There is no doubt that this year has entered a crazy hectic phase for me. I have tons of work on Octavius, I started traveling a lot with my kids, and I almost squeezed in time to write at midnight. But I still decided not to miss this Fall and take wonderful photos.
I had gained a lot of experience over the past year of shooting and it was now the best season, but I don’t have a model – the restoration of the Octavius was not completed in October as planned. Should I miss this fall? That’s such a waste. I looked at the fleet, Persian Kitty had been photographed in all locations already, Chimera hadn’t had any restorations yet, only Bianca is completely ready. Generally speaking, shooting in this Fall is passive. But that doesn’t mean the photo quality is any less, I just don’t have the time to explore completely new locations. My last large-scale study of shooting locations was in April. At that time, I calculated the sun’s altitude and sunset position at several locations. Fortunately, the current data in October is not too different from April, so there is no need to re-investigate. Bianca has been in the best shape since last December, I don’t need to invest more in actor, everything is ready.
Back in October last year, I did my first shoot with Bianca in the whole family. I took my newly acquired 70-200mm f/4 to explore possible shooting locations. I also brought an extender so that it can be turned into 140-400mm f/8. I drove around the city without finding anywhere good, and then it suddenly occurred to me that my wife and I had been to a woods near her home when she was still my fiancée. We found it by accident. There were tall poplar trees, and I remember there were long narrow passages inside, so I could use a long focal length. It was really difficult to find a use for a long lens in a crowded city. I picked a day in mid October to find it from memory, the last time was in 2018, is it still there? Thank goodness it’s still intact. I walked around and found that everything was pristine. It had not been overdeveloped and the poplar trees had been growing for a long time.
Arctic White’s Bianca is a model that’s absolutely beginner-friendly. She doesn’t need crazy cleaning, the white paint itself keeps out dust. And due to limited reflection, there is no need to worry about her having messy body reflections. She’s perfect for the poplar grove, and since the poplars are so tall, I don’t need to expend my energy on sunset – we’ll be done before sunset, because we won’t see the sunset at all.The darker shadows of the woods themselves can also contrast with the white to highlight the main subject of the photo. I just have to be careful about unpruned plants not pricking my girl, or any traps in the leaf-covered ground. I arrived around 2 PM and quickly found the location I had chosen during the previous reconnaissance. I first took a few shots with the 70-200mm , and then due to the limited distance, I switched to the 24-70mm and continued shooting. The weather wasn’t perfectly clear that day and the sun wasn’t very strong, but that didn’t matter in the woods.
After changing positions a few times, I started shooting at 400 mm, where I had to drive deep into the woods and then turn around in the woods. I could also back it in, but that would be more challenging, and I actually think there were plants that rubbed onto the bodywork, but it’s hard to find any minor scratches on the white bodywork. Wow, do you know how much distance is needed to fully utilize the 400 mm focal length? At 50 meters, the front of the car will fill the screen. If you want to take a side view, the distance must be further. This caused a problem when I needed to slightly adjust the angle of the car – there was always vegetation getting in the way over such a long distance that I needed to make a 100-meter round trip. Then I tried to shoot with the headlights on and it was a highlight, another 100 meters. I remember I made several trips back and forth, which took a lot of time. At this distance, the camera shake was very noticeable, so I made a stand out of a few rocks and shot using a timed shutter. Even so, the shaking could still be felt, and there was a busy highway dozens of meters away.
How can I describe how I feel? Photographing white cars is a bit difficult because there aren’t many details worth highlighting. The most important quality of white is: clean, when you suddenly see a car so clean in the city, you will go “wow”, that’s why I decided to restore the Bianca, I wanted a mood changer. But as MY1998, the most modern model, she is not a classic car in the secular sense. You can even find more things worth photographing on a Beetle. Looking back at most media images of the car, white is not a common color, and for the 140, it never even existed.
