Recently I had the pleasure of working with Sean the owner of Platinum Cars. I was hired to shoot content for magazine submissions. Stock photos they could give to car magazines for publication. This shoot was a challenge but ultimately a lot of fun. Being around all those shiny cars was pretty cool too.
This was a very challenging and enjoyable experience. Shooting the front lobby was a long process. With glass walls everywhere it took some time to setup the lights so that I would not see a million reflections everywhere. One light of the four was visible in the final shot and that took some time to setup.
I don't think I've ever been so conscious of my gear before. With all those cars being packed in so close together I had to carefully navigate my way around with tripods and stands. The last thing I wanted to do was knick one of the cars. In order to shoot the high angle shot of the show room I had to engineer a makeshift tripod extension by taping my heavy metal tripod to the side of a 13 foot aluminum ladder. My ideas always work but just to be safe I had my assistant vigilantly standing at the bottom of the ladder just in case something happened. The whole setup was top heavy and the exposure was long. So I had to wait for the ladder to steady before I shot than stay perfectly still while the exposure was in action. Thirty minutes to setup and 30seconds to take the shot. Welcome to the wonderful world of photography.
The one shot of the day I was really looking forward to was a portrait of Sean standing in front of his flagship. This was a 24 shot composite. One shot to light Sean, one shot to light each rim, one shot to light underneath of the car, one shot for the interior and so on and so forth. It was the first time I had ever done such a complicated composite and to do it for a client with no room for error, it was a rush. I really enjoy those pressure situation where failure is not an option. I really had no idea how it would work out in the end but I was confident that I could get it done.