I've been shooting a lot of cars in the last few years with clients like Mitsubishi, NRMA and Subaru and I've finally decided to publish a portfolio of some of my car work. Cars can be pretty fun- the projects usually call on a lot of the things I really like to shoot- big landscape shots, lifestyle and the occasional aerial shots (which used to be out of a helicopter but are mostly drone shots these days).
Joe Wigdahl Auto & Cars Portfolio
Sunset on Lake Gairdner, South Australia
A few months ago I shot a bunch of images for Mitsubishi for their new car in Australia, the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross.
When we did this shoot this was the only Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross in Australia. It has a busy schedule and the only days I had to shoot it just happened to coincide with the Melbourne Cup race in Victoria, which is something of a holy week there. We couldn't find a location scout who was available (i.e. wanted to take time out of the Melbourne Cup festivities to find locations) so I had to go down to Victoria a week early and find my own locations. Because I really didn't know the Victorian countryside I started every morning looking at Google satellite maps for terrain and roads that might have something interesting to shoot on- especially private properties that looked like they had roads on them that we could get permission to use. I would then spend the next 12 hours driving every day combing over every road in that area and then try and contact homeowners that might have a nice road. After driving around 1000kms of small backroads, at the 11th hour I finally found a family that let us shoot on their land. We couldn't have asked for more amazing weather.
To do the aerial shots I worked with Flying Dragon, a drone company that specialises in high-end cinematography. I had experimented with several readily available drones like the Phantoms and the still image quality just didn't stack up for the size we were going to have to use for the stills. We had to use a camera that was over 30 megapixels to satisfy their print needs and the only drones that can hoist up a camera large enough to do that are the heavy duty 8 blade drones that require professional pilots and cost a fortune. The operator was in charge of the flight controls and navigation on one monitor and I controlled the camera gimbal and captures on the other. I have to say, despite the challenges of short flight times due to battery power, I definitely preferred using a big drone to hanging out of the side of a helicopter.
Client: Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross
Agency: Richards Rose Executive
Executive CD: Adam Rose
CD: Liam Hillier
Last month I was asked by the UK's Redwood Media Group to shoot a story featuring Mazda's new BT-50 model for its award-winning online presence, Zoom Zoom Magazine. They wanted to tell a story about a day in the life of a BT-50 owner with a natural, reportage feel- showcasing its versatility by following the owner through rough terrain, a surf trip, a trip to the zoo "glamping" (glamorous camping) with his nieces and capped with a night out on the town.We had a looonngggg shot list for the 2 day shoot and I was working alongside Jefferson Grainger, from Corporate Video Australia, who was shooting the motion segment of the piece for the web.
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