I was not satisfied with this set and subsequently stopped shooting with the camera as I could not find a more suitable location. We did take several cell phone shots, and even on the day when winter was approaching and the smog was the worst, Bianca still looked very clean. If it’s a dark car, they’ll almost lose their luster due to the haze. We were in COVID lockdown during that time and the whole city almost came to a standstill and the traffic situation became ideal. I took the opportunity to go out and explore possible filming locations and found Bianca’s second location.
I found this salt farm on Google Maps, it was a 60 minute drive from me, it was huge and 15 minutes from the nearest road. This is no longer a salt farm, it is about to be transformed into a photovoltaic power generation base, so there is no one to guard it. There are no tall buildings for dozens of kilometers around, which is a huge advantage as I can take sunset reflection photos. I came here in mid-December and it was a very cold day, below minus 8 degrees Celsius. I walked outside for a few hours and then came home with COVID – the virus must have been in my body for a long time and now they caught the weak me.
Although I recovered by Christmas, I became intolerant of the cold after contracting COVID, and the rest of the winter was no longer suitable for shooting. My first plan is to take Persian Kitty here when spring arrives, his dark blue body can reflect the sunset very well. I already have experience on that. After repeated calculations, I determined that the angle of a path was just right to completely reflect the sun in April. This is very difficult, the orientation of the sunset is fixed and the reflection can only be captured by adjusting the camera position. The reflection of afterglow on the car body is based on the imaging principle of a plane mirror. It is a bit counterintuitive. When you think that the sunset will be easily printed on the car body, it will not. The most important thing is that this is a salt field and you have to find land where you can set up your camera. This T-shaped intersection is my final choice. I will stand on a small road and shoot from a long distance.
According to the pre-arrangement, we returned here in early April. I was disappointed to find that the installation of photovoltaic power generation equipment was accelerating, which meant tall supports. Soon we would lose the horizon and we had to speed up. Unfortunately the clouds suddenly gathered just before sunset and I didn’t get to capture the afterglow, but I was satisfied with the only photo I got and decided this shot didn’t need to be repeated another day, we found the right place. This location can be called the chosen one for several reasons.
- There is no terrain blocking the sunset
- The angle of the path is just right to capture the sunset reflection
- There is a road with street lights in the background of the car
I think this is a perfect angle for a standard photo and I would bring all our family members here. In addition to the sun, there are many factors that affect the time to take pictures. When I was shooting in April, even though it was still cold in the evenings, there were already a lot of flying insects attracted to our lights, and mosquitoes started attacking me. I realized that I wouldn’t be able to shoot here all summer, not only would the sunset change direction, but there would also be a lot of mosquito attacks. Shooting requires absolute peace of mind and you shouldn’t even break a sweat.
I tried to shoot in August when the core store was just renovated and I put Bianca there to bide my time. Summer is long and I have yet to experience any long sunset shots. I tried to protect myself with lots of anti-mosquito spray, but unfortunately there was no chance – Bianca was on call for half a month, the weather was very polluted, and then I gave it up to do other work. In the meantime I resealed the new ULO taillights and they were terrible at waterproofing.
By mid-October, the weather became sunny and the temperatures dropped, and I decided the time had come. I spent the entire day cleaning Bianca and then invited my teammate, a professional photography enthusiast, to join me on location. We’ve talked a lot about these locations before, we’ve looked at them both here and elsewhere, he’s going to use his own camera – different quality, different angles to shoot a different style. Before departure, I treated him to my favorite McDonald’s – this is the highest treat I can give to a friend. We arrived there 1 hour before sunset.
I had a vision for this location. First, as I mentioned, white will make shooting easier because a perfect sunset is not necessary. The difference between a perfect sunset and an invisible one reflected on a white car is: with or without an orange stripe. Losing the sunset is catastrophic if you’re photographing a dark car, but it’s much less of a loss with a white car because there aren’t that many to begin with. Then, the white is easily “stained” by sunlight, and on a sunny day, the orange sunlight will turn the white body orange, and then we have an orange car, which I don’t want. So if the sun is strong, we should focus our efforts after sunset.
