Six Days, Nineteen Spots, One City, Zero Chill — Inside the Tyson Foods Mexico City Production
Let me paint you a picture of what a real large-scale production looks like from behind the camera.
Day one: a candlelit dinner set draped in deep red velvet, a silver cloche being lifted tableside, a couple reaching for Tyson's lightly breaded chicken like it's the most elegant meal they've ever had. Day two: a vintage Formula racing car, a driver in full period costume, popcorn chicken bites sitting in the cupholder of what is clearly a very fast, very Italian sports car. Day three: an 80s aerobics set straight out of a Jane Fonda fever dream, complete with a giant Tyson logo exploding in yellow and red behind our talent. And that was just the first half.
Nineteen spots. Six days. Mexico City. Let's talk about what it takes.
The brief
Superbloom House out of LA- and I love those humans deeply- came to me to lead the full stills department on a major campaign for Tyson Foods. The ask was to shoot stills and GIFs in tandem with the motion team across nineteen different setups. Lifestyle scenes, tabletop product shots, conceptual humor pieces, talent-driven portraits, on-location exteriors. All of it. All at once.
This is the kind of job where your twenty years of experience stops being a resume line and starts being the actual reason the whole thing works.
The clock problem
Here's the thing nobody tells you about tandem stills and motion shoots: you don't get the set to yourself. The motion team has it, they do their thing, and then you have a window- sometimes a generous one, sometimes five minutes- to get the stills that need to live on their own in advertising, on packaging, in digital. Five minutes to nail a hero shot that will run nationally.
That's not a problem you solve on set. That's a problem you solve before you ever arrive, in pre-production, in conversations with the creative team, in understanding every single setup well enough that the moment the motion team calls cut, you already know exactly what you need and exactly how to get it. No hesitation. No setup time. Just execution.
Twenty years of doing exactly this is why I can make magic in a five-minute window. It's not a trick. It's preparation meeting experience.
The highlights
Two setups from this campaign live in my brain permanently.
The first was the exploding protein powder shot. The concept was simple: a black tub of protein powder with a dramatic explosion of white powder bursting out the top against a deep red background, with a plate of Tyson chicken bites sitting in front of it. Simple concept. Wildly messy execution. We used flour for the explosion, which meant we were dusting off every surface on the set between every single shot. The image turned out incredible- dramatic, funny, immediately readable- and getting there was genuinely one of the most fun creative problems I've solved on a set.
The second was the race track day. We had a vintage Italian sports car, a driver in a full period racing suit and helmet branded in Tyson red and yellow, and we were shooting at an actual track outside Mexico City. The brief was to make popcorn chicken bites feel like the fuel of choice for a serious racing driver. The images came out looking like a lost frame from a 1960s motorsport film with a very contemporary punchline. That's the kind of creative tension I live for.
The Mexico City factor
Shooting internationally adds a layer of complexity that you either thrive on or you don't. Logistics, language, local crew dynamics, sourcing props and food in an unfamiliar city, all of it requires a different kind of leadership than a domestic studio shoot.
My Spanish degree came in very handy. Our local team in Mexico City was fabulous- genuinely talented, deeply professional, and a joy to work alongside. That collaboration is part of what made six days of full-throttle production not just survivable but actually fun. The client loved the results. Superbloom House and Tyson loved the results. I loved the results.
Nineteen spots. Six days. Zero shots left on the table.
What this kind of production requires
If you're a producer or creative director reading this, here's what I want you to know: a job like this doesn't just need a good photographer. It needs someone who understands the full production ecosystem, who can be a creative partner to the motion team, not just a stills operator waiting for a window. Someone who has done enough large-scale productions to stay completely calm when everything is moving at once and the clock is ticking.
That's what elevated visual storytelling actually means in practice. Not just making beautiful images. Making the right beautiful images, under real pressure, every single time.
If you have an ambitious shot list and a tight timeline, I'd love to talk.