Today’s post is a truly special one. Before we chat about the specs of the Maserati Birdcage 75, let’s break down how rare this car is… For comparison, the Michael Schumacher Ferrari I photographed was one of almost 20 that he used in 1998 alone. The McLaren F1 GTR, like the F1 car was one of about 5 that exist from that team. Heck even the > $30,000,000 Ferrari GTO has at least 15 brothers and sisters. There are not many cars from Ferrari, McLaren and Maserati that can be preceded by the word “THE”… this is The Maserati Birdcage 75

Maserati Birdcage

Pretty, isn’t she?

While it looks like a current car, or even a future model, the Birdcage 75 was made in 2005 by Pininfarina (the company responsible for many of Ferrari’s greatest cars ever made). It resembles autos seen on the Jetson’s more than those we see on the road. If your asking yourself the same question I did, the answer is no, it does not have any doors. But why should it? I mean if you are going to make a car that is batshit crazy, it only makes sense that the top should lift off like a fighter jet for it’s pilot to enter. Speaking of drivers, the guy sitting behind the wheel better know his driving before giving it the beans. Like the insane styling, it also has an insane engine, a v12 that produces 700 horsepower… making it ever so easy to be the owner and the guy that wadded it up while telling the passenger, “hey, look, no doors.”

Which brings me to my general thesis, “at what point does the line between car and art get crossed?”

At some point the photographer of such automobiles becomes close to an old school art reproduction shooter. I mean there is a definite skill in lighting one of these beauties, but so often I walk on set with a car like this or the F1 sitting in the middle of the studio thinking, “damn, my life is going to be easy today.” What is ironic is how tough a shoot of one of these cars is, not out of technical challenge, but from pressure and responsibility that I tend to put on myself. I feel that I need to show the car’s absolute beauty, and anything less means that I will have let the car and its creators down. Perhaps it is unneeded stress, but it has to exist for a shoot to come together.

Life is perhaps an existence of controlled stresses, and the ability to use self imposed pressure to drive creativity. If you could only see how nervous I am sitting in the passenger seat on the way to a big shoot. Headphones on, I am not thinking about lighting or the image that I need to create, as all of that was planned far in advance. In all honesty, my mind is blank, focusing more on the music from my headphones than the world that exists around me. The drive to set is the last moment that I will exist as myself, and not the photographer.