Posted by Jamie Carl on May 26, 2010 in Jamie's Blog, Publications | 2 comments

At the beginning of the year I got sent a job by HPI Magazine which was to shoot a “matte black EVO IX” for a feature in the magazine.  That was literally the only description that I got for the job.  Turns out that the matte black EVO in question was Martin Notaras’ 440kw track spec EVO which was to be taking part in the World Time Attack Challenge held in May.  Also known as ‘Superlap’.

So when the editor at HPI got a hold of the photos, someone at Express Publications suggested that the article might be worthwhile using as the main feature article of the FastFours Superlap issue.  Turns out that meant that it would be on the cover.  As you can imagine I was kinda excited.

The shoot was just like any other that I’ve done.  I organised the heck out of it with the help of my friend Shaun Samaru (who was writing the article) only to have my plans get completely screwed up by something that was totally out of my control.  Upon hearing that it was a track car I decided to find a race track near by that we could use.  Unfortunately there aren’t many to choose from here in Canberra.  In fact, there is only one.  Fortunately I bumped into a guy named Daniel who just happened to be a member of the Southern District Motorsport Association (SDMA) and could get us access to their hill climb track for a few hours.  So I offered to trade favors and we were in.  Track car, on a race track, awesome.  Should make for a fantastic photo shoot.

My first hint that something was wrong was when the car turned up on the back of a truck.  I didn’t think much of it though as I knew it was a track car so I just thought the owner didn’t want to drive it on the road, or that it wasn’t registered for the road.

Nope.  Totally wrong.  It wasn’t running.

So there I was with a super hot/fast track car, on a race track, ready to get some great driving shots of it tearing up the asphalt, and the bloody car doesn’t run.  Time to throw out Plan A and come up with a Plan B.

“Ok…ok….don’t stress Jamie.  Just do the engine bay and interior photos, so you look like you know what you’re doing to the pile of on-lookers, while you formulate a plan in your head.  And don’t forget to breath.”

Without panicking I decided to just cross that other bridge when it comes to it and started doing the engine bay, interior and other feature item shots.

Then it hit me exactly what I was photographing.

Marty’s car is just phenomenal.  It’s probably the most awesome car I have ever had the pleasure of photographing thus far.  430kw of pure fury in a light weight carbon fiber all wheel drive chassis.  Marty told me that he’d done Wakefield in an impressive 1:03.  That’s on a track I can only do 1:13 on in the Supra and it’s a short track so 10 seconds it a heck of a lot.

Everything that could be carbon fiber, was carbon fiber.  Everything that could be taken out, was taken out.  Everything that could be replaced with a bigger better faster version, was replaced.

Now, some of this may be sounding familiar as I have touched upon it before in a previous article about Saving your butt with Photoshop and so I’ll leave it to that article to explain how we got around the motion stuff.  I will say that the technique in the other article would be soooooo much easier now with Photoshop CS5.

So the car wasn’t running, but that was no reason to just give up.  Therefore we tried a few different techniques to make the car look like it was the super fast/powerful race car that it is.  I already know what you’re thinking and yes we tried that too.  ;)  We pushed it down a hill with a camera attached to it and everything.  But what worked best was actually towing the car around the track behind a Holden Ute that someone had, with me in the back tray sliding around while trying to take photos.  I really wish someone had a video camera with them as it was a bit of a sight.  I got a couple of really great shots though that I was happy with.

With the sun starting to set and most of the shooting out of the way, it was time for the ‘hero shots’.  I wanted to place the car on a corner at the top of the hillclimb track when Marty tells me that the handbreak doesn’t work.  Frack!  This just keeps getting better.  Then we found a big rock and jammed it under the rear wheel to hold the car in place.  Fixed.  Did anything else want to go wrong?  I absolutely loved the light that we got though.  It was that nice golden light you get at the end of a nice clear day and it was being gobo’d wonderfully as it came in through the trees that surrounded the track to produce some interesting texture.  I was quite happy with the results even looking at them then and there on the back of the camera.

After it all, it really is probably one of the most fun car shoots I’ve done.  Marty, the owner, was great to chat to and a few people how helped organise or were ‘friends of friends’ hung around to lend a hand.  It was a great environment to work in and I had a blast.

The fact that it made it to the cover is just a bonus.