ABHINAV NAIDU
Graphic Designer, UIUX Designer & Photographer
About the project
"Vintage Resto-Bliss"
This project was an amazing experience where I got to visit restorations garages that worked on vintage vehicles. To give you more context the project was aimed to capture and document the the vintage vehicle restoration and collection scene in part of India. But this would be mainly revolved around the inner working of the restoration garages.
The Photograph's Statement
Also Known As "The Artist's Statement"
Vintage vehicles exist all over the world alongside restoration garages. But I felt like the ones in Bengaluru were not well presented. While the state of Karnataka has a Govt based org where different enthusiasts, members, and restoration garages come to host members' exclusive and other vintage vehicle shows via the KVCCC organization. But The collector market where I live is still quite small where mostly hardcore car enthusiast collect them.
KVCCC = “The Karnataka Vintage and Classic Car Club”
Vintage car events and museums have been heavily photographed, and a few shows showcasing famous well established restoration garages, via this series I was looking to document the inner working of local small enthusiast-based restoration (specialized) garages and how some of their cars appear on event floors and homes of collectors. Showcasing the spark that is always there no matter the size of the garage, the crew is always on their A-game and brings vintage vehicles back to working glory.
But the main aspect of this series was to capture the cars behind the scene in the restoration garages more than any other place.
I did most of the shooting (making photographs) in Bangalore, my home city in India where the the enthusiast based resto garages don't or aren't that easily approachable / easy to find. When it came to making the photographs the 1st important step was to track down suitable locations, collectors, and events where I could find suitable content and perfect compositions, but also unrestricted access to shoot. After which we can start the process of making photographs.
I used a Canon R6 mark 2 with a 24 - 105 mm zoom lens and 50 mm fixed lens to make the photographs, I used as many photography principles as I logically could, and made many with what felt right instinctively to the subject. After which I used Adobe Lightroom to edit the photos to get the desired vintage effect on the photographs and to make them feel part of the same set.
Side note : KVCCC is “The Karnataka Vintage and Classic Car Club”, that is a club for people and garages that own and restore vintage vehicles (this can be cars, bikes, pickup trucks, etc.)