Shooting cars is boring the 3rd time around :: PYKtures Stories

Another year, another car show. When the event invite came up on Facebook, I felt already déjà vu and bored… 2010 seemed like a boring year for cars. Evolution of car design seemed to be as slow as… the Canon camera evolution rate between 2007-2009. Maybe, it’s because a longer product cycle. The car show was mostly comprised of consumer cars that are “environment friendly”. I expected little to no Top Gearesque car appearances. So if you read my blog entry until here, you might think I didn’t go (oh wait, there’s probably a picture posted before this text =_=”).

It’s Friday, I’m tired… really tired. At the very last minute, I call my friend Kai who I didn’t see for the whole Christmas break and ask him if he wants to hang out at the Car Show. Then we got it on.

The gear I brought was mainly comprised of the amazing Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 and Micro-Nikkor 105 VR f/2.8. The main focus of my shoot was based on the details of a car rather than the whole body because it required more challenges in composition. I’ve also taken full body shots of cars that I found cool to do so.

The car show is hosted in Montreal’s Palais des Congrès, a very architectural building in which photography is usually prohibited outside of exhibition dates.








The first room we entered was the 7th heaven room where “high-end” cars are usually displayed. I was disgusted to find Cadillac among the attendees next to the boring Porsche and Maserati (they kept on showing the same cars year after year… we get the point already…). What frustrated me most was the absence of panels to show the model of the car. Like if I didn’t listen to Top Gear, I wouldn’t be able to identify the awesome Ferrari California… The other cool car of the room was the AMG SL65 Black present at the AMG stand: it looked like a fusion of a Mercedes and a Mustang hot rod.










The second room had Chevrolet monopolizing at least half of it. I believe Chevrolet became the new GM and had something to prove to people. Obviously its two hot cars were present: the Corvette and a Bumblebee version of the Camaro. Besides that the presentation was crappy, most of the cars there were gray… seriously WTF…














We were then treated by a display of Lamborghini, Lotus and some humongous vintage cars. Thx to the Top Gear show, I saw the famous Murcielago Sport Veloce, the last line of the Murcielago design. It looked soooo awesome, it’s like Lamborghini made a Batmobile for Batman. I was amazed by it.










I later turned my head left to find the Lotus Evora, the car with the alien aquaface. Seriously, I don’t know what Lotus was thinking, I liked the Elise very much and the Exige kept some of the Elise’s sexiness but Evora is just plain ugly or… fishy?






The vintage cars were a breath of fresh air to the near perfect, aerodynamic, environmental friendly designs of modern cars. One of my friends loves them for the amount of soul and passion given to the making of these old school machines. I’m starting to understand why. It looks like all the parts were molded out of molds taken from Renaissance Era statues. It’s crazy how classy they are!










The next room was made out of cars designed by people thinking outside of a box shaped in irregular form designed by someone that was high on… whatever hallucinogenic drug… terribly unpractical yet unique and weird in a good way. Funny stuff.




So far, only the Ferrari California and the Lamborghini Murcielago SV got my attention, but when I reached the Infiniti booth, my jaw dropped to the ground: the Infinity Essence this way comes. It looked so great from so many angles that I took 30 shots while walking around it for more than 5 times. I lost count of all the curves of that car. It felt like everything on the car made it more slippery to the air or just if someone was shaking flag to the wind and froze it. It is simply gorgeously sexy. But it makes me wonder; the shape curiously feels like a Maserati GranTurismo Japanese interpretation. Anyway, plagiarism or not, the Essence is a great add to sport cars. All that’s missing are side mirrors. This is by far the coolest car of the show.













I could go on and on about the Essence but I ran out of time writing this article so I'll leave you with pictures from my car show outings of this year and the one before. Enjoy

Car show 2010



Car show 2009