Cade Martin’s Top Secret Project

Top secret. Cinematic. Great Adventure. Words that can only describe a Cade Martin project. Cade creates conceptual scenes that inspire us to go into the undiscovered, always thinking outside of the box and yielding to his own imagination to traverse time and space Illustrating what’s possible, and even the impossible, is one of the most powerful tools in his belt. 

Museums often display objects that are unobtainable in our normal lives. Some bring experiences you could only read about in Sci-Fi books. The International Spy Museum sits somewhere in the middle, so with Cade's imaginative storytelling abilities and his prowess as a conceptual photographer, the project fit perfectly in his portfolio. The images bring us mysteries to solve and allow for our imaginations to run wild as to what could be.  A combination of A Night at the Museum and Mission Impossible, this project was full of secrets and we got Cade to tell us a few. Read on to learn more.

A few of your past projects are about museums, what do you find interesting about working with museums?

So much! I love working in museums – one of the things I have always really enjoyed is the ability to walk around behind the scenes of locations that we are working at. I always have found that the back corridors are fascinating, and places that I would never be able to venture and experience as a regular rule-following visitor. The dream is to get to experience these spaces and their treasures in ways most don’t.

It is my own Scooby-Doo mystery, you never know what is lurking (on display or in storage) around the corner. In addition to being able to hang out and talk with the curators, a lot of times it is literally the Night at the Museum since we have to work after hours so as not to interfere with everyday goings on.

Which shot is your favorite and why? 

The young woman repelling into the vault might be my favorite. It looks like she is having a great adventure - a little Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Mission Impossible.

What did you learn on this project?

Other than that I love the new Spy Museum!?

If anything - it reinforced that I have always loved adventure, and I want to go where I don’t know I want to go yet. One of the great things about working for yourself is that you never know what is coming around the corner or where you might be going next for a project. Someone may call and say you’re going to so-and-so tomorrow; it may be a place you never been or never heard of. You might love it or hate it, but you have those experiences. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel a good bit, to be exposed to all kinds of different environments and people, and the camera has been my passport. I like to relearn that as often as possible. 

What challenges did you encounter during this shoot?    

No real challenges, and it’s so nice to say that - it was just a really great, creative collaboration with Zach Goodwin and Maggie Winters Gaudaen at January Third and Robert Luessen and Jackie New of NLD Productions - mainly letting our imagination go and being solution-oriented.

How does this project fit with your vision through imagination? 

Storytelling is everything in a photograph. No matter the subject, the tone, the technique, a photograph has to tell a compelling story. It anchors the work I have done, and is what what I’m always chasing.