It's funny how life works sometimes. I've seen Dalton and Rachel's Mustangs at car shows aplenty in the past, but they were like most of the other cars in the show: amazing machines, but faceless and without an owner. I could admire and tag photos on Instagram, but I wouldn't have a face-to-face conversation with the owner.

Fast forward to the spring 2016 semester at ASU. One of my friends posts on her Snap story that she's riding in a Mustang; "Oh, ok" I thought and was about to quickly go through the story, until something caught my eye: what looked like an air tank in where the backseat should have been. Sure enough, the next photo was a red Mustang GT, the same Mustang GT I kept seeing at car shows. And that is how I met Dalton and got to know about the man behind the machine. Being a photographer himself as well and seeing my work, both Dalton and I vowed to set up a photoshoot. One day, at least, since we were both engineering students, meaning time was not abundant.

Fast forward again to last weekend, and after enduring our classes, Dalton and I finally got a plan together to take photos. With a date made and a location and time set, it was going to finally happen. Then, Dalton let me know that his friend, Rachel, would also like photos. Turns out she's the owner of the now-Nardo Grey (or as she calls it, Nardo Gay) bagged Mustang that I would also see at car shows. And, I had also gotten to talk to her before at a Pavilions Meet, shortly before the police came to kick us out. My friend volunteered to drive my car so I could take rollers, and we were all set.

We took the rolling shots on the way to the static photoshoot location. In hindsight, we realized we should have dedicated the entire evening to either rolling shots or static shots due to lighting, but alas, it is what it is. The rolling shots were at the perfect time of day, with the perfect amount of reflections and sun for tasteful lens flares and golden highlights. The trip though was short, only around half a dozen miles, and the opportunities to take photos were further reduced by the need to merge behind them to get into exit lanes. Our route was down the State Route 51 from Bethany Home Rd, down to the I-10 West until we exited at 7th Ave. Looking at a map, you can see that it's not the longest of trips. Still though, 3/4ths of my body was out the window of my car, much to probably the shock and confusion of the evening traffic behind us (which, funny enough, didn't dare try to pass any of us), and I got these shots.

Stay tuned for the static shots, as well as more information and detail about the cars!

As my last blog post mentioned, I always wanted to try rolling shots of cars. Thanks to my friend who also wanted me to try it and his girlfriend/also my friend who was willing to drive my car while I took photos, I got to try it last Friday. We decided to do it in the morning, close to sunrise. This, plus the fact that the road we wanted to do this on, the State Route 87, is half an hour away from our houses, meant we had to wake up at 5am and still miss a good portion of the sunrise and the golden hour. But, after meeting in Fountain Hills, figuring out how our walkie-talkies worked (so we could communicate and I could tell my friend where to position himself relative to me), and driving out onto the freeway, we got settled in. I moved to the back seat and first learned that sticking half my body out the window of a car moving at 50 miles per hour really wasn't that bad. However, the wind on my sinuses was, so I could only stick out for 30 seconds at a time when facing away from the wind, 15 seconds max when facing towards the wind. After quite a few horrible shots and subsequent adjustments, I got into a groove.

It always amazes me how it only takes around an hour of driving to go from a desert landscape to a mountain/forest landscape. As much as I love the desert, it gets monotonous after a while; nothing but flat, sandy, landscape with low-growth shrubbery and cacti. As we drove, it was interesting for me to see the transition as cacti became replaced with trees, and blank mountains were replaced with mountains filled with green bushes and trees. It made for some nice backdrops to the photos.

I have to say, the road was super nice. Someday I'll have to come back just to drive on it. I was kind of bummed to not be able to drive, but hey, it's for art.

Even though it was only a short stint up north and about 20 minutes of walking around, it was certainly a nice change of pace from the city/desert. The air was crisp, the sun wasn't burning a hole through my face, and it was quiet, except for the sounds of birds and insects. Even though I've always preferred urban environments, there was a very strong allure I felt towards the less tamed mountains. I certainly wish to come back here sometime for more shoots.

On the way back, we decided to get some shots with the headlights up, just for fun. Headlights go up, headlights go down.

It was certainly a fun experience. I have to say, part of the reason why I enjoyed it was because of the walkie-talkies. We could talk to each other at a whim, as if we were just sitting and hanging out, except the seats we were sitting on moved at 60mph. I definitely wish to have more of these kind of shoots.

Here are some digitally edited photos, these made for some very nice sharp, high-contrast images:

Monochrome was pretty nice too:

And here are the four images from the other blog post: