Thunder Bay Crew Heads West with Cameras to Oilpatch

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Energy Sector excited Crew from Thunder Bay
Image - Kevin Palmer

Excited Field Crews Departing for Weyburn Saskatchewan Early Monday Morning -Crescent Point Energy Giving PCG Their Start in the Oil and Gas Sector

 “We always rely on Kevin Palmer to produce stunning, high-quality images. Kevin’s images constantly receive our highest ranking – based on his lighting and composition.”
— Julie Woodhouse, Photographers Direct Photo Producer

THUNDER BAY – BUSINESS – There’s an excitement in the air here in Thunder Bay Ontario – as Lead Creative Kevin Palmer took his crew to the Oil Fields in Weyburn Saskatchewan to test the impact of underground lighting techniques on an Oil and gas setting – in what should prove to be an interesting set of images for Crescent Point Energy.

How this happened is explained by Kevin Palmer, “Well, I know a few people in the mining game from my time marketing Cobra & Northstar Drilling, ProDrill and most recently as the VP with Abitibi Geophysics -essentially, our role is to create top of mind awareness for our clients. Our teams construct the appropriate tool for the situation, including but not limited to: press releases, stories for trade magazines, marketing pieces, print / digital / CRM / database creation and bring the product or service to the prospective clients. Marketing is a contact sport and without contact – you just won’t gain awareness.”

One of their primary tools for contacting prospective clients is called Goldmine – which essentially personalizes all emails, stores the information, tracks sales people activities and they’ve found success in launching new products by including descriptive video, text, stories, images and sales sheets in with the email.

Palmer continued, “As a rule, I call to follow up the emails and to check for interest – one such call that I routinely made was to a wonderful gentleman by the name of John Squarek – of Tanager Energy. John is in the enviable position of having both mining plus oil and gas properties in his portfolio and is the nicest kind of guy. I made a call to him recently to let him know of our desire to provide images to his company for their promotional efforts – in exchange for giving us a shot at trying this technology of ours in an oil field. John tried but couldn’t mobilize quickly due to circumstance beyond his control. He did, however, suggest that we call Crescent Point Energy with his name as the referral. For whatever reason, Scott, Nicole and the folks at Crescent Point Energy were amazingly responsive to the offer and will escort our team through their property to help with these tests… an amazing bunch of people.”

Palmer and Crew will bring their entire 20 strobe studio on site along with powerful generators to drive the electrical needs of the shoot. They’ve scheduled two days onsite and are excited to see the results of this test shoot. Gary Cole explains – “With mining imagery, much of the work is done from the back – backlighting rocks, equipment, rim-lighting – causing incredible detail and highlighting minimally from the front. This is where Kevin will do very well – he’s a master mining photographer already”

Cole continued; “We feel that because of the downturn in both oil and gas and mining – there is a real opportunity for our clients to take advantage of these technologies, turning good company branding into GREAT branding by virtue of our imaging, writing, storytelling, videos, Public Relations and now, incredible Graphic Design thanks to our latest find, Lisa Armstrong – one of the best designers that we’ve ever seen.”

Palmer continued; “Between Nat Silverman’s PR abilities and his further abilities to get our client’s stories told in publications, trade magazines, daily and weekly newspapers to Gary Cole’s incredible gift of editorial writing, Gary Hu’s digital design prowess online – and Ms. Armstrong’s Graphic Design abilities, I’m thinking that we’ll be working for some pretty big things in the near future, once we prepare our marketing packages.”

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Update, Tuesday 2pm: What happened on site?

Total failure. Quick thinking. A MacGyver Solution. Total Success.

“Well, we left Thunder Bay at 6 am, got to Weyburn around 6 pm on schedule, but upon opening the cases found damage to the equipment – cause unknown at this time,” said Palmer. “It doesn’t matter what happened or how the damage occurred – what is important is how it was handled by the crew and how we overcame the adversity is interesting.”

Scrambling around the site, through backup equipment and some technical tinkering, Eric Bozec – Field Site Manager somehow managed to get a few of the strobes functioning properly on the generator. “Eric is incredible – there’s nothing that phases him, he’s a qualified electrician by trade – but he’s much more than that, handling studio setups, prop creation, repairs to equipment and all of our required maintenance,” said Palmer.

A few strobes were all that Palmer needed – and with the help from Crescent Point Energy, the shoot was a complete success and they are happy to report that their test-shoot with 30 mph winds went very well. Essentially, they shot the test site for a few hours in the cold, managed to make some cool ideas happen – and drove home to Thunder Bay later that night. In all, the test took about 27 hours of continuous time “on duty” – showing the kind of commitment that Palmer and his crew have to innovating and improving Corporate Communications. The first posted image received another 9/9 perfect ranking from photographer’s direct already!

Whatever happens, the PCG is extremely grateful to Crescent Point Energy for giving us the break that we needed to really show off the skills, equipment and technologies that all Oil and Gas / Energy / Mining companies can use to elevate the benchmark for quality standards in Corporate Communications – at a competitive price point.


The Palmer Creative Group is a Conglomerate of Individual Marketing Professionals, each with their own avenue of specialty – jointly marketing together as a strong solution to assist Corporate Communications Professionals in mining, government and the oil & gas sector. Kevin Palmer is the Lead Creative of the Palmer Creative Group. Call 807 473 3648 to engage.

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