Stan & Grace Exmoor Somerset.

I come from a family of car lovers.
As a child, my father owned various sports and prestige vehicles over the years BMW’s, Lotus, Mercedes, and a beautiful Concours condition 1969 Porsche 911.

So it fair to say I share this family passion although there are no 911’s tucked in my garage just my 1969 Lambretta scooter.

As I drove to my assignment on Exmoor today I spotted an old Morris Minor pickup truck pulling out of a country lane. I did a double-take wishing I had the opportunity to shoot it especially here on Exmoor a place I’d shot cars for Top Marques magazine years previously when I was on retainer to shoot its cover cars.

A few hours later I was wrapping up my shoot and about to leave the village where I was located when a dog appeared with its owner. Parked closely behind them to my surprise and delight was the very same pickup truck I had spotted earlier.

After a short chat with Stan the owner about the history of the vehicle he kindly allowed me to shoot a few frames.
It wasn’t the prettiest light to be shooting cars or an ideal location for it so I decided to mostly do a few detail shots.

We then got Grace Stan’s dog to get into the bed of the truck (which she often did) for a few portraits and I then persuaded Stan to join her for a few frames of them together.

 

The images I captured turned out to be less about the vehicle and more environmental portraits of Stan and Grace but the truck was most definitely the catalyst that allowed it all to unfold.

 

I firmly believe in synchronicity and seeing that pickup earlier that day and ending up at the same location where Stan lived felt like it was meant to be.

As in my ongoing Life In A Somerset Landscape project, I get huge pleasure from meeting people like Stan and learning about their passions, and being able to give people copies of the images if they would like them, the photography is pretty much the permission slip to allow it all to unfold.