship.

During a 3-day shoot for the Polaris Ranger RZR XP™ 900 product launch, Mother Nature was a mother. She blew high wind, raised dust storms and wreaked havoc on the photographic equipment. No problem for Adventure Studios, who pulled off the assignment with flying colors – as the fast, agile prototype vehicle flew through the California desert. The elements aside, the biggest challenge was capturing the RZR’s suspended essence with studio-style lighting at high speed. All while being critically reviewed in real time in the field by the production crew from Six-Speed and marketing managers from Polaris. Intense? Yeah. Worth it? Absolutely.

Schoenecker is a 2009 graduate of St. Cloud State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communications (Advertising) and a minor in Visual Arts (Photography).

Schoenecker’s advertising and photography experience includes co-founding AdsPlus, a student-run advertising agency; serving as Vice President of Promotions and Recruitment for the St. Cloud State University Advertising Federation; editing and production work on national television programming for Intermedia, In-Fisherman; serving as Advertising Representative, Classifieds Manager, Staff Photographer and Staff Writer for University Chronicle in St. Cloud, Minn.; and product design and distribution and promotional strategy work for Coborn’s/Little Duke’s convenience stores.

Schoenecker has led large groups on team-building trips through high-elevation courses and planned, marketed and co-led leadership training trips in Whitefish, Mont., and National Buffalo River, Ariz., as a Group Facilitator and Trip Programmer for Outdoor Endeavors, a St. Cloud State University outdoor adventures organization.