Behind The Scenes With Lamborghini and Hasselblad (Or: How To Give Your Insurance Agent An Aneurysm)

In what may well be the most outrageous photo shoot that I have ever seen, Olaf Hauschulz was presented with what must be an incredibly rare opportunity to shoot a Lamborghini Gallardo for Lamborghini Magazine. The setting? High in the snow-covered mountain ranges of Romania, with the car drifting around corners, inches from guardrails and cliffs, with what is definitely a very expensive helicopter hovering mere feet away. All shot, of course, with a killer digital Hasselblad setup. I don't know about you, but I must have said 'Oh My God-- what!?' about four or five times throughout this video.

Someone has one hell of an insurance policy, that is for sure. The final images, which are stunning, can be seen on Olaf's website, which is nothing short of inspiring.

via iso1200.com

Mike Kelley's picture

Michael Kelley (mpkelley.com) is a Los Angeles-based architectural and fine art photographer with a background in digital art and sculpture. Using his backgrounds in the arts, he creates images that are surreal and otherworldly, yet lifelike and believable. A frequent traveler, Michael's personal work focuses on the built environment of unique

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19 Comments

Any photo samples from this shoot?

 The last sentence says you can see them on his website: http://www.hauschulz.com/?#recent_projects

Although I really wouldn't call them stunning.

Thanks. Ya, a lot of the shots missed focus on the Lamborghini writing (I think that would be a priority for an ad campaign) and some of the motion blur just looks confusing.

meh, there was maybe 2 or 3 that were above average. I guess expensive budgets with fancy cameras,cars and helicopters can still provide sub par photos.

Totally agree....more than half were throw aways i think....Far from "stunning"....

The stunning part is the proximity of that helicopter to the car! Yikes!

Should of shot it with a Red Camera.

Should HAVE.

Welcome to my country, ROMANIA, and TRANSFAGARASAN, the most deadly road. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transf%C4%83g%C4%83r%C4%83%C8%99an

Rock on! Reminded me of home as well. 

I give my respects at the photographer as it wasn't a simple photo-shoot, however I think that the final shots look nothing more than amateurish, I can guarantee that, on flickr for example, you can find better car shots that are made from amateur photographers than these ones.

The shots are almost unusable, the focus and the crop just hurt my eye. My impression is that all that budget was spent very nicely, and the location was awesome, but the output isn't worth any of it sadly.
Despite the crazy pilot of the chopper and the lambo, hasselblad and so on, the pictures could have been a lot better if the photographer had more skill.

I believe a lot of people will agree. 

I think he did something different - and it works to great effect. I wouldn't call them out of focus, but motion blurred. In my opinion it makes you feel as if you are in the middle of the scene, with snow flying and a helicopter kicking up debris all over the place. 

At any rate, I'm sure this was all planned and discussed before hand, like most shoots that have multiple things happening at once for large magazines or companies. I'm sure there's a good reason for it, as well - if there was a story involving action or a chase sequence, the shots would fit perfectly. Keep in mind that he's the one shooting this stuff, and probably getting paid quite nicely to do exactly as he's done, while we're armchair quarterbacking it on the internet.

The thing is, a lot of these pics aren't motion blurred, they are just blurred. I would agree with you if perhaps the car or the background was blurred, but in these both the car AND the background are blurred. Sure, technically it may be motion blur since he is shooting from a moving vehicle, but it just looks like camera shake to me, which in turn makes it look amateurish. But to each his own, of course.

Seriously, I was really surprised by the final image "quality". The majority wouldn't have made it through my first pass through the set in Lightroom. 

Obviously I'm typing this while sitting on my couch reading a website, whereas Olaf actually got paid to go do this incredible shoot. Perhaps these are the ones he can use on his website (not selected for the magazine) before the final ones are actually published? I know that sort of restriction is fairly common. But I'm not interested enough in these shots to actually do any of the "legwork" to figure that out. 

That is one frikin serious shoot! And the images looks amazing on his site! Although some are mediocre in my opinion. 

/ www.zayaphotography.com 

Eh, while I suck photography I can afford finer luxuries in life and this ad campaign doesn't sell me anything other than wanting a snowboard to bomb that road!

Seriously? It was all staged to look dangerous and edgy. The angles things were shot at make it look like the helicopter pilot was crazy but its just not the case.
The lamborghini was going really slow in all the 'action' shots. All the roads were very carefully prepared beforehand, hence the presence of tractor tyres and heavy equipment tyres on the road. Out of shot will have been safety personnel. The driver will have been an ice racing driver of the highest standard. Most likely the tyres will have had ice spikes in them as well to ensure the proper amount of grip.

Not to put the hard work of the people involved in the shoot down but I have seen much better and more exciting adverts. As for the photographer, well its more about who you know, rather than what you know isn't it. That website of his is a headache to explore and so slow as well.

His work relies on way too much post processing and fake hdr, it has been said above, there are much better examples of car shots on flickr. 

Judging by his body of work it is clear that skill was not what was lacking. This shoot was highly planned. Not owning a lambo myself, i'm not subscribed to the magazine but i bet it's aimed at people who already have a lambo. These aren't ment to be highly polished and commercial images. I think they were going for more "raw, artsy" shots and I think a lot of them are pretty exciting.  

Most of the images from this shoot on the photogs website just aren't good by anyone's standards, much less 'stunning'. Perhaps, as someone else mentioned, they were outtakes that the photog wanted to show as personal work. I can't imagine what the art director's original vision was for this project.