Playdat – A Players Datsun 520
Having worked with the Players team before, I’m always aware that when they build something, you’ll probably want to be top of the queue to shoot it. Their latest creation, a ’60s Datsun pickup truck is no exception. Whilst it may look rough around the edges, this is intentional. By combining its original patina with modern air suspension technology – and soon to rehome a 1.8 litre turbocharged Nissan engine – they’ve created a rather nice restomod build. We scheduled the shoot as quickly as we could after Ultimate Dubs. For once the weather played ball, but to some extent, it was probably a little too good. The low, harsh sun done nothing to help the car so I chose to throw a couple of Speedlites into the mix to provide some fill. It was a pretty quick shoot, with everything wrapped up in under two hours. As the car was non-running at the time, it meant we couldn’t get rolling or action shots so we moved the car about as much as we could to vary the location. I hope to revisit the images some day and have a little bit more fun with them. There’s something quite wild west about the car and think there’s the potential to extract more from them.
A Classic – The Players Golf MKI
Since the article has just been published on Speedhunters, I can finally share the results of this shoot which took place last month outside London. Rather than try to repeat Ben’s words from the article, I thought some of you might be more interested to read about the photography side of things. With the extended winter we seem to be having, we were confined to an indoor location. Thankfully, Richie from Milestone71, based just outside London, gave us full access to his new workshop. The primary light source was via a large frosted window on one side of the workshop. There were ceiling lights but we only had those turned on for one or two shots. To balance the window, I used up to three speedlights on varying power settings and all diffused (two bounce brollies & one small soft box). Some of the exteriors were shot with just the small soft box providing fill in the shadows. All the details were shot with the same single soft box. Being a light coloured car, it reacted really well with the lights. The only difficulty was trying to ensure that the car didn’t appear white, as it’s more of a light cream colour. It was just one of those shoots where things worked, and very little post work was required. I would have liked some alternate locations and maybe some tracking shots, but it just wasn’t going to happen with the weather refusing to play ball.
