There are a lot of cars that I’d love to have in front of my lens. The Ferrari F40 has always been an amazing car to me and I’ve never lusted after a Ferrari until the 458 came out. But photographing the F40 last night really made you appreciate what it is. It’s an icon in the car world and one of the first Super Cars that started the Super Car realm. It’s an absolute beast from what Scott the owner tells me. It is a carbon fiber tub with an engine in the rear and for fat tires sticking it to the ground.
The owner of the car is someone I worked with before. EVO UK magazine contacted me a few years back and asked if I could photograph a collection of cars here in Dallas. What photographer would turn down such a job? We got everything setup and scheduled the day with Scott, Jake and myself. The day came and went and Jake and I never really saw the images come up from the shoot. I started thinking about photographing and F40 and thought about Scott and wondered if had imported his yet. He said he had and was interested in getting some photos done. So, Win, Win! We check our calendars and get a day and a location scheduled.
I show up at Scott’s house and see the side garage open and the tail of the F40, so gorgeous and simple. I go to the front door and ring the doorbell with no answer. But I hear the engine of a car startup. And what a sound it was. I make my way over to the garage and just listen to it rumble. It takes several minutes to get settled and then he starts backing it out. Parks it in his front drive and lets it warm up some more. We shake hands and say our greetings and then he tells me it’s been a while since it’s been started and ran. We look it over and let it do its thing. We plan a route because the car is low and we don’t want to ruin the nose before it’s close up. We make our way down the road and all I’m doing is watching the road for bumps and debris. I found a location not too far away that he said would be good. We arrived in about 6-7 minutes and set the car up. We chatted more about the car and what we had been up to. I got my gear ready as he looked over the car to see if there was anything that needed to be cleaned. The sun was behind the car and within minutes it was going to be setting behind the building. So lighting was going to be perfect.
I got to work shooting the car while still talking to Scott about what cars he had. I asked him if he kept the MacLaren 675S that they lent when we did our first shoot. He said he did and now he has 3 of them, even the new 720. (Scott, we’ll schedule a shoot in Montana one day for that.) Scott gets out his camera and starts shooting some images as well. We shoot for about an hour and a half and it’s time for him to head out. We wrap up everything and he’s on his way. I let the images finish uploading to my tablet to look them over. I showed him a few while I was still shooting and he was in love. I looked over the images before I left and was amazed how well so many of them turned out. I was only able to use my FotodioX 12×80 softbox for a few photos because the wind kept pushing it around. So I ditched it and just used straight flash, which turned out great. I thought I’d have to fight with the light bouncing off the surface of the car but it did realy well. I had to do little, light removal in post.
I edited a few and sent them to Scott and he loved them. All night I was thinking of the images and was eager to edit them, so as soon as I could I completed them and finished the gallery. These will probably be the best images that I will ever take. I shot bracketing and captured several images but when I started editing, I found that my settings during the shoot I didn’t need the extra images. I’m super happy that I had this opportunity to photograph this car and to produce such great images. I hope I’m ablw to work with Scott again and hopefully make more connections like this. I’d like more exotic cars in my portfolio and I think this is the year. I mean, my first publication was 10 years ago.
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