I’m back from holidays and slogging through several hundred photos trying to obtain some sort of order from it all, so decided I’d take a break and share a picture I took before I left. My buddy Sami is selling his car, and wanted some nice pictures of it before it was gone. I couldn’t promise they’d be nice, but I said I would give it a go. I’d planned this shoot in detail using my new notebook approach and was only missing a location.

Cue an hours frenized driving around looking for somewhere interesting. It did highlight the issue that planning a shoot is all very well but if you don’t know where you are going to do it in the first place, it’s all a bit pointless.

Anyway, onto the results. I had terrible problems with the optical triggers for my Vivitars – they simply wouldn’t work reliably. Or to put it more bluntly, they were utter utter shite. One flash would constantly fire on it’s own, whilst the other only fired one time out of every five or six attempts. Clearly the optical triggers need to go, they are are no good outside of a studio. In spite of this I got the static shot I wanted. I’m not totally happy with it, but equipment failings are the main cause of this unhappiness.

The only other image I wanted to get was a car to car tracking shot – this worked less well for two key reasons;

1.) I had to push to ISO 800 to get the shutter time I wanted – this caused a lot of noise which I hate.
2.) The boot of my Ignis is not a nice place to be whilst driving over bumpy ground. I was too busy concentrating on not falling out to be able to give enough attention to the shots I was taking. I’ll share the picture here if only to illustrate my points.

Despite these problems, I’m confident my new approach to shooting cars is really helping to improve the results I’m getting. on to the next car which will depend on which of my friends I can convince to stand around for an hour whilst I mess around taking photos!

Last night I used my new Vivitar 285HV Flashes for the first time in anger.

I set out with Rich for whom I’m currently working on a website. He buys and sells tasty but affordable motors, and I take the opportunity to take pictures of them. We made our way to a pitch black industrial estate, and after convincing the security guard not to “release the hounds” and that we weren’t there to instigate a terrorist plot against a double glazing company, I set up my gear.

Inexpert clumsy fumbling in the dark is my forte (just ask my Wife), and last night was no exception. Note to self – buy a torch.

The next lesson was a more painful one. When trying to work out if the remote flashes are firing, staring directly into them is not a good idea. MY EYES!!!!

I had in mind two images I wanted to create, and although I struggled a bit in this first one getting the lighting even, I got there in the end. This was shot with the two Vivitars off camera, and my Nikon SB600 on the camera, set to underexpose by 3 stops.

By saying “underexpose” and “3 stops” I appear to know what I’m talking about – don’t be fooled, I heard those terms somewhere else and thought they might make me sound clever if I used them. (this may be a lie). The idea was for the car to loom out of the dark, like some sort of sinister zombie monster. This is admittedly less convincing when the car is sunshine yellow coloured.

This next one was taken by cranking everything up to full power, and then pressing the button. Oops, looked directly at the flashes again, now I’m definitely blind.

Anyway, I was pleased enough with these for the first attempt, and I’m looking forward to exploring the creative opportunities these flashes open up for me. I am however in the hunt for some radio triggers which I hope will be more reliable. It does mean spending yet more money, but as I only have one set of eyes, I’d like to protect them by avoiding beaming flashes directly into them in future.

Ebay here I come!

I wanted to revisit the interior shots of my Ignis because I figured I could do better than the last time. The question is, how do you make the inside of a car look interesting? “Good lighting” I hear you say, but you are wrong. The correct answer is fill it with attractive, lightly oiled naked ladies. The problem with this plan is that I am repellent to almost all ladies, naked or otherwise. Just ask my wife.

With a dearth of sartorially challenged female models, and with it being dark outside, I could only manage this;

If this doesn’t excite you, then you need to see a doctor, because you can’t possibly be alive. Check your pulse.

Apropo of nothing, today I also spent some money on yet more camera gear. This time I have to wait for my purchases to be shipped over from America, so I probably wont get them till next week – watch this space, all will be revealed…

My wallet hurts.

Three updates in three days – I really am spoiling you all. In fact with this update, I have now done more updates this year than in the entire of 2007!

Fascinating.

So roll number two of 120 film out of the Holga came back from processing, and seems to be an improvement over the first attempt. I think using 400 ISO film instead of 100 ISO made a lot of difference, that and the fact I’ve learnt what the different focal distances are (boring).

So on to the results. Click on any of the images below to re-bigulate them in a very sexy way.

So apparently I am an idiot, and it’s not called 120mm film as I’ve put below, but rather simply 120 film. I feel such a cretin.I took another roll of 120 film in for processing today, and was told the shop didn’t have the facilities to process it. I said perhaps they should tell that to the other girl who processed it for me last Friday in one hour for £3.

They took the film and said could I come back tomorrow when the other girl was working. OK…

Watch this space, I took three frames with the lens cap on, and when my wife handed the camera back to me after holding it the back was open, so I don’t have high hopes for what’s going to come out this time!

Fun this film lark be.

On an unrelated note, I took some pics of a VX220 Turbo. Following on from when I took my Ignis there a week or so ago, this is from beach shoot v2.0.

New Year, new car – this time a Suzuki Ignis Sport. In spite of the torrent of abuse I’ve received due to it looking like a granny wagon on steroids, I like it.

It’s got whizzy vented and grooved brake disks, and sticky Yokohama Advan tyres. If you are a big car nerd like me, you’ll know that’s good. Ooh and Recaro seats!

Ooooooh…..

Pay no attention to the little head in the rear window. Cheeky monkey.