Case Study: Making NASCAR images without a traditional car studio.

I was commissioned to photograph Daniel Hemric and the number 8 OnDeck Capital car. I live in Charlotte, NC. Which is the home of the NASCAR hall of fame.  Another fun fact if you drive 30 mins north you will be in Mooresville, NC AKA “Race City USA”  home to 60 race teams. You can bet we have a few car studios with large CYC walls. There are even a few drivers and teams with their own studios. Rumor has it that Richard Childress started his studio after getting a speeding ticket when he was late for a photoshoot in Charlotte. 

Why did I not have a studio with a large CYC wall for this car and driver shoot? The answer, budget and availability. The studios that were within the budget and available during our shoot window were booked. The producer and I started brainstorming ideas and we called on friends with personal studios. I knew that as long as I had a large space I could build a background to give clean lines for the retouching that would need to be done. If the images had been shot on a CYC wall they would still be clipped out to pure white or transparent backgrounds. 

So what did we do? We used the truck bays at the race shop. The teams all have semi trucks that house mobile command centers for race day. The truck bay was wide enough and plenty deep for me to run the two sets needed to cover the clients image requests. My assistants hung 3 12 x 12 white silks to make a large backdrop. We positioned the car and started capturing the requested angles. The second set was a 9 ft gray seamless for portraits of the driver. With a great team and some solid pre production we delivered 28 final images to the client.

Please reach out if you have any questions or have an obstacle keeping you from getting the results you want!