LFA vs GTR

$400,000 Dollars. That’s how much these cost, so when the call came to shoot one you gotta say “YES!” Now have you ever driven to Riverside? Well you have to get up really early if you want to get there by 7am, and yes I took the Alfa…with strobes, rigging, stands, camera, tripod and I think I even brought a sand bag. We started in Riverside at the K&N facility with the LFA strapped to their dyno. But before the strapping down the carbon fiber underbody panels had to be removed. We drove it onto a lift and everything was revealed. Absolutely spotless. It was amazing, every piece was numbered and labeled by hand, this was a handcrafted frame and suspension. Titanium and magnesium and a bunch of other really expensive stuff. On the dyno though this 10 cylinder Lexus was quite refined, no turbos, no superchargers, just fuel injection. On the dyno that translated to over 450 horses at the rear wheels and a 9500 redline that pegged their dyno at it’s maximum, 202. mph. Now i was shooting the tach/speedo inside the car and it headed past 202, more like 205, and the motor just screamed like an F1 motor. It just kept going and going. Well after a few passes enough was enough and we had to get outta there, off to California Speedway… to meet the GTR on the back dragstrip. Cooool. Just one little glitch, I have to leave no later than 3pm. It takes 50 min to one hour with no traffic doing 80mph. I’m shooting again the next day and got things to do. So this is going to be a fast shoot. I did statics of the LFA first, got the strobes out and played a bit, it was very windy which resulted in to having to place the strobes on the ground, neat effect so I ran with it. At a certain point I had to give the car over to Scott to set up for acceleration test. Good time to take some pan blurs, remember I’m doing this with a 1d mark4 on high speed cont. It’s fast. I picked up some Transcend flash cards 600 speed 8 gig udma, I can hold the shutter down on low speed and the camera never stops to buffer, I can go through the whole card without letting up.Ok point it makes it a lot easier to get the pan blurs, the blur on the drag strip looked great on the monitor. Next were the group shots, more strobe, right on the straightaway, I really like these, then car to car singles and group, we used the Alfa to shoot out of, Ed drove, and Jim sat next to me with the video camera, the whole time Ed was driving I was listening to my motor thinking it sounded like it was lugging, not pulling over 4500.. I know it’ll pull to 6 with ease, welll we got our shots and were heading off the track when I noticed the handbrake was up. The whole time, luckily no real damage was done. Doah, current track time 2:56. I had to fly, got the kits together and hit the 10, it was close, made it back with time to spare. Next day, shooting the car from TV show Mannix out in the Santa Clarita oil fields, more to come on that later. If you click on the pictures they get BIG!.

LFA on the Dyno

Every bit numbered

On the track

It was sunny Monday but I knew it was going to rain Friday. This is for Motor Trend. 2 fast cars, what to do? Knew I had to find a place indoors, that meant it had to be pretty big. Now we have a very limited budget for locations these days and I knew the warehouse was pricey, but it never hurts to ask. Oh yeah, we got lucky. And yes on Friday it was raining. This was such a good call. The warehouse had lights, but it wasn’t that bright. This was a perfect time to test the new Canon 7d. With it’s high ASA and “sports focus”, lets see how it does. I like to start the day with static beauty masters, the group shot, singles etc. The first thing I noticed was the 1.6 crop factor. I am so used to working full frame, I can usually block the shot with my eye and then place camera where I stand, HA! not so with this camera, start stepping back, and back, and back…. now I’m so far away the auto focus doesn’t work that great and the pocket wizards start becoming sporadic. I had lights up top on the balcony rear 3/4 and on the floor with the cars to light up the noses, strobes in the car, and even a strobe on the rear wall at times to help with separation. I really like the static masters, I think we nailed it. Every shot, every detail needed to be lit. The clock started moving faster, while we were shooting 2 other film companies came and scouted the location, I even knew one of the crews. The car to car shot has got to be the coolest, in the warehouse, coming right at you, great energy. So how did the 7d stand up, the high asa helps when you’re shooting details in the car, if you can get the details handheld it makes thing go much faster, setting the tripod in the front seat of a car is always rather cumbersome, so I cranked the asa up to 800-1200 asa. Did the high asa hold up? well its hard to say, I think we are redefining what an image looks like, grain, sharpness, texture and color. I would say it has a “look”, I believe we should embrace this and just go with the flow, the process is constantly emerging and morphing. Would I buy one? As a back up camera yes. I am waiting for the 1D MK4, got money down and just waiting now. I will keep everyone updated with the progress. I would consider this shoot a success, not only was new gear pushed, we got great shots, the action stuff was fun and engaging. Riding in the car with Art, slaloming thru the columns, pan blurs with the Mercedes, nice stuff. You can see more on the Motor Trend website and in the February issue, and a SHORT FILM too.

