Wiel Mag: OPC vs Reno

Some time ago, I did a shoot for Wiel Magazine. We did a shoot-out between the Opel OPC & Reno (something). (You can see I'm no Reno fan :P )

I'm not the biggest fan of doing car parkade shoots, as it is a location that is SO over-used in the whole automotive sector in general. But it was a special request from the art director, so off we went.

I have to admit, doing motion shots in an undercover area is so much easier! There is no need for ND filters, etc. So we went to town on those. I think we ended up doing 5 or 6 of them in total... probably a record for me in 1 shoot.

Other than that, we had fun scooting around the parkade. As usual we had the local 'friendly' security guards come checkup what we were up to...
"yeah, quick, hide that bomb we planting on the car while we driving it..." :P

This DPS also won an internal RamseyMedia award for best layout & photography a couple months later.

Lambo Superleggera & Audi R8

The second installment of "rain shooting aka The Flood™". After the first session I was alot more willing to go get myself, my assistant, everything soaking wet again.

A gorgeous couple of cars this time too, Lambo Superleggera & Audi R8. Requested that the focus be put on the Lambo alot more than the R8. Lets hope I get to have a nice session with the R8 at some point... maybe even get an exclusive scoop on shooting the new V12 R8!

Again, I'll post the tear sheets in a seperate post, I have to still scan them in, etc.

Aston Martin Vantage

I was tempted to give up on doing any further shoots in the pouring rain, but after I had gotten home & taken a look at these shots, I quickly changed my mind. A little bit of sacrifice for a large difference in atmosphere & feel in a shoot.

This was done for Wiel over a month ago, it has been a long wait to show these! Right now I am a bit too busy to still scan in the tear sheets, I'll do so asap in another post. Overall I loved how these came out, and driving home soaking wet didn't seem such a biggie in retrospect. However at the time.... hehe

Tear: Wiel Aug 08 (SEAT vs Mazda 5)

This shoot was a bit of a "soccer mom's" car shoot-out. Or at least the Mazda 5 looked the part. I'm no motoring journalist on any scale, so that's just my opinion. The Mazda 5 did have these very cool remote slide doors! I was rather fascinated with those. To get a proper run down on these cars, I would suggest picking up the new issue of Wiel rather.

Just a note on the opening DPS, it was another style driven by the "Advertisement" type of image. I rather liked how it came out. Now to just get both SEAT & Mazda to let me do their commercial work. :)

Tear: Wiel Aug 08 (Merc)

Mercedes SL63... Not much to say, except this was an amazing car to shoot! I put a lot of personal extra effort into location, which I think paid off very well! Special thanks to the house owners for putting up with us for a few hours.


And then one more which I personally liked, but wasn't used in the mag feature:

Wiel July 08

This was one of those shoots that was just made extra nice, by doing it in one of the nicest possible locations. None other than the Stellenbosch mountain roads. Perfect lighting, late afternoon, the breaze gently blowing the already autum leaves... really picturesque!

This was finally published in the July issue of Wiel Magazine. So I can finally show it off. Yay. It was one of my more favourite shoots, as I felt alot more relaxed doing it. Maybe it was the surrounds. Maybe I was having a good day. Either way, I really enjoyed just shooting on this evening. And I think the results speak for themselves.

The first 2 images are scanned in tear sheets, and the third was one that I really liked personally, yet wasn't used as a nice large double spread. There were so many great shots that weren't able to be used due to space constraints. Unfortunately.

Wiel Tear Sheets: 4x2 Steed Shoot

So its always the case of waiting for things to be published before you can show it off to the world.
I'm glad to finally present a new style of automotive photography which I have begun doing.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I ultimately would like to end up in the advertising market. Where instead of having a range of images for selection in a editorial magazine, you strive to create that one perfect image for an advert or campaign. This new style heralds the beginning of my goal to reach the advertising look & feel. I know it won't happen overnight, nor do I expect it to. For now, practice, practice, practice & a bit more practice is whats going to pay off in the end.

Without further delay, here it is:

WIEL Tearsheets

Some tearsheets from the April 2008 issue of WIEL Magazine. Its their 30th Anniversary issue, so it was a really nice issue to start shooting with Ramsay, Son & Parker (RS&P) Magazine House

There are 2 shoots I did, seperate articles. The one was a article on Diesel being in SA for x amount of years. The other, being for Ford.

The shoot that involved the girl, the criteria given were very specific. They wanted a vintage, 60's look, which still had a little bit of an edge on sexy.