M.J. Bale 2025

M.J. Bale is Australia’s first carbon-neutral menswear brand, producing garments of integrity for men of character.

Details

• Collection: Winter 2025 (Southern Hemisphere)

• Date: November 2024

• Location: Scotland

• Photographer: Fabio Kraniotis

• Talent: Alex Libby

What We Did

Following on from our off-grid Tasmanian production for their Winter 2024 collection, the team at M.J. Bale commissioned us to create a short video and capture stills imagery for their Winter 2025 collection that showcased seasonal adventure.

Scotland was an easy choice and a great match for M.J. Bale, offering stunning scenery, snow, surf, and plenty of historic and refined built locations.

We built a plan around the concept of water being the thread in Scotland that links the surf to whiskey - “uisge beatha”, or “the water of life”.

Access Adventure Production’s lead videographer and photographer Fabio Kraniotis flew in to Scotland for the shoot, arriving the day before named-storm Bert hit with strong winds and snow. The storm landed right on our heads and snowed us in for a couple of days, and then there was a window of clear weather before another wave of snow came through, so we had to react to the conditions and move quickly to make the most of that gap in the weather. We travelled around a lot, connected with multiple Scottish champion surfer Mark Boyd and found some surf, discovered that the 4WD that we’d hired was an “optional 4WD” and not really up to the task of such extreme conditions, and toured some of the region’s historic distilleries.

This project proved the huge benefits that come from small and skilled teams; even though our schedule coincided with a serious weather event we were able to adjust our plans and still delivered on the brief within the time available. If anything, that serious dusting of snow that slowed us down by a few days added to the end results by giving us some incredibly wintery backdrops and a snow-covered beach.