Audi Urquattro – Feature
Earlier this year I had the chance to shoot this beautiful Audi Urquattro just outside of Oslo. Having production number 296 out of 898 produced in total the car is rare it self, but what’s rarer is the condition it is in.
Fully rebuilt with OEM parts, most parts under the car powder coated and the exterior paint wet sanded twice the car is absolutely immaculate. Sitting on H&R springs and Bilsteins shocks and rolling on 16X9 Schmidt Revolutions the car has maintained it’s rally heritage. Also, the 1994 Audi RS2 engine swap doesn’t hurt neither the heritage or perfomance. Beeing a most trustfull guy the owner gave us the keys, told us to have fun and left us with the car for hours. I won’t tell you how fast we went in it, but let’s just say it wasn’t the car that chickened out and let of.
This set was shot for Treffpunkt magazine and got both the cover (with the most cheesy composite sky ever) and a 4 page spread. All exterior pictures are shot with natural light and the Canon 70-200 2.8 IS and the interior and engine ones are lit with 2-3 Canon flashes. I hope you enjoy. And do browse to the bottom, there’s a bonus picture for you guys there ;)
There are some more pictures on flickr, you get there by clicking either image. Larger ones can also be viewed there. Hope you enjoy them
Mediterranean Wind
Sirocco is a Mediterranean wind that comes from the Sahara and reaches hurricane speeds in North Africa and Southern Europe. Scirocco is also the model Marius chose when he decided he wanted an newer Volkswagen than his old trusty Mk2 VR6. I’ve shot this cars before, but it wasn’t until recently I got to do a full feature shoot with it for Treffpunkt Magazine, and I’ll give you a quick writeup on the modifications as well.
Marius bought the car brand and it was one of the first to be delivered in Norway. Marius wasted no time and started modifying his Candy White 1.4TFSI the moment he got it from the dealer. Coilovers were fitted and a set of snow tires were sourced in order to try the car out. When the snow melted 19×8,5 Porsche 997 Turbo rims replaced the snow tires and it didn’t go long before he also got hold og some massive 6pot Porsche Cayenne Turbo brakes to match the rims.
Stopping power was now adequate for Marius’ frequent visits to local tracks with the Scirocco, but he wasn’t content with the handling even though the car already sat on H&R Monotube coilovers. A set og H&R Sway bars took care of that, and the 1.4 160 bhp car surprised a lot of high power cars with its superior handling at the tracks.
Clicking on either one of the pictures will bring you to the set on flickr where you can view the pictures even bigger.
Oh yeah, also worth mentioning is that the car is up for sale. Check out the listing and hurry if you want to buy it. I’ve heard there are several others that want the car!
Static Awesomeness
As I told you in my previous post I have some trouble taking decent show pictures. I’m way more comfortable with a proper photo shoot where you can control the surroundings to a greater extent. Fortunately I got the chance to do some of those when in Worthersee. I met up with Russel from KlutchOnline and was lucky to tag along to shoot this insane Audi RS6. I had seen it driving around around the lake an couldn’t help being blown away by it’s presence. But seeing it up close and realizing the drop over those huge 21″ AMG wheels was static made the car even more insane.
The French owner and his friends were great guys, but the task of producing images that would do the car justice seemed quite impossible. So impossible I’ve even put of processing the pictures for a long time. I just didn’t know how to do them. But watching a movie the other day I knew how they had to look. The RS6 is just like the main character in the movie Book of Eli featuring Denzel Washington- Understated, yet immensely powerful! I knew I had to do more post work to them than I usually do and If you’ve seen them movie you can tell me if you think i succeded in recreating some of the mood from the film.
More pictures in the KlutchOnline Feature and on my Flickr and clicking the pictures will make you able to view them larger.
Overdue…
I’ve finally been able to go through some of my Wörthersee pictures. One of the reasons for putting of going through them, apart from being really busy lately, is that I really suck at this kind of photography. Usually I do recognize a good photo opportunity when I see it, but when I’m at at show I enjoy being there to much so I forget about taking pictures… So with that being said, here they are, more holiday snapshots than award winning pictures.
But take them for what they are and I hope you enjoy them.
Cabriolicious
Still behind on my shots from Wörthersee, I’ve managed to edit some pictures I took of this nice Dutch Mk1 Cabriolet at Pyramidenkogel. Pyramidenkogel is a mountain located to the south of the Wörthersee, near the town of Maria Wörth and has one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen. We were up there sightseeing one day and I took some panorama shots I’ll make sure you guys get to see on another occasion. Anyways, Russel from KLUTCH had contacted Twan Niemeijer to shoot his 92 Cabrio and we all went at it on this picturesque spot near the observation and broadcasting tower at the top of the mountain.
Click on either of the pictures to see some more shots Jordan from Klutch and I did of the car, or visit this link to read more about the car and see Russel’s pictures from the shoot.
Audi A4 Allroad – Road Test for Treffpunkt Magazine
I know I should have put these pictures up earlier, but I’ve been swamped lately and haven’t gotten around to it before now.
Anyways, in addition to taking pictures, I sometimes write articles as well. Earlier this year I had the pleassure of having the Audi A4 Allroad for a week or so to do a road test for Norwegian VW- Audi Magazine Treffpunkt. As always, I had planned the location for the pictures in advance and everything was looking to go down smoothly. But again, the weather managed to put sticks in my wheels and the day of the shoot clouds rolled in and made everything into one dull gray mass. Shooting in the snow is hard as it is, add the boring clouds and the way they make everything really flat and dull looking and you’ve got yourself a real challenge. Still I feel I pulled the pictures off nicely.
