Sunday, Dec 10, 2006 at 21:04
Hi Brian,
Yep, twas my truck.
Back in late 2002 Michael Ellem photographed my next door neighbours
bright yellow 40 series which featured in the Feb 03 issue. My ugly mug even made it into that issue sitting around a
camp fire after I carted all Darren's bits over for the photo shoot.
I was talking to Michael about the poor direction the magazine was heading - all rock crawlers, extreme trucks and winch comps - and how narrow the target segment of the market that they were appealing to was.
He agreed and it wasn't too long after that he departed for the opposition.
I was also telling him about the plans I had for my bare bones ute which I'd recently purchased. He explained that that was what he wanted to photograph as there were hundreds of dozens of Cruisers, Patrols and Lux's in the magazines and just as many hundreds of dozens of readers with all sorts of other fourbies who were potential customers for the advertisers who just wanted to get away on weekends but weren't sure
where to start turning a work ute into a tourer.
He said he'd come back to me when it was finished, and I sort of forgot all about it after that.
Anyway back in September Darren rang and said that Michael was in Vic for an event and wanted to photograph the ute on the way home. I russled up a guy at work who has a really nice Wrangler and we met Michael as he came out of
Melbourne. The plan was
Tallarook somewhere but in the end the weather was crappy in the hills and we ended up back near Shep on the
Goulburn.
Mine took a touring direction with the camper which I've also tinkered with, and Hayden's is a bit more tourer cross with big lift & 33"ers.
It's amazing to see what goes into a photo shoot.
In this case several hundred kms. A whole day nearly dawn to dusk and about 1600 shots for two vehicles.
The camera was shooting raw TIFF files at about 40 megabytes per photo - and about 15 megapixels if my memory is correct.
Then I had to fill out a tech sheet with all my mods and what I'd done, and where I'd been and what other fourbies I'd owned and all that stuff. That ran to about 12 pages by the time it was finished.
It's great to see the final result - and I hope Hayden's makes it in in the next few months. And it's good to see that mag heading back in a more touring oriented direction.
I've even renewed my subscription - though the leatherman was a tempter too good to resist too.
Dave
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