God seemed to hear my plan. It was a very windy day and the southwest was suddenly completely covered with clouds before sunset. I expected to lose the sunset, so I started shooting early. The sunlight filtered by the clouds is no longer so sharp. I stood in the west and shot towards the east. You can still see that the eastern sky is dyed by the sunlight, but the body of the car is almost unchanged. Such kind of light is very helpful for photographing the car itself, which is about the same as putting it in a softbox.
I noticed that the clouds in the south were thinner and absorbed some of the sunset colors, so I decided to capture it at a specific angle. I turned on the headlights, shot upwards at the lowest angle, and tilted the camera so that Bianca looked like she was driving. In fact, there are some unsightly buildings behind Bianca, and the body can be used to block them. The glare of the lights gives the photos a unique look. By the way, I decided not to remove the Chinese license plate for all set, this physical plate is an older style issued before 2008 and it is a very dark blue instead of the ugly high saturation blue that is newly issued. And the number has never changed since 1997, it is part of history and as a China-spec vehicle, of course it should have a Chinese license plate. I want the car and this set of photos to look like it was 1997.
As it got dark, I dim the lights, which is a nice touch. When it’s bright, you can use a strong light, and when it’s dark, just a weak light is enough. A car with lights off appear to be sleeping in the dusk, making the photo feel peaceful. A car with its lights on looks ready to go, making people feel as if they are actually there, as if they are passing by. At this time, the street lights in the distance are also lit up. I really hope that I have time to take a walk here with my wife instead of being busy taking pictures! I actually invited my wife but that wasn’t going to happen, it would take us about 4 hours round trip and our kids need us. Anyway, my wife completely understands my obsession with sunsets, and on a good day, she supports me in reaching the gifts god has brought us.
Thanks to another gift: the side road I was on was lower than the main road where Bianca was parked, so I could shoot at a lower angle. I adjusted the steering slightly, it was about 1/2 turn, no more! The special steering linkage of the Mercedes causes the wheels to tilt significantly, which is why I never take photos of them turning, you don’t want to see a tilted tire. The photo below is all natural except that the ground is stretched.
One of the headaches on this shoot was the flies. I’ve been here three times before and never encountered flies, but this time there were tons of them. Since this is a salt field, I thought it was abiotic, but I was wrong. When Bianca stopped, hundreds of flies came up and wow, if you look towards the pond, it’s absolutely disgusting, there are a million flies there. At this time, the sun was leaving and the temperature was dropping to about 15°C. The flies, which had lost their warmth, swooped crazily on Bianca’s warm body. Interestingly, probably because only the roof and glass were not waxed, they mostly stayed on the roof and glass instead of the warmer hood and left behind the waste. At night I spent a lot of time cleaning up flies using Photoshop, as well as physically removing their hard excrement.
I realized I wanted a second shot and invited the master polisher to work on Bianca. Frankly, we have never gone through a formal polish and I have been waiting for the clearcoat to shrink since the painting was completed in April 2022. In December 2022 Bianca underwent a rough polish, not very detailed. The white is really forgiving and it won’t show noticeable scratches. So this time I invited freelancers I had worked with before. For such general skills, I tend to use more professional people to save time, and make sure they get all my expenses.
I spent another day getting the car ready and then continued waiting for good weather. A week later the AQI dropped to 20, which was really great. I immediately informed my teammate and he rushed over and we headed to the location for the second shoot. This time we are almost certain that there will not be any clouds blocking the sun as the wind is from the northeast and satellite cloud images show that not a single cloud has formed in the entire northern China in the morning. I expect this favorable situation to continue. In fact, I accurately predicted the arrival of this day based on the temperature changes, and informed my teammates in advance to be prepared to adjust his work. He was a crazy guy who would drop his job to take pictures with me.