Most of the pictures were lit with 2-3 Canon flashes placed of camera and triggered with my skyports.
The article ran as a 4 page spread which I’m pleased with. Even made washing the car 5 times in a weekend worthwhile :p
There are a couple of more shots in this set on flickr
Audi A5 featured in Treffpunkt
You’ve seen this car on my blog before, but I’m finally able, and pretty proud, to post the full set from the shoot last September. I was sitting on these until they were published in Treffpunkt Magazine this week. (Ok, so I might have posted them at a photography site last year to get some feedback on them, but don’t tell anyone… ) As before, the car is a Caractere kitted Audi A5 3.0 Tdi S-line. I think the owner checked all the options on the list and then some. With the Caractere kit and rolling on a set of staggered 20″ Petrol Traviata rims the result is awesome!
Treffpunkt is a quarterly magazine published by VW-Audi Club Norwegen and distributed to around 6000 members of the club. Treffpunkt has recently received a big change layout-wise, and I’m actually stoked about getting these images in the first issue with the new layout. Mag looks really professional now! Even made the cover, yay! Make sure to visit Red Rabbits, the design company behind the new layout to see some of their other awesome stuff!
But I digress, back to the shoot…
I’m usually not to happy about my own work, but these I like. Sure, there is a ton of stuff that can be improved, but I really feel they work well together as a set, and the location suits the car. Seeing them on print in the 4 page article in Treffpunkt made me like them even more, even though they had to be cropped a bit to suit the layout. I might even go as far as to say they are my best work to date…
Also, I’ve gotta give a huge thanks to Andreas, the owner who was extremely patient and put up with all my directions and swearing during the shoot. Here’s a bonus shot just for you!
Hope you all liked the pictures, check them out on flickr to view them larger by clicking on them.
Calendar again…
Did some product photography today and while I had the gear out I snapped a couple of pics of a calendar a German Scirocco forum published late last year. The owner of the white Scirrocco I’ve posted shots of here before had purposed some of my shots to be in the calendar and they were accepted.
Bottom two shots are mine. Kinda cool!
Head on over to www.iroc-forum.de for some more Scirocconess!
Blown Out of Proportions…
This summer I was approached by the good guys behind Australian magazine AutoSalon and asked if I could do some shoots for them. The first car up is this white Subaru Impreza Wrx built and owned by A nice chap named Bjørnar here in Norway. Being an ex-Petter Solberg company car Bjørnar sure didn’t put the cars racing pedigree to shame as he took it from a nice weekend track car to the full out race car you see here.
I met up with Bjørnar at his buddy Auduns workplace where we were to shoot the car early in September. The location was really awesome and even had an indoor train…
The car was consequently lit with three canon flashes triggered by Skyports and fired through either umbrellas or diffusers. For the most part I used two of the flashes to light the side of the car and one on either the front or rear depending on what angle I shot from. On this shot though, One was placed inside the car and the two others on either side of the car.
Never tried to shoot this car without modifiers on the flashes, but I may have avoided some of the umbrella reflections you see here had I tried.
As I said before, this car has evolved to a full blown race car over a short periode of time. This might not be all that obvious from the outside, but this picture with the rear door out of the way shows what I’m talking about…
I’m really pleased on how the pictures came out, and it looks like AutoSalon was to, as they ran several of them in a 8 page article in their December issue.
The pictures ran with little or none postprocessing in the magazine, but I gave them a quick edit each before I uploaded them to flickr today. You can check out the pictures on flickr by clicking them, and I you do happen to live in Australia you can probably pick up a copy of the magazine at your local newsagents.
I’ll try to get a link to the cars project thread from the owner and post it here later, so be sure to check back in here if you’re a Scooby fan.
Classic Beauty
Some time ago I wrote a short post titled Trespassing and promised I’d get back with more details and pictures. And behold, I’m back… In the previous post I showed you a picture of a wheel and a front wing that could only belong to a classic british roadster. And true enough, the car in question was a brand new Morgan Roadster sporting the optional 72 spoke wire wheels.
The Morgan Roadster is the latest model produced by the Morgan Motor Company. It was introduced in 2004 replacing the Morgan Plus 8. The car is identical to its predecessor except for new modern Ford V6 mechanicals. The new engine develops 220 hp (164 kW) and is slightly lighter than the Rover V8 it replaces giving the car increased performance and better fuel economy.
Although the photoshoot was done within 2 hrs from the journalist called me to schedule I had the time to put some thought into the location. Call it a cliché, but a car like this deserves not to be shot in your average urban location. It deserves something old and classic. I decided to shoot the car at Akershus fortress, a 700 year old castle that was built to protect the City of Oslo from attackers. Still being used by the military I called them up and made arrangements to do the shoot there… Got the permit and was bummed as hell when the guard at the gate turned us away saying the permit wasn’t valid. We decided to go ahead with shoot anyway and managed to do so in a more remote area, hence the title on the last post.
Being a quick shoot it turned out quite good and several of the pictures ran with the newspapers article. All pictures was taken using natural light and the trusty Canon L 70-200 2.8 lens. Check out the link for these pictures and some rolling shots. Also make sure to visit my flickr photostream to view the pictures in this post in higher resolution. Just click the pictures and you’ll get there ;)