Last year, I was afforded the opportunity to tick off two things that I’ve wanted to do for ages… Trek into the outback of Australia and go a Wheels road test.

I’d been in touch with Wheels editor Bill Thomas for a little while about getting me to go on a Wheels photo shoot to assist. He’d known for a while that I’m a very keen photographer and love my cars! It took a little while, but after a few months of trying to find the right photographer and time, I’d organise with Wheels photographer Thomas Wielecki to come along and assist on a shoot with him. The shoot was a trip to Broken Hill and back… well, not quite that straight, more like circumnavigate around the border of NSW.

The trip was about 2,500km. To top it off, the guys had to fit that much driving into 4 days. Sounds easy huh? Just throw in some photo shoots each day and the need to get to certain locations by a certain time so that the light was right and you’ve got yourself a challenging photo shoot.

I won’t delve too much into the trip, as you could read it in the December 2011 issue of Wheels.

The main things I got from this trip:

• An understanding of how a full time professional photographer goes about his business.
• How photographers work with the staff of a magazine
• Being able to take some amazing photos myself with cars that we didn’t really care about – in fact, we were trying to break them.
• Seeing how a magazine article is thought up and executed – both from a written point of view as well as from an imagery point of view.

As I was just assisting on the shoot, I wasn’t trying to grab the main photos, but did manage a few myself. Here are my favourites from the trip.