GAVIN SHOOTS ‘DREAM CAR’ FOR MERCEDES-BENZ

A while back Gavin Goodman shot a Mercedes-Benz editorial in our Drive-In photographic studio and we caught up with him to find out the story behind these amazing final layouts.

What was the brief for the shoot?

The ‘Dream Car’ brief I got from Mercedes was quite unique as they gave me a lot of creative freedom. Dylan Culhane, the editor of Mercedes-Benz Life magazine approached me after he saw a conceptual portrait I did of illustrator Jade Klara [below] and wanted to take a similar approach for their upcoming editorial and commission a different illustrator to collaborate with me on each image. All I had to do was include a specific sports car with a model/fashion element.

How did you decide what to shoot?

I wanted to show these cars from different perspectives and allow the illustrators to create these dream worlds that I would composite the cars and models into . After a few Skype chats with each illustrator I pulled a few references and started to get a pretty clear idea of how the images would look. When shooting these type of images I always have a fairly specific image in my head of what the finals will look like before actually going into the shoot.

Why did you shoot at Roodebloem Studios?

We shot this in 1 day at Roodebloem drive in studios. Because we had quite a bit of coverage over the 1 day, the adjustable sail above the curve really saved me a lot of time and hassle as I could avoid setting up a 20×20 scrim and was really easy adjust the height of the silk for each car setup.

What’s next?

The entire collaboration process was so much fun and I’m already in pre production on another Mercedes job – this time collaborating with a very talented CGI artist.

Here are some more behind the scenes from this wonderfully creative editorial photo shoot.

Concept : Dylan Culhane & Gavin Goodman
Photographer : Gavin Goodman @ Supernova Creative Management
Illustrator : Jade Klara , Linsey Levendal & Andrew Sutherland
Digital Assist : Casey Crafford
Lighting Assistant : Russ Goodman
Lighting : Profoto
Stylist : Crystal Birch
Hair & Make-up : Janine Pritschow
Model : Geli & Dante from 20 Management
Studio : The Drive-In Studio at Roodebloem Studios