Sometimes, you’ll see a photo that simply looks too good to be real — maybe it’s from a video game, or maybe it’s been Photoshopped — but you think, “There’s no way that image is straight from a camera.” What if that photo was of our Vantage GT3 race car tearing around the banking at the Daytona International Speedway, and you found out our photographer’s lens was, at times, less than 12 inches away from the Aston’s front grille?

The result is a beautiful, powerful photo, and the surprising truth is that it’s not a compilation of computer rendered images. Here’s the story on how it was done.

TRG-AMR Daytona / Bryan Cleary

THE SETTING

It’s sunset at the Roar Before the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and all of the teams competing in the spectacular 24 hour race are on site to shake down the cars for a weekend of season-opening laps. During this time, photographers are given rare clearance to take on-track shots of their clients’ cars at a moderate speed, aiming to capture unique glamour shots before the biggest race of the year. We position Brian Cleary and his cameras in the back of our maroon minivan and harness him in for the ride. Because we received so much interest (over 70,000 views on various websites) from our quick video of last year’s photo shoot, we planned to capture the entire process of this year’s shoot with four camera angles. Two of us from TRG’s marketing team are in the back seats of the van, our phone cameras facing out of the open hatch. We place a GoPro on top of that hatch, filming a bird’s-eye view of the Vantage. A second GoPro is attached to the front splitter of our race car, showing both what our driver saw and a low-angle view of our laps around Daytona. Once the cameras are in place, our British driver Lars Viljoen suits up and is asked to very closely follow the hand signals given by Cleary. One directive in particular is, “Don’t be afraid to get as close to the van as possible while we’re out there – trust me.”

THE BEHIND-THE-SCENES STORY

The four videos from the photo shoot have been put together as a little behind-the-scenes video for you. The result: better than we expected.

Watch TRG-Aston Martin Racing go for our fifth win at the 24 Hours of Daytona, January 30-31, 2016. We’ll be providing updates via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Follow along and cheer us on with the #TRGAMR hashtag.

You can follow Brian Cleary at Twitter and Instagram at @bcpix, or visit his website at bcpix.com.

Updates on the live TV schedule can be found here.