2009 Aston upgrades project underway

25/06/09

This week saw a major project come to completion in phase one with the Aston Workshop who are the official division of Aston Martin for the restoration of Classic Aston Martin models. The project was to create a large volume of high end quality work for use in the new 2009 Aston Martin upgrades brochure.
Initially the biggest challenge was the sheer amount of planning for all the differing aspects of upgrade work and modifications that were required, with some Aston models needing to be carefully arranged such as the DB5 as there are quite literally only a few high quality examples remaining in the World today that we could use for the shoot.
Once the planning was in place then the real work of capturing some stunning and creative photography could begin with each separate category of work being shot at to completion on a single day. This involved some very diverse challenges from working with studio lighting in very tight confined area's, to working out how to show the internal working mechanism of the Daytona window upgrade kit for the early DB5 and 6 when its actually not visible normally along side the transparent glass windows...

The challenge of the project led to some very interesting results for Ambient Life photographer Tim Wallace as he explains,

Tim - "This is a great project to be involved in and it's always great to look at new challenges, after all that's how I believe you progress and grow in your abilities as a photographer. Aston has been a client of mine for some time now and over the years we have worked on some very interesting elements to the business, I would have to say however hand on heart that the window upgrade kit was possibly that one item that eluded me slightly during the project until we finally nailed it on the second day... The main problem being that the actual mechanism is not really meant to ever be seen, spending its entire life behind the cars door panel, as such it's not really the most attractive piece of engineering whoever I had to some how show the mechanism in a way that was easily recognisable. Eventually I opted for a shot where I used three composite pieces of work as shown in the final image on this page. Possibly my favorite photograph from the series is the one at the top of this page showing the DB5 in full flight around a grass lined bend in the road. This was shot to go with the brochure section on handling upgrades and was in itself a real challenge with the camera body being fixed on a professional rig that was perilously close to the ground as we drove the DB5 around the sweeping bend whilst shooting. A great shot however and very well worth the planning and effort to get the best results possible for the client."