A beautiful machine, and a beautiful day at the Muckenthaller facility. The Cadillac was the original car of the year car, and it still wears it’s original paint, pretty impressive. Your first impression is how big these cars were. I could only imagine a city full of these, you look at all the SUV’s bumping into everything in sight, how did they do it in 49? We got to the location, I was seeing for the first time, and found that there were only a few places to stage the car, and these few places were to very soon loose the open shade. I had to hurry!!! Master shots first, front and rear, a bit of reflected light here and there, I didn’t want to over light the car, I believe when working with classics not to make the car look like a toy but yet to try and retain the original designers intentions, so people like you and I won’t get distracted by a bunch of flash. And Cad’s have enough flash already, just look at that grill!! We slammed through the statics, did our details, got some nice ones, and even had time for a rig shot. The motor was fun too, due to the big hood not much light fell into the engine compartment, and putting on camera flash just looks horrible, so I bounced the ambient light into the hood and let it fall back onto the motor with a bit of help from my assistants. It opened all the shadows and gave enough clarity. The driving shots were done out front, drive this way, now this way, okay one more time, and car to car we did by driving around the block several times. I’m really looking forward to the new Canon cameras, when shooting objects that move it would seem simple enough but these digital cameras really fight at giving you tack sharp images and letting the background blur, it sure did seem our old film cameras were much better, but who has a budget for film these days? Anyways our majestic king ran flawlessly all day long, and quiet too, a seamless piece of American Machinery, I hate to say but like a giant Lazy Boy on wheels, Archie Bunker would of loved it!!

Vintage Alfa Shoot

This has to be one of my best shoots ever. Ok…with that said I’ve got a lot to live up too. Three Alfa’s here, a 58 Spider Veloce, 59 Sprint, and 67 Duetto. 3 wonderful cars, it was a real Veloce in beautiful period blue, full rubber matted interior and leather seats with blue piping. The Sprint was done in red and grey just like it left the factory, even the headliner was perfect, and the Duetto, a 1600 with webers, red seats and red carpet and all original. I searched long and hard to come up with the perfect location, I wanted it to feel as if we were looking at those vintage Road and Track covers from the 50’s and 60’s. I drove through Beverly Hills… leaving flyers and knocking on doors, drove through Hancock park… knocking on doors and leaving flyers, and then to Pasadena, yes, knocking on doors and leaving flyers. Well every now and then someone opens the door and like a blessing you discover the perfect location. I couldn’t have asked for anything else, the scale was perfect and hands were shaked… now I just had to find the rest of the cars. I went out to Santos’s shop in Northridge, I found the Veloce there, back into town… went to Omega Motorsports and talked with Uve, he put me in touch with Allen, the owner of the Duetto, and putting post on the AlfaBB, and talking with Autobooks and Norm from the Alfa club, Alfa Milano and John’s Alfa I found the Sprint. Call time was 9am, a saturday morning, the same morning as Monterey / Pebble beach. I didn’t want to make it too early since everyone was driving from around town. It was still a little cloudy at 9am so I started with the details, interior and exterior and by the time I was done we had nice hard sun, Alfa’s look great in hard light if you place them just right. Now I only had the house location from 9-2, so I had to work smart and fast, so onto the master beauty shots, with variations and verticals. Then the singles, front 3/4 and rear 3/4, and don’t forget the motors!! Well it was 2:18 when we finished not bad timing, so you know what that means “lunch”. I wanted to do something nice for everybody, Alfa owners are a special breed and lunch should be Italian. We went to Il Forniao in Pasadena old town and ate all we could hold… but wait we still have more to shoot, The driving shots, using local roads we wound our way around for car to car, dappled light with tree canopy’s overhanging, and the sound. The cars are about 6 feet off my bumper and I can hear the Weber’s sucking air into those fabulous 4’s, a real treat and the pictures aren’t bad either! Every now and then work turns into fun, it’s still work, but boy, you get home and start going through the images grinning from ear to ear. I even got a “thats very nice” from the girlfriend, thats when you know you’ve done good!

