Sharp Shooter Premier Pontoons builds the industry’s ultimate photoboat. by h eath e r ste i n b e rg e r
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e’re all familiar with them—those glossy, colorful images that grace boating magazines and catalogs around the world. They entice us with their seductive visions of racing across cerulean waters, lounging on the hook in serene summertime coves, and entertaining dockside on moonlit nights. The images are, literally, picture-perfect. They seem effortless. They’re most certainly not effortless. Talk to any marine photographer, and he or she will regale you with stories of dangling out of helicopters, taking doors off seaplanes and balancing precariously on motoryacht hardtops. It’s a difficult job under the best of circumstances, and these seasoned shooters are used to making the most of whatever they have on hand, determined to get just the right shot. But they’ll also tell you it’s so much better to have the right equipment. For the team responsible for shooting six different boat brands on inland Midwestern lakes, the first item on that equipment wish list—the Holy Grail,
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if you will—was a custom photoboat. Mike Menne is vice president, operations director and a partner at Take It To Eleven, a Minneapolis-based creative services agency with numerous clients in the marine industry. After working with photographer Robert Pearl for more than a decade, Menne said the two men and their respective teams developed their own distinct concept for a photoboat. “We started working together about 14 years ago,” said Menne, who served as director of marketing for Premier Pontoons prior to forming Take It To Eleven with Troy Brandt. “About three or four years ago, we pulled a creative group together to provide services in the marine industry. “After we formed the company, we used many different photoboats from different manufacturers, so we were able to put our ideas together for what we’d need to do our best work.”