Delivering the message

The job: To shoot 300 images in 21 countries on four continents in just 84 days. This marathon assignment might sound like a nightmare for those of us who dread airline food and in-flight movies, but the New York-based photographer Anthony Nagelmann insists that it was actually "fun." He apparently has the constitution for it. "I don't get jet lagged," he says. "I just sleep on the plane."
Nagelmann, a photographer represented by Corbis Assignment & Representation, had been hired by global delivery company DHL to update its image library with photos depicting DHL's customer service around the world. These images, explains Susanne Balcke, who handles Corporate Branding & Advertising for DHL's parent company, Deutsche Post, are used in DHL marketing departments and their ad agencies around the world for brochures, direct mail, annual reports, posters and more.
When DHL unrolled a new logo last spring, Balcke felt it was time for new images, and that's just when Christiane Grosser, the commercial assignments agent for Corbis's Dusseldorf office, happened to visit Deutsch Post's office to pitch the agency's assignment photographers. Grosser recommended Nagelmann, and worked out an estimate and a schedule for the entire trip. Balcke says using one photographer assured a "harmonized" look.
Nagelmann says he usually hired a local producer for each shoot who would find locations, hire stylists, and cast local models to portray typical DHL customers. During shoots in Asia and Africa, Balcke had marketing executives from DHL's regional offices to oversee the shoots and bring their knowledge of local customs and culture to ensure each shot looked believable. "
The toughest location was probably Nigeria, he says. Though Nagelmann carries kidnapping insurance when he travels in Colombia and elsewhere, his insurance company informed him that his policy wouldn't cover Nigeria. DHL representatives in the country's capital agreed to handle security. Nagelmann recalls: "They met us at the airport with an army column that took us through customs and then in a motorcade to our hotel, and then to the shoot."
Balcke says she's proud of the way the images turned out, and so is Nagelmann. "We could have shot all the customer scenarios in a New York studio with models, and not worried about getting props, wardrobe, stylists." But he says, "Once the planning was done, we could let things happen, and we got moments that were real, uncontrived." For that, he says, those hours of plane travel were "definitely worth it."