RAM TRX Photoshoot in Colorado
Some amount of months back, I get a call from a photographer/videographer at the time Anthony, he calls me me saying I just got a new truck. I was excited to find that out that it was the gas guzzler itself a Ram TRX. Sorry Dodge, it’s true. Plus it was brand new, he just drove it from the factory in Detroit back to Colorado. He already had taken a proper trip to the Silver lakes, I was a little jealous of that trip because the photos and views were insane!
But back to the story, he calls me up and says let’s take this bad boy somewhere and get it dirty. We got it dirty all right, as you’ll see in the photos below.
So it was the perfect day to maximize the amount of clean up he’d have on his brand new truck. Snow fall that day and rain from the other night. It was a muddy oasis! During the call, I already had a location in mind that I knew would be perfect.
I was planning on having a reunion with one of the most infamous spots of my young-in days. About 4 years back, one of my friends and I who will remain nameless (for the sake of the story) wanted to go drifting. It’s not what you think, it’s probably worse. It wasn’t drifting with a proper drift car like a Nissan S15, it was with our own poor everyday cars which in my case was a Mazda Cx-5, which eventually blew up. Shoutout to Mountain Recovery and Summit Fire. But That’s another story…
We’d go drifting a decent amount of times, and with everything that went wrong in that span. I don’t regret it one bit. Eventually 5 years I later was going to use that same place to shoot the brand new Dodge Ram TRX in Colorado.
Now that you got the back story of the location, you can get a better idea of what this shoot meant to me. It was in a way of going back full circle. Not to mention, that it was my first snow fall/muddy photoshoot and it was a blast!
The best part of this project was that this was fairly out of the blue and a spontaneous shoot. That meant that the results really didn’t matter, this was not shot for a client. This was a creative and another creative going out to shoot. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if I didn’t get a single shot, but luckily that didn’t happen.
This is one of my all time favorites from the series. It's just such a unique photo, it looks like an actual painting. Perhaps, I'll have a limited edition canvas run on this photo…
First of all, I’m going to start off with how unbelievably difficult it is to shoot while it’s snowing, with tan joggers and white shoes and just a hoodie in definitely below freezing weather. I also only wore one glove, that was a mistake, because as you could imagine, my other hand was freezing. But that doesn’t even get to the best part, it’s in broad daylight and we were at a local dirt lot and there was definitely some potential of being caught. For god sakes, it’s a loud v-8 TRX drifting and doing donuts, we weren’t really going incognito.
So we had to shoot quickly and drive off like nothing happened, I remembered another spot, which was really only a couple miles further.
The first spot had massive puddles, so we had the genius idea of driving/drifting the TRX in the water. That made it difficult for the camera to focus, plus it got me soaked. Here are a couple of the images from the first spot.
On to the next spot, and we did the same shenanigans but this time it was in a slightly more photography friendly location and it was more of a muddy atmosphere than a rainy jungle. So it made for slightly different photos, the goal was to capture exterior details and full exterior shots for a full set and then have action shots next.
The real fun began near the end where we once again decided to do some donuts and drifting. Getting hit with water is one thing, but getting hit with mud is a whole different experience. First of all, it severely stained my already wet tan joggers and the mud being sprayed up hit me a couple times and multiple in the head
The Hardest part was I was much closer to the truck than at the last spot, and I had to do my best not to flinch. First time I flinched bad, and that resulted in me being hit in the face with the mud, and none of the photos came out. The 2nd time was tougher because I didn’t want to get hit with mud again but I knew I was going to get hit again. In those few seconds, I really contemplated if all of this was worth it just for a couple photos. Okay, I may be exaggerating a little. But you tell me if they’re worth it?
After multiple takes, we finally called it a wrap and when I got home, I immediately imported the photos on the computer eager to find out if any photos were in focus. Sadly, most of them focused on the snowfall or the mud. So it was a lesson to learn for next time.
Either way, some of these photos worked out even if they were focused on the mud or snow. It looked like it was intentional and after all art is subjective. Everyone has their own opinions and I was pleased with the photos and I had yet another wild experience as a photographer. For the people that read this, I’d love to hear about your crazy wild adventures as a photographer. I’ve got plenty! Check the rest of the shots on our behance page down below.
DODGE RAM TRX SNOW & MUD PHOTOGRAPHY IN COLORADO
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Or directly email: david@davidglessnerworks.com