I will spare you guys the whole “‘Twas the morning before Christmas” bit and jump right into things… I received a message from Scott Mitchell saying that he had his brand new, 1 of 1, Exclusive Sport Classic Gray 2013 Audi S5 parked at work. That was enough of a reason to battle traffic and head down to Audi Wilsonville with my camera bag containing my Leica M9 and two Voigtlander lenses, a 35mm f/1.4 and a 21mm f/4.
I met up with Scott and got a walkaround of the car and had a discussion about the paint color, and what the next steps would be. The Audi Exclusive paint is based on the Porsche Sport Classic Gray and it is relatively similar to Audi’s Aviator Gray. Sport Classic Gray doesn’t have the slight bluish tinge that Aviator Gray can have and makes the S5’s lines and presence stand out even more.
Scott then gave me full reign in photographing the car and handed me the keys in case I needed to move the car or turn on the lovely LED daytime running lights. Although the sky was quite cloudy, it did work in my advantage by reducing the amount of glare and gave me a chance to experiment with contrasting the car with the gray skies and surrounding buildings. Below are some of the photos that were taken.
And yes, I did not use my usual set of watermarks for the photos, since I wanted to treat them as commissioned photos. After taking photos, I handed the keys back to Scott, chatted with some of the guys there, and headed home. From there, I started work on trying to best replicate the paint color as closely as possible; while, playing with various aspects of contrast. Once done, I packaged up the photos and sent it over to Scott; but, not before teasing him with some of the work-in-progress.
There has been quite a bit of buzz around the photos when Scott posted them on to Facebook (here and here) and on his I Am Audi website. The guys at Fourtitude even posted up a brief write-up about the color and Audi Exclusive.
You can view the whole set of photos from the shoot on my Flickr photostream, under “I Am Audi 2013 S5 Photo Shoot“.
I would like to thank Scott for giving me the opportunity to photograph his beautiful and one-off Exclusive Audi S5.