I recently shot 3 classic motorcycles Hagerty’s Insurance. A Honda CBX, it had 6 cylinders, a Velocette, and 1971 Yamaha. These were living in a classic bike museum and they were beautiful. Simply Spotless. I like bikes, I just don’t want to ride one, but this is a whole nother story. That Honda sounded like an F1 car, I couldn’t believe how compact and refined and tight that motor was, so reliable, so perfect. It was a big bike though, not something to toss around. It was the Velocette that caught my eye, A compact efficent classic look, it looked like it was moving just sitting still, this was probably my favorite out of the three. Vintage stuff always catches my heart. So of course I awoke to rain. Theres nothing like being a photographer with only one day to shoot a story and seeing rain. You awake at 6am, you peek out from behind the curtains, its grey, its wet, you can see the raindrops hitting the puddles, well we said we’d meet at 9am at the museum…and its still wet at 9, but theres hope, the weatherman says a small window of sunshine is expected from 10-2. YES!!  I don’t want to tell you what time I got my first shot off, but it was sunny, it was sunny all day, the rain left and stayed gone. We did car to bike moving photography, pan blurs, and those static beauty shots and tons of details. I must admit, its alot faster shooting the dashboard of a bike than a car interior. We worked very hard and fast, am I happy? oh yeah!

Ok…We have the new BMW750iL, The Audi A8L and Mercedes S550. We have downtown Los Angeles as our playground. What to do? We talked in the office about shooting in the same areas as the movie Heat was shot in, hence the name  ”The Getaway”. I got permits throught the city, a whole downtown grid, booked a couple officers to handle traffic and we were good to go. I decided that the downtown photography should be done on the weekend due to weekday traffic in the city. As I thought about the shoot shot by shot I realized that I must storyboard every shot. We will be a crew of 1 shooting vehicle, 3 picture cars, 2 motorcycle cops. I went downtown, scouted and boarded and photographed every shot, paid very close attention to the “one way” streets and created the plan. We met at 8am by lower Grand. And started with Car to Car. We have 3 cars so we started with all 3 in formation from Fig to Temple to Hope to 5th, changing out the lead car on each lap, it looked great thru lens, good energy, a sense of speed, nice postioning, I shot from inside the Audi looking out, driver POV, out the sunroof, out the back window, all different ways to see the chase, and fortunately not much traffic so things went quick. It’s always fun shooting with cars on city streets, make for an action movie kinda day. Shooting pan blurs from Grand to 5th with all 3 cars in turn, and the Tunnel shot used for the opener. The police held traffic for a moment, I only had 3 passes to get it, that means getting all three cars in formation, on their moving marks, the strobes rigged and ready to go, the shot only works at the tunnel mouth, the camera buffers, the strobes recycle, I got it though. I really like this kind of shooting. We are moving throughout the day. You dont have time to get tired, and capturing movement thru the lens is exciting. The beauty shots went great too, my “free is good” location, it’s funny anywhere you shoot has a quirk, like my free location, great place but surface was dirt, and this dirt was dusty, the type that sticks to the tires and turns them white, sticks to the paint like static, so you spend more time wiping the cars off than shooting them. Where I shot the Maserati was a sulphur facility, yes, everything had to be washed twice before the smell went away, and the list goes on, funny how that works, but the shot is always worth it.

I have been driving all over Los Angeles. No, really, all over searching for good locations. If I were just shooting people that would be easier, but when you’re shooting cars there are only so many places you can put them or get them too. I found an amazing quarry overlooking downtown LA. wow, it was perfect. It had those huge bulldozers, giant mounds of rubble, contraptions to move the stuff, and an open workshop to fix the broken machines. Now I’m only doing static beauty shots, 3 cars, singles, interiors and details, so four hours is all I’ll need. I drive to their main offices, I always like to meet in person the one responsible, as well as they get to meet me instead of just another “can I have” phone call. The offices were near Montecito Heights, I had never been that far east, and it was surreal, rolling hills dry with golden grass and pasty skies. Well as we all know the best laid plans…I entered, we spoke, I offered them my own services for a day to come back and photograph their facility, I gave them free issues, and business cards. I got the phone call on the machine when I got back in…$2500 bucks. 4 hours for $2500!!! They gotta be crazy, CBS shot there not to long ago, they must of paved their palms with gold. Not putting all my eggs in one basket I’ve switched to Plan B, Free is good. I’ve found a cool place thats just perfect, its quiet, no one to bother, and looks like the perfect hideout. So 4 hours in and out…I hope, and there’s always Plan C….