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Haide’s Personal Branding Session at West Pecan Coffee + Beer

May 23, 2019 by Josh Baker

We love working local. Haide is a north Austin native and West Pecan Coffee + Beer is quickly becoming our go-to meeting location on the run. It was a perfect location for Haide’s personal branding session in Pflugerville.

West Pecan‘s space is bright and airy, and also full of tasteful furniture and other elements. It makes a perfect location for a personal branding session like this. Haide favors bright colors in her outfits and they fit right in with the coffee shop’s brightly colored retro-style furniture.

We were able to get a variety of backgrounds and poses quickly in a small space thanks to the decor. West Pecan’s colorful art and furnishing matched Haide’s bright spring look.

Haide’s Personal Branding

Haide, like us, is almost always on the run. She curates the CiaoBonita blog (and on Instagram) covering lifestyle, travel & fashion. One might safely assume that that her personal brand involves a lot of working on the go, grabbing a latte and bite to eat between other meetings. Adding those elements to her Pflugerville personal branding session felt natural.

A Change of Look

Haide describes this shirt as Neon Yellow on her own blog. Working with such a bold color, we used some of the more neutral areas of the coffee shop to balance out her outfit.

Personal branding sessions are always a bit of a journey of discovery. Like at portraiture, we strive to find images of our subject that tell a more in-depth story than a simple image might seem to at first. Fashionably working on the go in Pflugerville (and around the world) was the story we arrived at for this personal branding session.

We want to give a big thanks to West Pecan Coffee + Beer for letting us use their beautiful space. It’s always a pleasure working there, whether it’s answering emails, or a full photo shoot. We’ve photographed West Pecan before, in particular, some of their menu items, as a part of their own marketing effort.

Troy’s Roadster

May 14, 2019 by Andrew Fritz

We’ve photographed a few other cars from this collection, but this roadster might be my favorite. It’s nominally a Chevy, and is Chevy powered. It’s based on a 1930s Chevrolet coup… Sorry, I don’t even know the exact year. Does it matter that much? Nope. We love the outrageous flame on yellow point job, the open engine bay and beautiful headers and especially the crazy wide rear tires. On to some hot rod photography.

Virtual rig shots are not something I get to do that often, and frankly, they are a lot of work. This one is a bit of whimsy. We asked about doing an actual burn out. Turns out with those rear tires, even a big V-8 can’t spin them very easily. Still fun to play with the idea.

Classic Chevy Street-rod - Automotive Photography - Streetrod Badge - Automotive Details

Classic Chevy Street-rod - Automotive Photography - Shifter - Automotive Details

This is one of those projects that is all about presence. The owner admitted that it isn’t that fast despite the noise and tires, nor would you want it to be given the total lack of safety gear. There is no roll bar or even a b-pillar to mount a real 3-point seat belt from. Safety in this thing is basically “don’t hit anything.”

Inside it’s basic with analog gauges and chunky toggle switches, both of which fit the streetrod perfectly. A MoTeC electronic dash would be about as out of place as a coil overs on a battleship.

Classic Chevy Street-rod - Automotive Photography - Engine headers and spark plugs - Automotive Details - Hot Rod Photography

Regardless of the “basic” safety gear, this hot rod is definitely not a garage queen. It’s collected it’s share of rock chips, fossilized bugs and road dirt. What’s the point of building something this cool if it just sits in a garage?

1970 Yenko Chevy Nova

October 25, 2018 by Josh Baker

Yenko Chevy was was one of those local dealerships that took off the shelf cars, souped them up and sold them ready to drive. This 1970 Yenko Nova was one of only 175, with a big block 427 and beefed up suspension, it has a mean looking stance. We have been waiting for the right weather to photograph this muscle car for a while. Some late afternoon August thunderstorms provided the perfect backdrop and setting.

Making Use of the Rain

The thunderstorms left the hard concrete surfaces covered in a thin layer of water. This posed some problems but also created a great opportunity for reflections along with sunset photos of the Chevy Yenko Nova. Care had to be taken moving the car since getting into the area with the water required passing through an opening less than a foot wider than the car.

We also had to be careful not to splash the car. Once positioned, we needed to wait for the water to settle and not disturb it again adjusting lights. All of this was against the ticking clock of a rapidly changing and fleeting sunset.

Changing Historic Hutto

Downtown Hutto is in flux like most of the area around Austin. It was a tiny farm town between “the big city” of Taylor and Austin itself. There are (or were) still a few surviving artifacts of it’s agricultural past including the grain silos in downtown. They don’t have long to live.

Part of the complex has already been turned into a nice event venue and as of the writing of this post, the silos themselves have been rearranged to become accidents for a modern “town center” development. These photos were taken just before that development started. Being in the Austin area, with all its growth, is exciting most of the time. Its nice to still have local access to historic and rustic structures. Its also nice to see the area grow.

Historic Yenko Nova

As with any historic car, we capture the details that make it unique. This car had special badging. The black stripes on yellow make it look killer.

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