Here are some bonus photos from Suraj’s Civic shoot. Although this feature was just released, I shot last year in Detroit, Michigan. To be honest with you guys, I’m not too happy with this set and felt super rushed at the time. Strobing a car takes time and I believe we only had about 1.5 hours to shoot this car (interior/exterior/motor/details/etc). I typically like to take my time but we were under some weird circumstances this day. If this was a local car, I probably would have scrapped the entire set and started over. Considering Detroit is 4 hours from me, that really wasn’t an option.
So let me give you the background story. When there is a car from the Midwest being considered for Honda Tuning, Rodrez (editor of HT) usually sends me a message. I definitely appreciate being one of his “go to guy” in the area, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out due to driving time and my schedule. For this particular day, I lined up two cars to make the trip worthwhile. After finishing the first car earlier that morning, I called Suraj and we agreed to meet in Downtown Detroit.
I’ve been to my share of American cities and heard that parts of Detroit could be considered “unsafe.” I didn’t expect prime downtown real estate to look as impoverished is it was. There were a few times I felt I was going to get either car jacked or solicited. haha
Prior to the trip, I asked a few Detroit natives on some location recommendations. This old theater converted to a parking lot seemed like a great backdrop for an automotive shoot. If this doesn’t scream Detroit, I don’t know what does.
We were naive and thought we could simply drive up to the location and shoot. A hostile security guard wasn’t too happy when he saw us unloading our gear and hustled us to give him whatever cash we had on us. Surej, you seriously need to have more then $2 dollars on you. The security guard literally said, “You can use the place for an hour.. how much money you got?” We scrapped together whatever change we had and handed it over.
Recently I found out that this theater is actually a pretty popular location and companies are spending $5,000 or more to use the space. Luckily for us, it only cost is $23. Anyways, here are a few bonus shots. Please pick up the June 2014 issue of Honda Tuning for more photos and the article. -jdmchicago
Beautiful i have a 1998 civic as well and this is my dream