The Unique Challenge Of making An Artistic Series To Launch The VW Arteon

Douglas Sonders - Volkswagen USA reached out to me with an incredible alternative. They supplied to ship me one of the primary VW Arteons within the United States, which is their newest flagship sedan, and asked me to create an art series around it. The goal was to create around 8 closing photos, print them out on giant 8 foot lengthy archival paper, and present them during a museum present for the Arteon’s public debut in the United States. The venture was a unique challenge for a couple of causes. One, they gave me nearly full artistic freedom on what I would create (as long as it included the car). This basically by no means occurs. Second, they wanted the images to be distinctive and never appear to be a normal automotive catalog advert marketing campaign. Third, I had never printed my images out this massive before (aside from billboards). The viewers can be within inches of the giant prints in a museum environment, so high quality and colour reproduction have been going to be incredibly essential. When arising with the concept for this undertaking, I went with what I am creatively into in the intervening time, which is 1980’s-inspired Synth-wave music and art.

I opted to create photos with deep blues and reds to compliment the attractive gold paint on the Arteon. So, as you may think about, being able to recreate colors with deep saturation was going to be important for me. We casted two prominent models and booked two iconic Los Angeles area areas. One was a drive-in studio that looked like Batman’s lair, and the opposite was a notable underpass in downtown. My purpose was to create images that had been principally shot in-digicam, so I was really relying on the Trichromatic to handle long exposures in low gentle captured in rapid succession. Plenty of my remaining photos were captured with a mixture of strobe and ambient gentle. Thanks to the XF’s internal Profoto Air Control system, I used to be capable of hearth my D1 1000 strobes without needing a separate transmitter. Also, I have to mention that I was typically taking photographs in nearly pitch black conditions and the XF’s HAP-2 autofocus system persistently captured pictures that were completely in focus. In the studio, I shot tethered to my Mac Pro laptop, and used Capture One Pro to quickly verify my exposure, focus, coloration balance, and composition.

We were also capable of verify the coloration gamut to ensure how far we could push color and exposure on the final prints. Processing the Trichromatic Raw files through Capture One was spectacular and will exhibit the 15 stops of dynamic vary. Additionally, there was primarily no image noise in the shadows, even when photographing at 800 ISO for 2-three second exposures. Files were exported as 16-bit to Photoshop CC for ultimate retouching, and then despatched off to my wonderful art facility to have the photographs printed on 8 foot lengthy gloss metallic archival paper and mounted. As you possibly can imagine, I used to be extraordinarily nervous and excited to see the final outcomes, especially since the prints price around half the price of the car itself. I used to be extraordinarily happy with the final end result. The coloration, readability, and element had been excellent. Everything was pin sharp and the colour reproduction was correct.

The inside of the current Euro-spec Passat is fairly arduous to tell apart from the new Arteon. Sure, there are little variations right here and there, but for essentially the most part, it’s largely the same. That tells us one factor - Volkswagen is pleased with this interior design as it severely did a replica and paste maneuver to design the inside of the Arteon - at the very least from the rear seats forward, anyway. With that said, there won’t be quite a lot of change taking place inside. Expect barely reworked seats and maybe a couple of much less buttons because of a revised infotainment system however there’ won’t be a lot else to write residence about. Passenger space and cargo space will carry over untouched. To place it merely, there will likely be new software program for the infotainment system, possibly a revised instrument cluster and a few different little odds and ins. VW is just trying to freshen up the exterior look to keep the sales coming till the subsequent-gen mannequin makes its debut.