Jim Hollander is the author of this image which illustrates the first press advert that used a photograph obtained with a totally digital professional photo camera. This was in1999 and the prestigious American publicity company, Saatchi & Saatchi Rowland decided that an image of the Sanfermin fiestas and its Running of the Bulls should be used to show the new virtues of the Kodak DCS520C to accompany its slogan for the commercial. The slogan stated “Not all cameras have the guts to obtain a snapshot like this one”, and the image was taken from the running of the bulls. Jim Hollander and the publicity executives chose this image taken in Mercaderes Street with the pack of bulls pulling up at the entrance bend to Estafeta. It was taken at Sanfermin1999.
A further rather curious detail is that, arising from the relationship of Hollander and this special Kodak, camera, the snapshot used for the official Bullfight Poster of 2002 was also taken with this same camera and in the same year as the advert snapshot. So this poster was also the first poster with an image taken by a digital camera.
The director of the photo commercial was Frank Dattalo at Saatchi & Saatchi Rowland and the image was spread across all the most important North- American newspapers and magazines in 2000. Jim Hollander tells us that the price of these cameras at that time was around 15, 000 dollars and it was not easy to get your hands on one, even at that price. The technology was developed by Canon and Kodak and they competed against both the D1 from Nikon and the general mistrust of digital which still existed among people everywhere. This commercial was specially aimed at fighting against that mistrust. Among the anecdotes connected with Sanfermin fiestas that year, Jim Hollander relates how one of the public relations executives from Saatchi & Saatchi Rowland accompanied him to fiestas that year and that he looked very like Ricky Martin. 1999 was the year of the hit song Livin´ la vida loca from this Puerto Rican Singer and the people in the streets would shout at them “Ricky, Ricky”… Hollander says that he is sure that the executive will remember his Sanfermin experience for the rest of his life. Nor will we ever forget, thanks to Hollander, that the first ever commercial with a digital camera came from the Running of the Bulls, when the great leap was taken to move to digital technology. After images such as these were taken by Hollander, soon after all the newspaper reporters began turning to digital cameras to cover the Running of the Bulls.
