My favorite new client of 2011 was Golf Digest -- Christian, Kerry, & Matt you all rawk -- and one of the most challenging things I've shot for them are cars for their "Long Drives" feature. And wouldn't you know, the only thing in common about two automotive shoots completed near year's end was the bad weather... the rides themselves were worlds apart: the 2012 Chevy Volt and the 2012 Jaguar XJL Supersport (roughly $90,000 difference in sticker price). Having worked with cars a handful of times in the past I know that they aren't easy to shoot well... especially within the normal compromised environments/obstacles of editorial photography. For one, it's truly impossible to have enough lights for a car shoot... unless you sort of approach it like I did and focus on finding interesting locations and going from there. Then hopefully, even if each wheel is not lit just right, a story and a context trump pure, chromed-up aesthetics. Though we had to hustle around in Sarasota, FL for the Jaguar (featured in the Feb. 2012 issue out now), shooting the Volt in Washington D.C. was a nutty late-night affair that found us all alone in an underpass dodging cops wondering what in the hell we were thinking. The weather of our actual shoot day went from bad to worse and so we decided to give it a rip late the night before and were rewarded with a really nice vibe. Golf Digest subscribers can check out a sweet new aspect to these shoots in the iPad edition of the magazine as I've started to do some motion of the cars as well. Nothing ground breaking but it adds even more challenge to these gigs.