I was back in Santa Fe to photograph more cars for my best car client, James. You may recall he let me drive his Rolls-Royce Wraith last time I was there doing photography for him. This time it was his 1982 Aston Martin V8 Vantage Volante to be photographed by my Sony a7R IV. Volante is the word Aston Martin uses for convertible. You may see some similarities in this generation V8 Vantage and the Ford Mustang. I noticed it immediately. In photographing this Aston Matin the green color showed itself or hid nearly entirely based on the angle I photographed it from. In the above photo it is hard to see, but in the aerial drone photo below it is clear.
On a recent car photography shoot in Santa Fe, I got to photograph four fantastic cars. This 1962 Austin-Healey 3000 MKII is the second car I am sharing from this day of car photography in Santa Fe (the first was a Rolls-Royce Wraith). I photographed this Austin-Healey in the style for selling at auction, as I had for this client before a few month ago with his Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider Veloce. As it often is when photographing a beautiful classic car, it was an absolute pleasure photographing this Austin-Healey as there seemed to be endless angles to get stunning shots. The color of the car itself dazzled me each time I looked at it in the bright afternoon Santa Fe sunshine.
This past summer I went up to Santa Fe to photograph an Alfa Romeo Spider for James who was selling the vehicle through Bonhams Auction House. James contacted me about photographing even more of his cars, the first of which I am featuring is his personal favorite car, a stunning Rolls-Royce Wraith. I really found myself getting caught up in photographing this car. I am much more of a mid-engined supercar fan, but I could not help but start to fall under the allure of Rolls-Royce. In editing these photos I appreciated the boldness even more in the final images I was able to create.
The BMW Car Club New Mexico Chapter got invited to a very unique car show right at the top of a mountain at Santa Fe Ski Resort! We actually drove from the Sanat Fe BMW dealership on to the foot of the ski slope itself! Yes, that means my M3 along with a host of other sports cars and classic cars actually went off road. This could not have been a more stunning setting and a fantastic day overall. It felt like a whole different world up there. We capped the day with a hike up to the summit of the mountain, some 11,000+ feet of elevation! To top it all off, they had great veggie burgers grilled right before us with green chili and homemade cookies. In a side note, from the photo below you can see that Jessica and I are living in two totally different temperature zones!
For regular readers of this photography website, I often say when I go to car shows I usually focus on detail shots of cars because getting good, full shots are nearly impossible due to lots of people around, other cars parked too closely, and often bad light. There were not so many people around this classic Cadillac Coupe deVille, but I still mostly focused on the details because they were so interesting to me. What kind of car has two hood emblems? When is the B-pillar all the was in the back and emblazoned with yet another badge? Then what I am pretty sure did not come from the factory, how often do you see a skull floating in the cabin?
This is an unusual blog post or me as I do not usually post much personal content on this, my business website. It is also extremely rare that I have an entire weekend off, and even rarer that it is spent out of town on an overnight trip that was not part of a photo job. Then also I have not really talked about realizing a life long dream a few months ago of owning a proper sports car. However, a weekend trip to Las Vegas, New Mexico with Jessica and our dogs Kiki and Artie was that good I decided to share. This all came about because of the RSW Cruise 2019, otherwise it would never of happened!
Going for details with car show photography in Albuquerque
To my surprise the car show featured at Albuquerque Summerfest 2019 was much bigger than I expected. As with most car shows, get photos of entire cars is a challenge due to people walking all around the cars, so as is my usual custom, I focus on getting detail shots, this time with my trusty 50mm f/1.8 lens. In the lead photo I cleaned up the background removing a few people to leave a clean shot of the front of a powerful yellow 427 balanced by the double center white line passing through the bottom of the frame. I look for contrasting lines, with the double white and then the black stripe on the car.
