I took a one-day road trip with one of my friends. We had no plan on where we were going and ended up taking a turn onto a dirt road that had the most inspiring vistas. I didn’t have my camera with me, but I knew one day I would come back to that location to do a shoot.

It’s been a while since I’ve shot any work featuring a car. My work has lately been focused on fashion, and I decided it’s about time to mesh my fashion work with some car photographs. I’ve been wanting to shoot a 4x4 with an outdoor theme ever since that road trip.

Being summer in Cape Town, all the best models were in town, including my friend Michael whom I’ve shot for some publications before. Having a rugged look, Michael would be the perfect model for this 4x4 shoot. So, I made plans to borrow my friend’s Jeep, got hold of Paula, a good friend who does video and we set out to shoot.

The plan was to shoot at sunset and into twilight so we could have the sun streaming through the car windows and lots of sun flare to match. However, on the shoot day, the weather started to take a turn for the worse. Clouds began to fill the sky. My plan to have the natural sun rays were dashed. With this in mind though, we popped into Photohire (my go-to local gear rental company here in Cape Town) to picked up a Broncolor Siros L and some CTO gels. We were all set and ready to leave to the location.

For the key shots, I covered the Siros L with two layers of CTO and placed it in such a way as to just peak through the windows of the car.(Below)

Varying the angle of the light allowed me to control the flare and varying the power intensity of the Siros allowed me to manage the strength of the ‘sunshine’ effect. (Below)

We ended up with very little time to shoot because unfortunately it started to rain and because the Jeep had it’s roof off, we didn’t want the inside of the car to get wet. It was time to call it a day and head back to safety.

On the way back to Cape Town however, there was a break in the rain, and we found a place to pull off the main road and onto another narrow dirt road to get a couple more shots.

By this time, it was twilight and the sun had already gone down – but that wasn’t about to stop us.

Again, I relied on the Siros to fake the sunset. This time I cranked the power of the Siros higher up to create a really intense sunset look. All that was left to do in postproduction was to photoshop out the light stand. (Below)

For the final shot of the day, I turned the power of the Siros way down and used it to directly light Michael from the side. This allowed me to create a very striking ‘evening’ shot to close off the shoot. (Below)

All in all, without the Siros acting as the sun light, the images wouldn’t have the same striking look that they do. It was an invaluable tool on this shoot. Having a battery powered mono-head allows you to solve problems as they come up, with more power than a speed-light while being equally versatile and easy to use. The rfs 2.2 allowed me to place the light anywhere without having to worry about cables, and I could adjust the power of the light directly from the trigger instead of having to walk over to the light every time to make adjustments.

Photographer
Tim Gerges
www.timgerges.com
@timgerges

Videographer and BTS
Paula Zapata
www.paulazapata.com
@pz_visualcontent

Model
Michael Oates from MOT Models
@michaeloatesofficial