ARCHIVES

As we predicted last November, our relationship with professional photographer Tim Wallace has evolved significantly over the last twelve months, from a simple licensing arrangement to eventually having Tim visit us in person and shoot for us in our own detailing studio. Tim’s work is often described as dramatic and conceptual, and is highly regarded within both the commercial photography and advertising industries. Indeed, Tim’s unique style and ability to precisely capture the essence of his subjects has recently resulted in him being named as one of ten most influential photographers in the world today. Accordingly, we are absolutely delighted to be continuing to work with him on an ongoing project to capture the essence of detailing and showcase the work that we do.

Last month we were visited by Tim Wallace from Ambient Life Photography, who spent two days with us shooting two Porsche 911 Turbos belonging to two of our customers. This was the highlight of our year so far, and an event we had been looking forward to for a long time. In order to make the shoot as interesting as possible, we tried to incorporate several themes into the imagery. For starters, we chose two iconic models; the air-cooled 993 Turbo, in this case fitted with the extremely rare X50 factory upgrade, and the current water-cooled 997 Turbo. Secondly, we opted to contrast light against dark by choosing a Basalt Black 997 as the second car (the Arctic Silver 993 was the primary car chosen before the details of the shoot were finalised). Thirdly, we decided to shoot on location as well as in our studio, in order to capture some interesting textures and landscapes in the shots. Finally, we chose to shoot out on the open road too, in order to try something new – as far as we know nobody else in the UK has shown off detailing results in such a dynamic way before.

Another month, another Ne Plus Ultra detail. Bookings for our flagship detailing service have been growing steadily since its launch back in 2008, and this year we are very pleased to have completed two 150+ hour details already. This time round it was the turn of a four year old solid black Bentley Arnage to receive the Ne Plus Ultra treatment, and it soon proved to be our most testing challenge yet, requiring over 104 hours of paint correction work alone. As per usual, the entire process was photographed and recorded in HD, and at some point in the next couple of months when the spring rush is over we will produce another HD video feature for the blog. However, in the meantime we thought this would be a good opportunity to briefly show off another side of the Ne Plus Ultra service; studio photography.

Q: When you regularly detail high-end cars to perfection, but lack the talent to capture equally good images of the results, what do you do?

A: Contact Tim Wallace at Ambient Life.

We have been following Tim’s work for well over a year now, but only recently made the decision to contact him directly when discussions with Green Jersey about the design for our new website threw up some doubt as to whether the quality of our imagery was good enough for use in the main page banners. After introducing ourselves to Tim and explaining our requirements, Tim was kind enough to offer us a licence to use some of his existing work in return for an agreement that we commission him to shoot some of the cars we detail in the future. To say we are delighted by this turn of events is an understatement – Tim’s work is world renowned, and you only have to spend some time on his regularly updated website to see why (be warned; if you click through, you may be there some time, as his portfolio is stunning!).