I was contacted by a local collector a few weeks ago about photographing his personal collection at his shop in Montgomery, Texas, about an hour north of Houston. He has a great collection of classic cars, including many Stutz models that I’d yet to see in person before. He wanted the look of a studio set, but wasn’t able to move the cars from their current collection, so I had to get creative to achieve the desired look. I bought seamless white backdrop paper from Houston Camera Exchange and used clamps from Lowe’s to securely attach the paper to the ceiling tile grid, making a poor man’s version of a “studio”. Paper was also run along the floor to create a seamless look. Here are some behind the scenes shots, taken with my iPhone.
From there we got to work! With 14 cars to shoot in 8 hours, we had our work cut out for us. Luckily some of the employees were on hand to help us out pushing the cars around the showroom, which was much appreciated as the pace would have crawled to a snail’s pace without them.
When we were about two cars in, the owner nonchalantly came up and asked if I had any issues with flying or helicopters, making me wonder “no, but what’s that have to do with anything?” It turns out that he’d decided that it would be a perfect time to capture some aerial shots of the shop since all the cars were all lined up neatly outside for me to shoot. I was really excited, as I’d never been in a helicopter before, and even more so when I was told that they’d removed the back door of the helicopter for me to shoot out of, Rambo style.The helicopter was a very small aircraft, looking like a little dragonfly perched in the field behind the shop. I snapped a few photos as we were being briefed:
After our safety briefing (“Don’t let any of your gear fall out of the helicopter- it will get caught in the tail rotor and we’ll crash…seriously – don’t drop anything) We were off! What an amazing flight! Although we were up for about 15 minutes, it felt more like 1 or 2. It’s a completely different experience from a plane, and I hope I’ll be able to do it again soon! Here are some terrible videos I took while in flight:
Once we were on solid ground again, it was back to work. We were able to get all the cars done in a timely fashion, finishing right around 6:30. The set turned out great with the limitations we had, and another set with Old Iron Works is already in the books for the next few weeks. Can’t see what other exciting cars they have for us next!
On to the photos!
1915 Stutz Bearcat
1929 Stutz Blackhawk Speedster
1932 Packard 733 Roadster
1930 Rolls-Royce Phantom I Transformal Phaeton (Marlene Dietrich’s Rolls Royce, with real gold flake in the paint!)
1930 Stutz “M” Victoria
1931 LaSalle Roadster
1931 Stutz Model “MB” Coupe
1932 Stutz Bearcat
1932 Ford Rat Rod “Rat Snake”
1957 Ford Thunderbird
1965 Jaguar XKE Roadster
1933 Stutz Monte Carlo
1931 Stutz SV-16 Derham Convertible Coupe
1932 Packard 901 5 Passenger Sedan
