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Gran Turismo

Tuesday September 13th, 2011

Douglas Sonders is a lucky man. In addition to his numerous commercial and editorial clients, Douglas has lately been collecting some interesting side clients—wealthy individuals looking for unique, personal photography. Recently, one of these individuals offered Douglas the opportunity to photograph some very special cars. Douglas was hired by a car-collecting corporate client to fly down to Florida to shoot a couple of extremely limited edition cars from his private collection. Douglas, being an auto junkie himself, was quite excited for this unique project and jumped at the opportunity.

So exactly what cars was Douglas shooting? Well, that would be none other than the Ferrari 599 GTO along with two ultra-rare Bugatti Veyrons (one of the two Bugatti Veryron’s is very limited edition, as in it’s 1 out of 1).

Douglas has shot and driven some amazing cars in the past, but even he was slightly intimidated by these grand touring beasts, admitting that he left the driving to a handler. However, the shoot was obviously any car lovers dream, whether they’re driving the cars or not. And fret not, Douglas got to drive a few other fun automotive legends before his Florida trip was up. For the shoot though, Douglas’ ended up highlighting the vehicles’ dreamlike quality. To do so, he spent hours out on a runway, boiling in the hot Florida sun (it was over 100 degrees), trying to effectively light and shoot the cars on what was a very bright day. Douglas and his crew took turns under the shade, debating when to step out into the heat next. However, the end results were well worth the sweat, with the photos evoking the somewhat surreal wonder of these magnificent automobiles.

Douglas’ client was thrilled with the photos and is having them printed as giant wall murals. He’s even bringing Douglas back down to shoot some more recent vehicle acquisitions—a gig Douglas was more than happy to accept.

Since these cars are so incredibly rare and beautiful, Douglas decided to create a behind the scenes video of the shoot with his video production company, 8112 Studios. The video explains some of his lighting techniques while nicely showing off the vehicles. He was then kind enough to share the video with us! Enjoy…