The Big Bad Wolfe

In mid-March, I had the opportunity to shoot the cover and profile images for Drag Illustrated magazine.  Editor Wes Buck had chosen chassis builder and ultra tough racer David Wolfe for the cover, who just a couple of weeks prior had put on a performance for the ages at the Radial vs. The World event at South Georgia Motorsports Park in Cecil, GA with his twin-turbocharged, methanol burning Mustang, becoming the first car on radials to dip into the 4.4-second range.  I made a red-eye, one day turnaround flight to David’s Wolfe Racecraft shop in Forth Worth, TX for the shoot.  Like any photoshoot that you haven’t had the opportunity to scope out a location for or have control over the environs, you just go in with some rough ideas and hope for the best.  Below is a collection of images from the shoot, both those that were used in the magazine, others that weren’t, and some candids that were never meant for print.

The Drag Illustrated issue #42 cover.

David with car owner Ken Nelson.

My favorite style of portrait has always been an outdoor location, with the scene slightly underexposed and some nice, soft light hitting the subject.  And as DI very rarely had an outdoor cover image, one of my primary visions for the shoot was to be unique with a striking outdoor shot. But the combination of the extra harsh sunlight (which I believe is indeed bigger in Texas) and the lack of a pleasing background in any direction really rained on my parade, however we managed a couple of semi-usable images for our effort.

Wes and DI Art Director Mike Carpenter wanted some additional images for the story, including some details of the car itself and some of david in his element, working away at his shop.

The trip ended up being a nonstop 27-hour affair – on 2 hours of sleep no less – but was well worth the time.  David may be all business at the race track, and rightly so, but away from it he’s one heck of a cool, laid back guy thats forgotten more about making a race car fast than most will ever know.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 11th, 2010 at 5:09 PM. It is filed under Blog, People, Sports and tagged with drag racing, mustangs, photoshoot, racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.