As we turned off the road into the salt pans we were blown away, we had never had such an abundance of sunshine! Even the sun visor didn’t work and it was almost heaven looking at the massive seagulls on both sides. I first asked my teammates to take a “standard photo” for me. I like to take photos with my family and cars but we have never taken a photo with Bianca before. He used a Sony equipped with a 50 F1.2 lens to take a photo of us. This is the simplest one so far, just me. I didn’t have to stick the kids in their positions and adjust the angle again and again, I even have a photographer this time.
As for the flies, I’m not worried about their presence, I just don’t want them excreting on the freshly polished bodywork. The first thing I did when I arrived was observe the flies, and there was only one! I looked towards the edge of the salt pond. Their number had dropped sharply compared to last time, and they were now lying quietly on the shore. It can be said that the time is right now, all the negative factors have gone dormant, and we don’t feel cold.
As I expected, when there is enough sunlight, the side of Bianca facing the sun will be dyed the color of the sun. This style was prevalent in post-1994 brochure, where sunlight was often represented as purple due to the film’s spectral sensitivity. I took a few shots and imitated the color. When you’re not so confident in your photos, look at how close they are to brochure photos! Posting them in this narrow blog is underrated, best requires a 3 meter high TV to appreciate it carefully.
After sunset, the afterglow appears, and it’s time to turn on the car lights. Today, you can see a complete strip of light on the side of the car, even in white. At the same time it caused a small problem, as the salt pans are made up of irregular ponds with lots of wild plants – I’ve tried to trim as much as I could and the reflections from the irregular terrain would appear on the bodywork. This can only be avoided at certain angles, which limits where the shot can be taken, and there are some angles from previous shots that cannot be better replicated. I tried my best to remove as much clutter as possible from the photo below. This one is magnificent! A few days ago I was immersed in the photos from my last photo shoot, and now I’m drifting away. There aren’t many moments in life when you can appreciate a car or anything like this.
When it gets darker, I start shooting the “classic view” that require a lot of skill and luck. Unexpectedly, the white body also reflects the clear afterglow, and the polished texture of the 6-loch is emphasized by the afterglow! One tricky part was that I had to position the far street light between the car body and the road – not much wiggle room. I especially love seeing the brake discs stained red by the afterglow, it’s a perfect photo of a perfect car.
Different from last time, I thought of trying to take photos with interior lights, because Bianca has Beige leather, the lights can light up the entire interior. Soon I realized that with the internal lights on, this caused a problem, since you were shooting from a lower angle, you could easily shoot directly into the light source, which would create highlights or glare. A clever position must be found to block direct light sources with the headrests and A, B, and C pillars. At the same time, the height of the street light strip in the background must be controlled between the car body and the road! This is almost the last light, the afterglow after sunset is very short, there is not much time to adjust and shoot.
That’s all of my part. At the same time, my teammate used wide aperture lenses to capture some amazing detail – we use different lenses for different jobs. The following are his works. He also used a long lens to capture a perspective that I completely overlooked and would make it the cover image of this series. This time the shooting time flew by! I only shot a limited number of shots. Oh, right! Time went to streaming, during which I filmed a number of short scripts to make up a video.
When you see how beautiful the wheels are, you’ll understand why I insisted on restoring the unpopular 6-loch, and its emergence as the most premium 16″ rim on pricelist. I recently got a set of unused 6-loch with original Cotinental Sport Contact produced in 1997, a comparison showed that the restored texture of these rims is completely correct.
The last is a photo taken with a wide-angle lens with a large aperture. It was completely dark at this time. My aperture was only f/4, and the shutter speed was not enough to support handheld shooting. Incidentally, I did not use a tripod during this entire process. At this time, the advantages of 50mm f/1.2 were fully demonstrated. Maybe I should restore the 50mm f/1.4 that has been sitting idle for a long time.
It’s early November and it’s still Fall. This past week I sought to continue shooting my the third set for Bianca this year – in the city, some regular angles and interiors, but due to the severe air pollution this did not happen, hopefully within the next 1-2 weeks. According to the data card, Bianca’s delivery date is November 27, 1997, I would like to make her the wheelsage.org Car of the Day on that day this year, which would be a major achievement in our restoration over the past 4 years.