It’s almost seven years since I last used a roll of film for Classic & Sports Car. In that time I’ve had to learn my way around the possibilities (and pitfalls) of digital imaging, but I still hate the phrase "we’ll sort it out later in Photoshop."
Back when I was learning my craft at art college, one of my lecturers had an oft-repeated mantra: "Photography is just a 1/60th of a second," his point being that you had to put the work in to your picture before you pressed the shutter. All too often an intention to "sort it out later in Photoshop" betrays a lack of effort at the front end of the photography process.
Having worked with film for most of my career, I still try and get the picture right "in camera" whenever I can. Regular readers will – I hope – recognise that on C&SC we don’t go in for excessive digital manipulation and what you see on the pages of the magazine is, pretty much, what was in front of us at the time.
The trouble is that, when you are working with old and sometimes very valuable cars, circumstances all too often limit what can be achieved and there are occasions when Adobe’s magic box of tricks can get you out of a hole.
Back in February, Editor in Chief Mick Walsh and I headed off to deepest Oxfordshire to shoot a Bugatti Type 50/59B at the workshops of restorer Tom Dark. The car was under wraps in a busy workshop and, although Tom was more than happy to take the car outside for our shoot, or even to trailer it to a nearby location, the British winter had other ideas.