Christian Garibaldi

It was that time of year again.  I had gotten a call from the Central Jersey VW society asking me if I would be interested in shooting this years featured vehicle for their awards poster since last years bug shot was such a success.  Of course I jumped at the opportunity to pull a rabbit out of a hat again….  I just love challenging shoots.  This years selected VW was a 1967 21 window bus that is owned by a gentleman named Bob Cropsey.  Bob himself had painstakingly restored this bus, along with a fleet of other vintage VW’s in his garage to impeccable standards!  I was assured that this year we would have some more time, and more room and resources to shoot the project, so without hesitation, I packed up my truck with my gear (Which seems to get bigger and heavier by the day) and headed north near Giants stadium.  When I hear VW bus,  I start thinking hippies, bongs, surfboards, Janis Joplin, and weed smoke just pouring out of all 21 windows.  I arrived and this bus was anything but.  Just so tastefully done,  beautiful two tone paint, perfect interior, you could tell a lot of time was spent making this vehicle special.  I originally had thought of doing a shot from directly overhead looking straight down on the roof, but after getting to an elevation above it, we decided that the shape and form was quite non descript and opted to do a front nose shot since most of the shape and design on this utterly simple machine pretty much is all packed in up there.

The challenge was that the space we had to shoot it was tight,  I mean the bus was parked on a 20×15 patio between a garage and a house, on a slight incline with patio furniture and a bbq grill behind it.  We shimmied the bus to a decent position and I set up the lighting and gear.  Being that there was not enough room to get far enough back,  I actually wound up having to shoot from out in the middle of a main road with cones around me and keeping an eye out for cars coming by.  Thankfully I had some help from everyone there to make sure I didnt turn into road kill as they directed traffic around me.  6 hours , 3 pizzas, and a case of drinks later, we were done and packed it in and what you see above is the finished product.

The proof went off to Graphic Kontent for the copy and then to Berry Printing to be printed in a limited run with a 4 color offset process.  The final prints turned out great and everyone at the event was thrilled to get a signed and numbered copy.  I wonder which VW it will be next year…..Until then….

You can view the final image under the wheels section of my site