I’m generally very good at hanging out our washing and it’s not a difficult task to put things on the line in the back garden. So when LawsonClarke PR asked me to take some pictures of a Brabantia rotary clothes dryer, I didn’t think twice and accepted without hesitation, relishing a nice easy shoot.
Unfortunately, what the agency had in mind wasn’t a simple, straightforward picture in a nice garden somewhere close to where I live, but on the side of a mountain!
To get the pictures I needed a sunny day with a slight breeze, blue sky and set within a beautiful landscape. The location also needed to be accessible as I had to carry a fair bit of equipment and props. After a bit of Googling there really was only one option, it had to be on the Brecon Beacon in Wales.
The best time turned out to be during the Bank Holiday weekend. A time, it turns out, when bikers from all over Europe gather at the cafe half way up the hill along the A470, just yards from where I’d chosen to do the shoot. I wonder what they thought about the activity going on above them.
To enable the dryer to stand, Brabantia make a wonderful device to push into the ground and it worked great in the lawn of my back garden when I tested it. Unfortunately, there is no soil on the Beacon. Only rocks covered by heather and bracken. I ended up having to gather a very large pile of heavy stones to support the rotary. Of course it did take a while to get it to stand straight and the bikers would have had a good laugh when at one point it fell over and hit me on the head.
About an hour into my mountain adventure, an attractive Scandinavian blonde named Jette suddenly appeared. She’d walked up to take some pictures of the view. Perfect timing as I’d just managed to stabilise the scene, so I asked her to model for some of the shots. Amazingly she obliged and agreed to sign a model release so that the pictures could be used. I must admit to being somewhat nervous, hoping that I’d put enough stones around the post to stop it tipping over again.
Brabantia is going to see a massive increase in their rotary dryer sales over the summer and the rural landscape across Europe will change as people will try out exotic new locations to dry their washing, Caminada style..
