Audi R8: Much less sinister than its looks convey

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I shot this R8 for a private owner in Houston. They were thinking about selling it in the near future and they wanted to have a few photos of the car as keepsakes if they were to follow through with it. I was given a VERY limited time with it (about 30 minutes) and couldn’t take the car out of the neighborhood for the shoot.

I chose the most picturesque setting that I could find with the time allotted, which was an empty lot nearby which still had the foundation of an old house sitting on it. I cautiously backed the R8 up the driveway and eased it onto the grassy empty lot, parking with the sun peeking up just behind the car.

I refrained from using any flash for the exterior shots, as black cars are the bane of my off-camera-lighting existence, and opted instead for natural light, with a CPL affixed. While grass is indeed a strange place to feature a supercar like the R8, I thought it was a nice contrast, reflecting the softer side of the car, much like the recent press on it as the “drivable supercar”.

For the engine shots, I placed an SB 600 off camera right and shot it into the compartment to achieve the shadowy “gotham” look that I wanted.

For the interior shots, I used an SB600 and an SB900, one propped up on the driver’s seat facing the ceiling and one on the dash facing the steering wheel. This took multiple tries to get the look I wanted.

In post, I tried to complement the dark, mysterious feeling that I thought the jet-black R8 conveyed.

I was surprised in driving the R8, for the little amount of time that I did, that it drove as easily as its little brother, the A4. Sure, there was the visceral burbling of the V8 directly behind my head and the precise “click-click” upshifts from the metal gated shifter, but I was utterly surprised at how easily this beast was to drive. If you kept the RPMs down, it was happy to tool around rather easily, without the huss and fuss much attributed to cars of this caliber.

I hope that in the future I have more time to shoot this car, as it was a total blast for the time I had it.

The rest of the set is here.

Thanks for looking,

Theo