Archive for the ‘Magazine Feature’ Category

Wraptivo CLS and Vorsteiner BMW E92 M3

Saturday, March 19th, 2011

One of the exciting new trends in the automotive market is wrapping a car. It allows a consumer to change the color of the car relatively easily while preserving the OEM paint. Changing the color on a car can cost upwards of $4,000 or more and take a full week, while wrapping a car can often be done in an afternoon for less than $1,000. Meguiars has introduced a new product called Wraptivo, which is a series of designer car wraps that can be applied to any car. They have a bunch of cool colors and designs, but their flat colors have been the most popular in their pre-launch phase.

Through some phone calls, I was able to line up a pair of the cars for separate photoshoots. I met up with Peter from Vorsteiner and Brett Coca in Irvine where we cranked out both shoots in record time. For Peter’s BMW, we chose a commercial complex with a draub red tone to it, which should help add some contrast to the simple color spectrum of the BMW. When it came time to shoot Brett’s car, we simply moved down the street to another commercial area which included some blue tints, again providing some contrast against Coca’s car.

First up was Vorsteiner’s E92 M3, complete with an Active Autowerkes supercharger, full Vorsteiner aero and wheels, Brembo brakes, and a matte silver colored wrap. This car will be featured in Performance Auto and Sound magazine.

The second car was Brett Coca’s Mercedes CLS. If this car looks familiar, it’s probably because this car was originally white and built by RJ DeVera. DeVera sold the car to his good friend Coca, who changed the look up with a matte battleship grey wrap that really goes well with the black and carbon accents.

This feature hasn’t been comitted to anyone just yet, but has interest from several outlets.

Teresa’s model feature for Race Pages

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

Since 2005, I’ve worked with Promedia Publishing to wrangle the models for their magazines, and occasionally shoot them as well. This originally started with OverRev Magazine, but when that magazine was retired, the features rolled over to Race Pages. For those who don’t know, Race Pages is the publishing end of Promedia, with the National Mustang Racing Association (NMRA) being the racing end of the business.

We found Teresa Menconi via Model Mayhem, and she was great to work with. For each issue, we shoot a handful of products for the product section, then take a few extra shots with the model for their feature.

Teresa starts out modeling an OBD-II scanner

We moved on to a digital fuel pump controller and a Wilson throttle body.

We finished up with a few poses using one of the many airsoft pistols laying around the office. Don’t mess with Teresa!

Fausto Merida’s 2006 VW GTI

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

Fausto Merida’s 2006 Volkswagen GTI turned  heads at the 2006 SEMA show, and I got the opportunity to shoot the car for a feature in PAS Magazine. Fausto has been a good friend since his days working at Overboost.com, so it was great to spend a morning shooting his car. I chose to do the shoot at a pretty infamous spot near downtown LA which has a view of the downtown skyline. Because of the overcast weather, we had some awesome equal light, which allowed us to shoot the car in any direction and make the most of the location.

Shooting towards the city

Shooting to the East, towards a black gate and some ivy

Shooting to the South, against a red brick wall with some graffiti

BPM “Shwag” shoot in Hollywood, CA

Sunday, February 18th, 2007

Out of the blue, I got a phone call from Ray Allan David asking if I could help him out with a quick photoshoot. I knew Ray from the car industry, and at the time, he worked at a publisher who not only published a car magazine but also had some titles in the music industry. He was working on a short deadline, and needed some products shot that same day. Luckily for him, I lived just a few blocks from the OverAmerica office, and had the afternoon off from work. Being a fellow creative, Ray pretty much gave me open reign creatively to get the shots they needed.

First shot was a set of chocolate bars from a private chocolate factory. We decided to do the shoot in the office fridge, with just ambient light and whatever condiments were remnant in the fridge.

Next up was a set of 4 T-shirts. We only had one mannequin, and Ray wanted to fit all 4 t-shirts into 1 shot. Luckily, the office is on Sunset Blvd, and we found an extra turntable in the office that we could use for part of the shot as well. The first composition was shooting across Sunset to the South.

It wasn’t a bad frame, but it just didn’t jump at me. Plus, the middle mannequins would block the sign that says “Hollywood”. Perhaps this would work for 1 shirt, but not for all 4. Instead, we shot towards the East, down the sidewalk.

Ahhhhh, much better! The palm trees definitely screamed “Hollywood”, and the red building added some nice color to the frame to offset the muted colors of the shirts. We setup a tripod, shot a few frames per shirt, then composted them together.

There we go! Looking back, I wish I had switched the olive green shirt with the burnt orange shirt to help offset the colors in the shot, but I like how this all came out. Simple, yet conveys the purpose well. These 2 shots ran in BPM Magazine.

To date, this is still one of my favorite product shots.

Nokturnal’s Yukon Denali w/ Rolls Royce front end

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

Nokturnal Car Club is a car club that can usually be found at DUB and other similar shows in Southern California. This particular car was featured by Visionik Audio in their booth at the 2007 CES show. Visionik was advertising in PAS at the time, so I was sent out to the San Gabriel Valley to snap some photos of this unique car. Each door opened differently (Driver front door was Lambo style, Driver Rear was draw-bridge style, Passenger Front was normal, Passenger Rear was Suicide), and the front end features an authentic Rolls Royce grill and headlights. The interior had quilted suede, mink, and other lush fabrics, combined with a real hardwood floor and a 15″ screen integrated into the dash. Although this car isn’t everyone’s taste, it is very unique and has a ton of work into it.

Team Hybrid Scion xA Feature – Scion HQ

Saturday, January 13th, 2007

For my first feature shoot of 2007, I was contacted by PAS Magazine to shoot the Team Hybrid Scion xA designed by David Huang. This car won the inaugural Scion Challenge at the 2006 SEMA show in Las Vegas. I traveled to Torrance, CA to the Scion Corporate Headquarters to do the shoot. Unfortunately, I was limited on location as the car wasn’t street legal. Also, as with many show cars, the engine wasn’t running right at the time, so we weren’t able to get any rolling shots. I still feel the shoot came out good. PAS ran the car in their 2007 Buyers Guide.


Click the cover to get a glance at the layout.

Hillbank Motorsports shop tour – PAS Magazine

Saturday, January 6th, 2007

My first shoot of 2007 was at Hillbank Motorsports / Superformance in Irvine, CA. While some of my shoots are from me sourcing the cars, this particular shoot was sourced from the sales department of PAS as Hillbank was a paying advertiser at the time. Hillbank produces replica Shelby Cobra kit cars for their buyers, with all manufacturing happening in house. I went to the facility and met with the staff, who gave me a tour of both their showroom and their warehouse. One of the biggest constraints of this shoot was that their showroom was very tight quarters, and the 1.6x crop factor on my 20D didn’t allow me to get the wider shots I would have preferred. Never the less, I’m happy with the way the shoot came out, and so was the client (PAS Magazine).

This spread ran in the July 2007 PAS Magazine. Click on the magazine for a preview of the spread.