The Car & Vintage team and I went back to Costa Smeralda, attending Simone Bertolero’s special creation: the Poltu Quatu Classic.
Car&vintage was in the jury, together with some of the best heads in the business, and I could not wait to go back to do what I do best: loose myself behind a camera. And so I did, I “entered” my camera and I shut the door. I wanted to tell you interesting stories about people behind the wheel, about their cars and the phenomenal landscape that only Sardinia can offer.
We started in the warmest Friday of the season, the light was very strong and it was quite hard to find the right compositions. So I started focusing on details, so: dashboards, interiors, grills and lights. I spent 3 or 4 hours digging into details, risking an epic sunburnt.
Later in the afternoon, we finally moved from the hotel’s piazzetta to the San Pantaleo main piazza, one of the most beautiful villages of Gallura – Costa Smeralda is a part of the Gallura area. I had the privilege to ride with Simone in his beautiful Fiat 500 Jolly “Spiaggina”, and I had the chance to took a couple of cool shots. Giorgetto Giugiaro welcomed us in San Pantaleo: the automotive design Maestro is always a smiling and friendly chap.
In this kind of locations it gets very hard to take good photos: cars are too close to each other, people gather among them and so the compositions usually get to clattered. There is no space to create a nice tridimensional image, so I usually wait for something to happen, I walk around, camera in hand, and usually I get a few nice portraits and a couple of unusual views.
During the second day we drove to the famous beach of Capriccioli. While judges were still working on their score cards, guests and friends went for a good swim and some relax. I kept taking photos, trying to find the best spots that could better describe the location, focusing on vertical landscape compositions, people and rally cars.
After a quick stop in Porto Cervo, we went back to the Grand Hotel Poltu Quatu for the big show. Sadly, when the natural light was already over. So I tried to concentrate and expose highlights, leaving some smudges here and there, like this snapshot below: Giorgetto Giugiaro receiving a Fiat 850 Spider for his upcoming birthday.
