The Camaro.
July 5, 2016Last week started with a lot of emails and preparation for an upcoming wedding. Had to confirm my second photographer and make sure everything was, from legal aspect to the gear, ready. While Marc was enjoying Italy testing the new Mercedes-Benz GLC Coupe, I was in Montreal, enjoying the rain like I could. Rain = water = mud, why not get my mountain bike out and have some fun riding in the mud. After a great ride, I took news from Marc and we scheduled a shooting for the Camaro he had this week.
We decided to shoot the car on Canada Day (July first) so the streets would be less crowded making it easier to find some sweet spots around the city of Montreal. The shooting needed to be different since the Camaro really got a nice hard look. We wanted something more urban/industrial so we headed to a part of the city with more business and warehouses. Concrete, graffiti, metal were all considered options for a nice shoot.
While I was waiting for Marc to come and pick me up, I suddenly heard a nice engine sound getting closer and closer. I’m pretty much able to tell when Marc is coming to pick me up with a new car since I never hear those sounds in the neighbourhood, also, he kind of like to rev. the car a bit when he gets close. The sound was pretty cool and I really thought it was fitting the car perfectly. All packed, it was time to get going with the shooting.
Gear list :
- Nikon D600
- Nikkor 24-70mm (Just in case)
- Nikkor 70-200mm
- Manfrotto tripod
I really liked the interior, especially the ventilation controls. On the previous picture you can see the two air vent in the bottom right of the image. The silver rings on the outside are actual wheels which controls the air flow and the temperature. I thought it was a cool feature. One thing to noticed, was that the windshield was pretty small and I thought it was reducing the visibility a bit compared to some other car. Would I trade style for a bigger windshield, definitely not. You really feel inside a cockpit while sitting inside the Camaro and the size of the windows are part of the effect.
Our first stop was in a small clearing in an industrial area where we found some graffiti. Nothing to complicated, I simply wanted an interesting background.
Even though the picture was fine, I found that the background was too disturbing. While I was setting the photo, Marc was scouting the zone on the map application of his cellphone and when we were ready to go, we decided to drive around the area just to see what we could find.
How cool! We found some kind of deserted overpass which created a small dark environment for the car to hide under and show to the world the aggressiveness of the front grill. I know…the license plate ruined the car a bit…but still, the picture turned out alright since I didn’t had flash to light the car.
Since we had in mind to shoot the car in some urban area, we went in the Old Port of Montreal to find some great looking building. When parking the car and looking at the possible frame, a family passed by in a car and we heard the kid talk about the Camaro. They parked right in front of us and Marc asked the kid if he would want to sit in the car. The kid was really happy and told us it was the second car he “tried” that day (the other one was a Corvette). While the mother was taking some picture of his child sitting in the car, I was still framing and scouting the zone.
I wanted to see a bit more building behind the car and to do so, I knew I had to photoshop a lot of thing to clean up the image.
I really like the wheels on this car and thought it would be nice to have a classic rolling shot of the Camaro. With the wheels spinning it would make a nice effect while creating some movement in the image. As we were driving back home, we made a quick stop to a location I previously shot the Mazda Miata in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue. The place was pretty crowded so we tried to take this picture as quick as possible. A slow shutter speed with a small f-stop would give me the result I am looking for. As usual, Marc did a test run so I could adjust my settings to the environment and we were set to capture the shot.
Wrapping up the day, it was time to edit the pictures. This time it was more about finding locations then anything else. I didn’t took any close up of the car especially because it was supposed to rain so we wanted to maximize our time in Montreal. The car itself was pretty fun to play with and the look was great. I really liked the harsh line defining the car making it look massive and powerful.
Stay tune for my next blog post where ill go over my edits in photoshop on the image with the building in the background.