Worth Avenue

"In my musings over how to pay homage to Palm Beach in one frame, I focused on the need to evoke a sense of leisure and a sense of place. Worth Avenue looking east ticked many boxes for me as the clock tower instantly locates the set and, if my composition was tight, the absence of modernity would allow me to tell a period story. If possible, I wanted to go back in time to add more to the narrative.

To write a love letter to this community without palm trees in the frame is suboptimal as they are integral to the vibe. It would be akin to paying homage to Aspen without any sense of snow or mountains. But dogs are almost as pivotal to the community as humans; to be dogless in Palm Beach seemingly risks social isolation.

The problem was closing the road down and, to the best of my knowledge, in recent years it’s been challenging to get the town council to agree to this. We have some friends on that committee, however, and agreement was reached so long as we finished filming before 8 am. This meant shooting directly into the rising sun and this limited our effective shoot time to about 20 minutes. When the sun rises above the clock tower it is simply too powerful to work into.

So, we had one shot at it and it was a true team effort. Nadine Leopold, the European supermodel, played her role perfectly as a carefree, dog-loving, life-loving resident of the community and luckily the poodle behaved at the right moment.

In my Palm Beach series, the starting premise was to be original in all that we did. There was simply no excuse for being hackneyed—that would be lame. The road shots had to be authentic and celebratory and according to the famous clock tower, I think we achieved that at about 7.40 am that morning."

- David Yarrow