And as promised, the latest happenings at our izmoEurope Studio in Brussels Belgium!

GM Europe recently engaged our izmoStudio Team to launch their spiffy little ‘Spark’, the latest in their trendy mini or subcompact car segment. Only a little off-beat, the Chevrolet Spark boasts close to 47 miles per gallon and is just 1 point away from receiving a 5 star safety rating. The dapperly junior seemed to be the perfect fit for the hip city dweller and we thought it would be fun to take this car of little consequence to a sizable scale.

On a referral from a Belgium Photographer David Noels, our talented izmoStudio team went to work. {Thanks David!}

So just what is involved and goes into photographing a vehicle of such minuscule proportions?

Creative efforts of artists, designers, directors and photographers from across 5 Countries ignited the Spark project and together production began.

First, the car was shipped from Geneva, Switzerland to our Studio in Brussels, where an automotive decal specialist applied the Wrap Sticker, designed by Portuguese Artist, José Rocha, who is the winner of the Young Creative Chevrolet (YCC) .

Then our studio team – Photographer Andreas Lunde from Seattle, WA and Creative Director Steven Poe of San Francisco, Studio Photography Specialist Stephan Sturges of Brussels, Belgium, and Producer David Marlé from France – spent a full day producing the photography.

The 2011 Chevrolet Spark was then shipped to the UK for the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) races at Brands Hatch, U.K., while our professional in house Digital Artists in Bangalore, India retouched the digital elements to fully capture the essence of the Spark and to authenticate the final press photos.

Now that is flat world economies of scale.

The entire project took just over a week and with the cooperation of everyone involved, the mega mini project was a success. As the Italian Poet Dante Alighieri said, “A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark”.

We would love to hear from you and invite your questions! Please feel free to call us or comment and stay tuned for what’s happening at izmoStudios!

Juli Andra Fuentes | Strategic Accounts for izmocars

There’s nothing that could stop a couple studio photographers from going outside, with media passes and a invitation to join the Maserati racing activities. A few months ago the izmostudio Brussels team went out to the Zolder track to make a little timelapse movie and some still images.

izmoStudio photographers Andreas Lunde and Stephan Sturges rigged up a Nikon D3 and a couple magic arms to hold the camera in place, as the Maserati zipped around the track.

During the timelape track runs the photographers were also making some really nice panoramas at the pits and some stills of the day. Thanks for the fun day at the track Maserati Europe!

Maserati race car at Zolder in Belgium

The izmostock.com website is completely re-done. We did this to make searching and finding car stock photos much easier and to help expand our stock photography library online. Sometimes there are some really interesting things happening at the studios, so we are adding a new blog too.

Most of the time we are all really busy sourcing the latest cars, which means figuring out how to get the newest cars to the studios. Then we photograph the cars inside and out. After the studio photography, our teams of digital artists retouch reflections, build HDR composites, and assemble animations. Well, this is our stock library production workflow, and its efficient enough to publish up to 700 new cars and trucks per year. As we come upon new features, or interesting happenings at the studios we’ll post them here.

We also photograph custom photography and interactive projects for agencies and OEM’s. These projects range from the exciting pre-launch cars, to the normal marketing and advertising materials, and the bizarre. We’ll blog about all these too.

Thank you for reading the new izmostock.com blog.

Steven Poe