|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| . | |||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Rangefinder
Magazine The Rf Cookbook by Jen Bidner
INGREDIENTS
The King of Jury-rigging Makes a 1934 MG-NA “Fly” “Fast, expensive cars” are the self-described subjects for one of David Wendt’s 2004 car calendars, and the 1934 MG-NA race car shown here certainly fits that bill. The bulk of Wendt’s Cincinnati-based photography business is driven by his self-published calendar business. His specialty is cars, and his calendar sells extremely well each year. Wendt has learned that it is not enough to do a showroom-style product shots of the car. To create calendars that sell tens of thousands of copies, he specializes in creating interesting and exciting photographs of vehicles. Part of his flair comes from spontaneity. “I like to ‘wing’ things on my shoots,” explains Wendt. He prefers to show up and conceptualize the shot on the spot, rather than do a whole lot of pre-planning. And he is the king of jury-rigging. To shoot this racecar, he started by scouting a location and finding the right model driver. Next he tied the vintage 1934 race car to the bumper of his own Audi with a clothesline. He began building a unique camera rig that was secured onto his own car with a suction cup, clamps, light poles and gaffer’s tape. A long air plunger shutter release reached to his position so he could remotely fire the camera. His assistant drove the Audi, either towing the race car or letting it roll backwards down a slope. Amazingly, the total shoot took less than an hour, from his first arrival on the location, through building the rig, shooting the image (two rolls of 220 film), and tearing down the camera setup. The final image was actually a digital combination of two film exposures made on medium format film. He had 4000 dpi drum scans made of the best time exposure (2 to 3 seconds to get a nice blurred background) and the best frozen exposure. He layered the frozen image over the blurred image, and then matched them up as close as possible. Next he erased most of the frozen image, keeping only the important details (such as the grill and headlights) so that they appeared sharper than was possible in the time exposure. Dave Wendt’s art prints, posters and calendars are available through his website at www.wendtworldwide.com. The MG-NA race car photograph shown in this article will appear in his “2004 Fast, Expensive Cars” calendar. His calendars are also available from www.calendars.com or at Waldens and Borders bookstores.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
