Hello Mini
Pewh! I’ve gotta tell ya, since returning from Austria I’ve been swamped in work. But between editing shots for several editorials, writing articles, doing “real” work and having a fire at my apartment I found time to shoot this nice little Mini Cooper S.
The car belongs to Nina Marie, which you might remember from this post and is, although not dressed in a very masculine color, a really nice piece of machinery. Equipped with a supercharged 1,6 litre engine the car is quite fast, and you just gotta love the sound of the supercharger when you accelerate. And even with stock suspension and those powder coated stock 17″ rims the car handles surprisingly well also!
I’m really pleased with these shots. I’ve been wanting to to the high key thing for some time now and think I pulled it of nicely. The car was consequently lit with 3 canon flashes triggered with the Elinchrome Skyports.
Unfortunately I had no time to do any interior shots, which is a shame, because the interior is just as good looking as the exterior. But I shot these pictures all the for the guys out there which might not like the Hello Kitty inspired exterior color ;)
I don’t really feel the last two pictures suit the set, and would have loved to shoot them on the first location to tie them closer to the others. But I hope you enjoy them anyway.
A couple of extra shots can be found in this set over at flickr. You can also access the full size shots directly by clicking on them and choosing “all sizes” .
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.
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.
Red Rabbit
More snow here today so I went through some more shots from when I did Cato’s incredible VW Mk1 Golf, or Rabbit as it is called stateside. The car started out as a 1,5 LS in 1978 but now has a carbed 16v engine in it. So the little thing both moves and looks great!
All these shots are taken with Canon’s 24-70 L lens on my Canon 50D and are lit by three flashes. More info on that on flickr. You can get there by clicking the photos.
I have several other decent shots from this shoot, but I feel they don’t really work together as a set because of the difference in ambient lighting. Just take a look at the picture below. It’s taken just 30 minutes before the two shots above and no more than 20 meters away. Despite being lit the exact same way with flashes it really has a lot harsher lighting to it. I did exaggerate it a bit in the post processing, but still…
I might post up some of the other shots later, until then these are available on flickr in higher resolution if you want to take a closer look.
Passing time
Just passing some time editing one of the A5 shots from earlier this year and thought I’d share it here.
The photo is taken with the Canon 50D and a Canon 10-22 lens. Car is lit with two Canon 430EX’s on the rear and the sun on the side. Click the photo to view it larger on flickr.
Dub Wagon, Rolling On Dubs
First of all, sorry for the recent lack of updates. been really busy moving houses and swamped with work so I’ve had almost no time for shoots and other fun stuff.
This weekend things calmed down a bit and seeing as I had talked to Bernhard about a shooting his car for a while we made some hasty arrangements to do a shoot.
As you can see, Bernhard rolls around in a family friendly Passat Wagon which fits both his kids and girlfriend. How they feel about the not so family friendly 20″ TSW Holstens I’m not sure about. What I am sure about though is that the wheels really sets Bernhards 1.8t Passat apart from the crowd. Paired with a millimeter perfect lowering and subtle modifications this sure is a nice ride.
Oh , also one can’t miss just how shiny this car is, which is because Bernhard passes his spare time doing detailing jobs on cars. I don’t know how many coats of wax this car has received during the season, but it might just be more than other cars sees in a lifetime ;)
Enjoy the pictures. Check them out in higher resolution on flickr by clicking them or visit my photostream to see even more ;)
Chevy Again
Just a quick post to say hello and tell you I’ve been super busy and show you another picture of the Classic ’55 210 Chevy I shot last month.
I wish I had my Skyports for that shoot, because everything is so much easier with them. My lighting improved the moment I started using them, and together with some new studio gear that I bought the other day lighting cars is suddenly “easy”. Looking forward to showing you some more shots with taken with the Skyports and stuff, but I have to wait until the pictures are published first.
Anyways, the client picked up his Chevy shots today and was really pleased, and I hope you liked them too.
Cheers.
Finally, Skyports!
Last week I finally got my Skyports. I had been waiting for the supplier I use to get both the Set with both transmitter and receiver and the separate receiver in stock I decided I couldn’t wait any longer and bought two sets with transmitter and receivers.
I even got myself a dedicated Suitcase for all my Strobist gear . Still need to cut out some more room for the rest of the stuff, but I wanted to share anyways :) The china triggers have no cutout as they just double as hotshoe mounts at the moment. New stuff is on it’s way from FlashZebra and should arrive sometime next week.
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With the weather being bad and heavy rain pouring down every night since I got the Skyports I got the chance to test them yesterday. I was out shooting the launch of the new Polo for Treffpunkt magazine and VW Audi Club Norwegen, and stopped on my my way home to test the Skyports. Not having any pictures of my own car since I lowered it another inch i decided to take it to a location I had scouted several weeks ago. Normally i wouldn’t “waste” a good location on my own car, but I’m glad I took it there, because although I thought the location looked cool from a distance, it just wasn’t that exciting when I got there..
Although not quite pleased with the location I went to was delighted with how well the Skyports worked. The range is greater than can see my self needing any time soon and the best part; -they fire the flashes every single time! After struggling with the unreliable china-triggers I can now focus on getting the lighting right, not just getting the lighting to light. The picture is available in higher resolution on flickr. Get ther by clicking the image.