Great story on some fascinating photography work:

Early that year, Bernhard got a phone call from the museum and was asked if he wants to photograph 30 cars for an exhibition catalogue. He said yes. The museum built him a studio in a storage facility, outside Vienna. The setup, 20 meters long and 15 meters wide, had a moving stage, like a turn table. The project took 5 months to finish, but only because part of the cars, spread all over the world, were brought in only shortly before the exhibition, to avoid huge costs for insurances.

On using light:

With the help of two assistants, he photographed one automobile per day (5-6 images only). The most difficult to shoot were the black cars on the black background. But white wouldn’t have been an option. Photographing high-shine convex or concave surfaces is amongst the biggest challenges in product photography. It’s not anymore about putting light on the object, but about letting the shiny object reflect the surfaces around it. In this particular case, the light had to be bounced back on the cars from a white reflecting surface used as a ceiling.

Great results:

Uhlenhau032
Bugatti_Royale_2
Silberpfeil_13