Stingrays don’t normally indulge in a game of soccer but for the purposes of a new ad campaign by Inter Miami football club and Adidas, to highlight the threat of plastic to our oceans, it seems they obliged.
Or at least that’s what – after hours of work and 8,000 underwater shots – Cayman-based photographer Jason Washington’s images of model Coral Tomascik and the rays near the Stingray City sandbar in the North Sound appear to show.
As she freedives with the southern stingrays, Tomascik is dressed in Inter Miami’s newest jersey, supplied by Adidas, from the Primeblue collection, which is made from recycled plastics reclaimed from the ocean.
This is the second consecutive year that Washington and Tomascik have worked with Inter Miami on the campaign to raise awareness of ocean plastic debris. Last year, images of Tomascik with a soccer ball at the Kittiwake wreck off West Bay featured in the campaign. Those shots were viewed more than 90 million times in a single day, after Inter Miami president David Beckham and Major League Soccer players shared them on their social media platforms.
Washington told the Cayman Compass, “We did this about the same time last year, at the Kittiwake. We were excited to be asked back. Last year, they had such a good reaction to the campaign, they asked us to do this year, and next year as well.”
“It’s such a big rush to be involved in a brand that is trying to make a real difference, on a different scale,” he added.
Last year, the new Inter Miami jerseys featured in the Kittiwake photos sold out in the afternoon the campaign was launched.
This year’s shoot was done in a single day, “but the preparations took much longer than that,” Washington said.
“The difficulty was, were we going to be able to create an image at the sandbar that would be visually compelling, when we’re in just four feet of water,” he said. “Was it going to be an over/underwater shot? We moved 60 feet away from the sandbar so we could get some shots in deeper water. We were in about 12 feet of water.
“It was perfect. The stingrays cooperated… We wanted some shots where they would swim through the scene and hang out in a natural way.”
Washington said he took about 8,000 shots that day.
“They say never work with animals or children, but it worked out pretty well with the rays,” he said.
Washington said there was the inevitable questions on social media last year on whether the photographs at the Kittiwake were real or fake, with people not believing that the model could get or stay underwater without fins, or saying the football was photoshopped into the shot because a ball would float to the surface.
The photographer said this year, he made a video to show what was happening behind the scenes.
Noting that Tomascik is a talented freediver who can remain underwater easily for the duration of the shots, Washington also shared the non-Photoshop technique of how to photograph a football underwater. “I weighted it down by filling it with lead and water,” he revealed.
A video, filmed by James Gibb, shows the tale behind the photoshoot (see above).
“I wanted to tell the story of how we got the image,” Washington said.
In a press release announcing the launch of this year’s campaign, Inter Miami’s senior vice president of marketing and branding Mike Ridley said, “Everyone at the club was excited to work with Jason, Coral, adidas and MLS again on such an important initiative as reducing plastic in the ocean.
“This year we really wanted to find a way to highlight that when the oceans are clear of plastic, marine life will repopulate and ultimately flourish, which is critical to a healthy ecosystem.”
The launch of the campaign comes just over a week after Oly Rush completed a record-making swim around Grand Cayman, to highlight the same issue.
As well as raising awareness of ocean plastics via the digital campaign, the team’s centre-back Damion Lowe, along with representatives from each of the club’s supporters groups and front office staff, recently took part in a beach clean-up with Off the Hook Florida, a South Florida organisation dedicated to spreading awareness and taking action to prevent ocean plastic pollution. In one afternoon, the group picked up 60 pounds of trash.
The Primeblue jerseys, which are part of a league-wide initiative with Major League Soccer and Adidas to raise awareness about plastic pollution, will be worn by all MLS clubs this weekend, with Inter Miami donning the kit on Saturday, 28 May, when they host the Portland Timbers at DRV PNK Stadium in Fort Lauderdale.
Related Videos
