It’s almost a year since the pandemic started and it’s starting to look like 2021 will be yet another year without much traveling or events. As an aviation photographer it’s quite problematic as we’re dependent on airshows to be able to organize big air to air projects. In 2020 I realized I will have to expand my photography interests a little further if I want to be shooting anything. As long as travel isn’t possible, I won’t be able to photograph aviation or travels. So I started a small project during lockdown, made a book and tried to shoot some more automotive photos after the first lockdown ended. Even though I planned to continue shooting automotive in 2021 I didn’t expect it might be my only option.
Luckily, just before the year ended, I got asked by Mercedes AMG to shoot one of their GTC’s. Of course I didn’t hesitate and went to pick up a matte blue GTC Coupe. It was the first time I drove a car with that much power and it’s was quite the thrill!
Last summer I already had the opportunity to shoot an A45s 4matic+ and I wanted to do something different this time. Not an easy task given it’s wintertime. It’s dark till halfway in the morning and by 4 o’clock it’s dark again. It was rainy, so there were no sunrises or sunsets to work with either, which made many locations useless. So I was forced to go for a cooler, darker look this time and search for some new spots.
I did start at a familiar location, but instead of going during a warm sunset in summertime, I visited this spot in the harbor mid-afternoon on a cold winter day. I couldn’t really get into it, but still managed to take some photos that I like.
After that I went to the top of a parkinggarage that has a view over the city. Unfortunately with this weather there was no sunset and it simply became dark without any nice skies or light. I went for a cool edit here that matches the dark weather. It’s definitely a location I’ll be revisiting on a summer night…
The next morning I went to a small road out of the city for sunrise. The plan was to get some drone shots and then maybe have some morning light to take pictures from. But again, no luck. There was a 10 second window in which I got some sunshine, but after that it was overcast and even raining a little.
Next spot was another parking garage that has some nice light coming from above. It was the first time I photographed here, but this location really worked well. I got some nice clean shots here and the weather didn’t really matter too much (though I think this could be really cool spot when the sun is out). It was a bit of a hassle to shoot here since there were constantly cars entering and leaving the parking, but definitely worth it.
In between I also took some interior shots, but I somehow couldn’t get it to work so I ended up taking some photos from my wife instead.
Finally I went back to an old spot I used every time so far. I really had to think how I could use this location differently and I still managed to make some new photos. I was lucky that there was a very short window of time in which the sun popped up from underneath the clouds.
I enjoyed cruising around in this car, but photographically speaking I wasn’t too sure of my work. Then I started editing and realized I not only had many photos, but also many that I’m really happy with. It motivates me to continue in this direction in 2021.
I told myself to shoot more video while driving this car, but then I didn’t so I only ended up snapping some stories for Instagram and on most locations I simply forgot to turn on my GoPro… So yeah, I could never be a vlogger, but I still slapped together some of the videos to give you an impression of what it was like.
Below you can find a video about how I edited some of these pictures. I mainly worked with the presets I made in 2018 for my series from Lapland. I guess it worked pretty well because of the cold tones. Each picture was then separately finetuned.
List of gear I use for automotive photography.
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Giel Sweertvaegher 