Porsche 911 50th Anniversary

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of taking photos of a Porsche 911 50th Anniversary Limited Edition (belonging to a member of my wife's family). What an amazing car! The 50th Anniversary Limited Edition is strictly limited to 1963 seventh-generation vehicles so I feel incredibly lucky in getting to see one close up in the flesh let alone the chance to shoot one.

I spent a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon taking the shots outdoors at a beautiful location in North Wales. For these shots I switched between using my Zeiss 24-70mm f2.8 and my newly purchased Sigma 10-20mm f3.5. I also spent a few hours on the Sunday capturing the details of the vehicle at the owner's garage. I ended up struggling to get some of the shots inside the car having to eventually position my tripod-mounted Sony A77 with Tamron 90mm Macro lens squeezed into the cockpit. For one shot that I 'trialled' situated inside the owner's garage, I set up the camera on my tripod, with my Sigma 10-20mm and a variable ND filter (as the garage wasn't quite dark enough), a shutter speed of 10 seconds at f8 and ISO set to 50 (I love that ISO option on my A77). I then took a continuous light mounted on a lightstand and softbox, triggered the camera's shutter then moved from one end of the car to the other using the softbox to light the features of the car. This was the first time trying a shot like this and although quite pleased with the finished result I can see what improvements I would make to get a better final image.

I spent quite a lot of time editing the photos including painstakingly 'Photoshopping' a lot of the small specs of dust (not really visible in the flesh) that could be seen when zoomed in especially on the interior of an otherwise spotless and gleaming car to achieve a professional showroom brochure look.

As a surprise for the owner's birthday I produced a book for him purchased from Blurb to showcase the images in a beautiful way. The quality of print is amazing. I can highly recommend using them.

I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with the owner and his beautiful vehicle.

Check out some of the photos and feel free to comment, like or share.

All photos from this set are available for viewing here.

Adidas Spezial Exhibition, Manchester

This is my first blog in a while. I’ve kind of put this blog on the backburner for the last few months as my wife and I readied ourselves for the arrival of our 1^st child Lucas.

On Sunday my wife and I (for a change) had no plans. My brother, sister-in-law and my niece had just left our house as they had been staying a few days. I came across the Adidas Spezial Exhibition in Manchester via a Facebook friend and realised it was the last day that it was showing. 

The exhibition was based on Dale Street in Manchester’s trendy Northern Quarter, a part of the city which I have visited a few times of late. It offers some lovely cafes/restaurants. I can highly recommend that you check out Home Sweet Home. The burgers there are amazing and the cakes are ridiculous!

We set out with our near 7 week old boy Lucas to take in the historic and iconic sneakers that Adidas has produced over the years. Armed with just my Sony A77 and 24-70mm f2.8 Zeiss lens I marched my wife and child around the exhibit snapping away and even used the pram handle to steady the camera for a few relatively slow shutter shots to show motion of some of the other Adidas fans attending the show.

Check out my snaps from the exhibition and leave a comment.