Tuesday, July 14, 2009


This is one of the announcement outdoor boards for the 1969 Chevrolets. It was shot on one of our experimental shoots at the GM Proving Grounds in Mesa, Arizona. Warren Winstanley was the photographer. We had been shooting all day but looking for one last shot before the sun went down. We set up at some distance with a long lens that I liked to use. This was made with a 35 MM camera. At the time our powers that be back at the agency had forbid us to use anything that small. They thought it wouldn't produce a sharp picture. I and Warren liked shooting with the small camera and Warren even bought a special long lens that we called the "big eye". My way around the problem was to go ahead and use the 35MM camera and then have the shot I wanted to use transfered to an 8x10 sheet of film. The powers liked to look at large pictures and didn't ever catch me. We went back to the 35MM film for reproduction. The thing I liked best about this shot was the way it illustrated the little styling bulge above the wheel wells. In regular light this styling feature was not very visible but surely made a fine contribution to the good looks of this Chevrolet. Chuck Felt may have written the copy. He was the Chevy creative director at the time and the author of the very aggressive copy we were using. One last thought on the picture. This is a very honest depiction of the car. You can tell by the vertical oval on the wheels that we didn't use a stretch lens. Everyone, including us, used a stretch lens to make the cars look a little longer and more like styling illustrations. When used the wheels were perfectly round or slightly oval in a horizontal direction. 

1 comment:

Tris Mast said...

Beautiful photo. The Chevy almost looks like it is made of liquid.