Behind the Aston Martin shoot.
Aston Martin DB11, 007 detailing, a luxury house at golden hour, and me finding out my autofocus was garbage.
The client was a serious James Bond fan. His Aston Martin DB11 had 007 markings tucked into a few places you'd only notice if you were looking, and his house was luxury — the kind of exterior you don't have to work hard to make photograph well. I got there thinking I was going to have an easy shoot.
“The car and the light did most of the work.”
The car and the light did most of the work. What didn't work was my autofocus. This was pretty early in my career, and I hadn't figured out yet that a camera being amazing on paper doesn't mean it's going to hit focus every time on a curved chrome body in changing light. I burned through way more shots than I should have because I kept trusting the AF instead of pulling manual.
The bigger lesson from this one was filters. Up until then I'd been shooting mostly without them — polarizer here and there when I remembered, that was it. On this shoot I really felt the difference. Reflections on the paint, glare on the windshield, the way the sky bounced off the chrome — filters weren't optional if I actually wanted the car to look how it looked in person. I ended up rebuilding my filter kit around that shoot.
If I shot this again today I'd pull manual focus from the first frame and I'd stack a CPL with a light ND to control the sky. The autofocus lesson feels obvious now. The filter lesson is one I still teach anyone who asks me why their car shots don't look right. And getting both right is what let me shoot the details — the leather, the badge, the stitching inside — which turned out to be the frames I kept coming back to.
Explore all 23 photographs
