Bentley Continental GT Speed Photoshoot

It's been a while since I last wrote a blog post. I'm a little rusty so here goes...

As a follow up to the Porsche 911 50thAnniversary Edition that I photographed back last year I finally got to try out some new techniques while capturing another beautiful vehicle – a BentleyContinental GT 6.0 W12 Speed.

For a while I thought about where I could photograph a car of such luxury that would make interesting images. I came up with the idea of using a dark and dingy parking lot as the perfect backdrop which would create juxtaposition between the grime of the car park and the sublime of the Bentley.

I shot all the car park images mainly using my Sony Zeiss 24-70mm f2.8 and my Sigma10-20mm f3.5 mounted to my Alpha 77 mkII not forgetting to use a circular polarising filter to eliminate reflections on glass surfaces as much as possible.

Next onto the images featuring the metal shutter doors. I was fortunate and very appreciative to be able to use a local factory during the weekend for this and many of the interior details shots. The shot of the vehicle facing away from the camera, with the headlights beaming onto the shutters was captured using a Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 from around 30 feet away to compress the car and backdrop together. To exaggerate the effect of the headlights I triggered two Yongnuo YN560II flashes using a Pixel King triggering system mounted to both my camera and one flash; the other flash was set to Slave mode. This was a shot that I had been most looking forward to trying out.

Take a look at the images from the shoot below or click here for high resolution versions and feel free to leave a comment/critique.

Its been nearly 2 years since I took this with my Sony A65 and a rented Samyang 8mm Fisheye.
Despite still loving this image there's so much I would change about this shot if I were to retake it.


I would:

1. Would without doubt shoot this in RAW instead of jpeg as I did originally. I could then bring out more of the details in the buildings

2. Shoot in Manual instead of Auto

3. Use the lowest ISO avalaible for the best quality possible and not ISO 400!

4. Use a tripod and cable release even though it was a very bright day

5. Use a circular polarizer

6. Graduated ND filter possibly

7. Wiped my damn lens and made sure my sensor was clean.

8. Possibly shoot with my Sigma 10-20mm instead of my Samyang 8mm fisheye as the quality of image is way better in my opinon. I would only be losing a little bit of focal length but then I suppose I wouldn't get the warped perspective the fisheye gives.

Thanks for looking. Please feel free to comment and share :)