This model, this car, this styling. These are the elements that came together oh-so-beautifully in order to make this shoot happen. And man, am I chuffed.

If you had asked me a few years ago if I would ever be shooting models, you would have gotten a resounding “no” from me. But things have changed somewhat.

Let’s go back. Waaaay back. Back to the days of my photography degree, and the decision that led me down the path of automotive photography, and why it’s so “surprising” that I am shooting models.
Back in 2004 I enrolled in the Tshwane University of Technology’s Photography course. It was meant to be a 4-year bachelor’s degree, but due to choices I made, it turned into 5. The 5th year was, contrary to what many might believe, a blessing rather than a burden. There was a very specific reason why I decided to stretch my 4th year out over 2 years. And this reason is why I am here today, writing about car photography and how I got to this point.

You see, throughout the years of studying photography, we were given assignments that spanned the gamut, from still lives to product shots to portraiture. Of all the “genres” that we would shoot, the one that I didn’t care for, the one that excited me the least, was portraiture. It’s not that I don’t like portrait photographs, on the contrary, I love seeing great portraiture. It’s just that I didn’t like MAKING these photos. This had a fair amount to do with my own lack of surety when it came to the actual process of shooting people. You see, I don’t believe that a good portrait is as a result of having a good model (this is invaluable for other reasons), but rather a good portrait is the result of a photographer working with his model and being able to coax the best out of them. This was where I found myself very unsure of myself, and quite often incapable of actually directing a model in such a way that we produced great photos. So I took the easy way out and avoided it as much as possible.

This idea sank ever deeper into my head, and I found myself convinced that I was not good at shooting portraits, and as such I swore off becoming a “portrait photographer”. This was pretty pivotal in me deciding to become a car photographer. There was, of course, the fact that I love cars and am still a huge car fanatic, but it was the contrast between cars and people that swayed me. The exact words have been lost to time, but I recall saying something along the lines of: “I want to shoot cars, not people. Cars do what I tell them to do and don’t talk back.”

I know this seems like a pretty daft thing to say, but in my mind it made sense. To even diametrically oppose cars against people makes little sense, but this is what sent me down the automotive photography path.
Making that decision when I did is what helped to guide me. I chose to write my Bachelor’s thesis on car photography in part because of this choice.

During my 4th year, I was lucky enough to land a job as an in-house photographer with a car magazine in Johannesburg, Cars In Action. With my focus lying with car photography, having landed a job in which I had near endless access to cars was the win I needed. For this reason, I decided to extend my 4th year into a 5th, and I believe my final results were all the better for it.

What does this seemingly unimportant part of my history have to do with these photos? Well, you see, this is one of the first shoots in which I feel that I successfully married automotive photography and portrait photography. This caused me to reflect a bit on why and how I came to be where I am, hence the historical ramble. I know that this is possibly not considered “portraiture” in a strict sense, but rather fashion or lifestyle photography. Nevertheless, I managed to combine cars and people into a solid shoot.

“The person” in this case is a friend of mine, Magdalena Hufnagel. Magdalena is a part-time makeup artist and model, and was immediately game when I asked her if she would be interested in this type of shoot. I laid out the idea to her and showed her a couple of example images, and she was nothing but down. All we needed were a car, a location, some clothes, and a stylist.

The car was taken care of by the good folks at BMW Wien Heiligenstadt, who occasionally lend me a car for a few days in exchange for a few images. The actual car in question is the brand-new BMW i4 M50 in San Remo Green Metallic. Car: Check.

For the clothing, Magdalena and I spent some time at Humana, a second-hand clothing store here in Vienna. We found a few pieces that we thought would work, and that Magdalena thought she could accessorise nicely with some goodies she would bring from home. Clothing: Check.

The stylist came in the form of Shari Michelle. Shari was an acquaintance of Magdalena’s that she met over Instagram. Magdalena mentioned the shoot to her, asked her if she would be keen, and before we knew it, we had a stylist on board. Stylist: Check.

As for location. Finding a decent car photography in Vienna is quite hard. For anyone not living in Vienna, this is a very tight city. That means roads are tight, parking bays are tight, and space, in general, is at a premium. To top it off, traffic and parking enforcement is, shall we say, the opposite of kind. I needed a location that we could use for more than a few minutes before having to move along or receive a fine. Luckily, I knew of a parking deck that offered just this. I had actually shot here before with another car from BMW Wien Heiligenstadt, the 4-Series Cabrio.

So, with all the pertinent factors sorted out, all that was left was the actual shoot. I picked up Magadelena and Shari quite early on a Sunday morning, and after the obligatory stop at a bakery, we headed to the location. After a brief “scouting” for angles and places to shoot, we got things underway.

We started with an all-white outfit that worked quite well, but didn’t quite have the punch and pizazz we were after. Shari suggested an outfit change. We swapped out the white for green, and BLAM, we had what we were after. We ran through a bunch of setups, and as per my usual way, I ended up shooting far more than I was hoping for. This may seem like a good thing, but it just makes the entire process of sorting through images far more complicated than it should be. Either way, I was super pumped with what I had shot.

I’m not going to go into great details about how I “directed” Magdalena or what the exact styling choices were, that were made. Nor am I going to go into the editing that went into these images. I might do a future blog post about that. What I will say is that the success of this shoot is due in a very large part to these two wonderful women who lent me their experience and expertise and helped me make some fantastic images.

I’m going to leave it there for now, and let the images do the rest.