Recently I took some photos of my friend, Brad. Brad has an animation studio here in town, and it’s the host for our monthly ‘creative mastermind’ group. Every month, we get together and discuss our challenges running a creative business. I’m there talking photography, and others represent video, animation, training, and education disciplines. It’s quite a therapeutic process – I often feel energized coming out of those meetings.

A few months back, Brad shared with us his newly-completed custom Captain America Dodge Challenger. Since he runs an animation company, it’s no wonder he has a strong appreciation for this comic book character. After taking a look at it, I told him that we absolutely had to photograph it.

The first challenge was finding an ‘epic-ly American’ location. I did some scouting in the Austin area, but nothing really stood out. Fortunately, I had a trip to NYC planned, so I set up a schedule to shoot backgrounds up there (especially the NYSE building on Wall Street). Unfortunately, it rained the entire time I was up there, so I needed another option. I checked some stock image sites, but all of the images had the same problem – a vantage point which wouldn’t work with a street-level car. I started thinking about alternative locations.

A friend of mine hooked me up with some time at the Austin airport in front of a huge hangar. It was a great location. It was epic. And and all it needed was a 20 foot wide American flag, which I rented. Who knew that you could rent large flags?

Here are some of my favorite images from the shoot. I am pretty sure Brad is indeed Captain America.

It’s a little hard to tell in this next image, but there’s an American Airlines flight in the background. Of course it had to be American Airlines.