I have been shooting cars in my spare for almost 2 years, mainly for friends,family and anyone else who had heard of my work and wanted some nice photo's of there pride and joy to hang on the wall. This helped me out with buying new gear and also give me some extra $$ to throw around. Each time I would do a shoot and proudly show off the results to the people around, every time I would get the same comments,"Why dont you send these into a magazine, surely they are worthy?" Why, well im my own biggest critic, and a harsh one at that...
Moving on, a few months ago a set up shoot with my mates Mazda RX3 Drag car, a very tuff car indeed that I had been a fan of for years. The shoot was a succes from my point of view, and my mate was happy with the results so I decided, what the hell, i'll send this one in to a magazine and see what happens...
I contacted the editor of a new magazine that was just starting out and was right up my alley. It was also dedicated to the specific class of drag racing the RX3 was for, awsome! The reply I got was simple " We would love to have your photo's in our mag, send them in and we will get a feature written up asap." Needless to say, I was over the moon!!
After a few chats with the editor I had lined up a few other cars for features and got started on organising shoots. The magazine is currently a quartley publication so feature spots are a premium. I have tried to source cars that are interesting and new to increase my chances of a hit.This included my latest shoot last week of a Tuff little datsun 1200 Ute that has just come onto the scene owned by Dave Wilzig.
The little ute is being pushed along by a rather odd powerplant to see in a car like this, a V6 Holden Commodore engine. And if that not crazy enough for you, it also has not 1 but 2 turbo's strapped on the side. Remember, this little shoe box of a car came out of the factory with a sub 1.5L 4cyl engine that was lucky to have enough power move anything larger that a few bale's of hay in the back and old farmer in the drivers seat, let alone cover 400m in anything even close to respectable. But this thing now punches out a crazy 600+hp and shoots down the 1/4mile in 8 sec flat.
The shoot was done at Dave's workshop of choice V&E Rigoli in Wetherill Park Sydney, starting at a cold 8am. This location worked out great as the weather outside was anything but desirable. I wanted to go for that gritty, de saturated workshop feel and have the car under the spotlight so to speak so it really popped out from the background.
To accomplish this I grabbed my 3xNikon sb800 speedlights and got to work. Positioning the flash heads low (where able) & aiming into the wheel arches to hide as much of the hot spots as possible. Shooting bare to ensure i get all the available light from them i was able to highlight the car and make it stand out from the underexposed back drop of the workshop, this really put the focus on the car. Without the use of the flash guns this would have been a difficult result to achieve and the car would have blended in with the toolboxes and other workshop equiptment. A few hours later and a lot of work to move the car around the shoot was done. This Shoot is being used for a full feature on Daves off tap ute in next months "Sport Compact Drag Racer" magazine due on stands 24 June, keep an eye out for it and let me know what you think. I will update this with some finnished images soon as well as some from my other recent shoots.
Jason
