The Soiland Heavy Equipment Repair shoot held some great challenges. First, how do we shoot their big, red trucks? And how can we get these images done to look great on a business card?

Greg Soiland is a good friend. He’s been repairing heavy equipment (caterpillar, bulldozers, and the like) for many years here in Sonoma County. He had run out of business cards and asked if I could help him. I thought this would be a great time to try out some photo ideas. We agreed to make these into ‘photo’ business cards.

The plan was to do the shoot at his shop. The upcoming Saturday was slated to have good weather. As I drove to the shop, it was a glorious, sunny, winter day. Since Greg needed his card pretty quick, I didn’t have time to scout locations so I didn’t know what to expect. As it turns out, his shop is smack-dab in the middle of one of the most idyllic spots on earth - the Alexander Valley. This valley is home to some of the best wine in the world, too.

Arriving at the shop, I found there was a perfect area to shoot: a huge, cement-top area with the vineyards and hills as a background. The downside was that there was a bunch of old equipment at the edge of the cement and the blight of the valley, an ugly casino in the hills. Yes, there would be Photoshop work needed.

We had a great shoot. Greg and his son, Shawn (also his service technician) had fun moving the trucks around for me. We also used a battery-operated lift to shoot with a different perspective.

So, here’s the 2 shots we liked before retouching:

Next, we had to remove the distractions you can see in the backgrounds. Also, I didn’t even see all those tire skid marks when we were shooting! Also, in order to have the trucks appear on the cards correctly, we needed to extend all around the the original image.

So, after a little retouching, here’s what I came up with:

Now that we had the final shots, I added some text and here are the final business cards: