As a child I had a ton of car toys. My favorite was a 15" plastic 1978 Trans Am just like the one from Smokey and the Bandit. I wore out the carpet and my knees racing that car all over the house. Not much has changed since then, my life still revolves around cars.
As part of my business I lease my cars for three years. It never fails, as soon as the new car reaches my driveway, my gaze starts looking along the horizon for the next one in three years. I'm a car research junkie, however I always put my efforts in to researching cars I have a remote shot at getting. I'm realistic, so I don't put much time in to reading about the super cars such as Ferraris, Lambourghinis, Porsches, etc…
Over the last year or so, I've been fortunate enough to get hooked up with RM Auctions, a Canadian company that does high end auctions for the world's premiere cars. My role with them is to photograph cars going to auction from Buffalo through Albany. This region is not exactly a hot bed for super cars, but if you look carefully, they're hiding in places you'd never suspect. I've driven through Ovid, NY dozens of times on my way to Ithaca or down to Wagner Vineyard for weddings. I never would have guessed that tucked between the miles of farms and rusting pick up trucks was the last prototype Ferrari F-50 before they went in to production. Needless to say when I pulled in to the driveway to photograph this beast I was giddy. The owner even took me for a short ride from one shooting point to the other.
Shooting for RM Auctions, I have to wait until after the auction ends before I can post the photos as to not interfere with the auction process. "My" little red Ferrari sold at the Arizona auction for $1,625,000. Not a bad pay day.
As my business transitions more heavily in to commercial work, I'm setting my sights on more and more automobile photography. Since I can't afford them, I can always drool over someone else's.
