Photographer Surprises Father With Dream Car (1968 Camaro) For Christmas

the older I get the more I realize how important family is and especially how important my father is to me and this year for Christmas and his sixtieth birthday I want to give him an unforgettable gift and for him I know what that gift is it's the dream car that he's always talked about but he's never been able to afford I want to surprise him for Christmas with this car but being that I'm a photographer I'm going to fool him a little bit with a picture just to see how he reacts now my dad has never been the type of guy to have a really nice car his current sports car is a 1988 Mazda rx-7 convertible I think the Kelley Blue Book on that car is like eight hundred dollars right now he loves it he's so proud of he keeps it clean he keeps it in the garage and I was joking with him this summer what would it take for you to sell this crappy car it's always breaking down on him and he said jokingly if you buy me a 1967 Camaro hugger orange with white stripes I will sell the Mazda he's had this Mazda forever and he never in a million years would think I would buy him a car of course he was joking but what he doesn't realize is that for this Christmas I actually did buy him that car and when he sees it he is going to freak out now I've known for a while now that my dad's favorite car was an original Camaro and hugger orange with white stripes I know that but I've been looking for a hugger orange car for the last year and I had no idea how difficult it was going to be I tried to buy two or three different cars I even bid on one of these cars at an auction and I lost the auction it was so painful I ended up having to give up the idea of getting the car in my dad's favorite color and just go with standard red there's a ton of Camaros for sale little red and I found a guy up in Lenoir North Carolina that had a gorgeous car for sale in red and great condition numbers matching everything and I decided you know what my dad's going to be very thankful that's the car I'm going to get from so I was planning on giving my dad the car as it was because it was in great condition and I was telling a buddy of mine Justin that I was going to just give him the car in red and he owns a body shop called a J superior body shop in Concord North Carolina and he told me Lee you cannot give your dad that car unless it's hugger orange with white stripes he's always talked about it like that and so he said Leah I want to give you a great deal on the paint I want to be the one to change his paint color for your father and it was a really tough decision to shave off the beautiful paint job that the car already had but we did and we repainted the car in hugger orange with white stripes I even went up to Concord and helped Justin do it alright guys so you can see we've got the car all in pieces now and ready to go and Justin how many man-hours do you think now you put into just preparing this car to be painted orange I would say around a hundred hours a hundred hours just to get the car ready you can see how intricate the tape job was on the car now I know justin is a great painter but I had no idea that the car would end up looking this good now being that I'm a professional photographer I've given my parents framed prints many times and they tell me they love it maybe they hate it but they're at least lying to me and say we love your photography so for Christmas I'm going to take a picture of this car and give it to my father and film his reaction I assume he's going to be really excited just to have a picture of his dream car knowing that I took it and then I'm going to record his reaction when he opens the second gift which will be a car key I assume it's going to take a little while for him to figure out that he actually owns the car in the picture so we're at the location that we're going to shoot this car it's an incredible location in my body Robin Knight put me on to apparently some guy rebuilt this 1950s gas station like this just because he's a car enthusiast and he lets people photograph cars in front of it we're going to come out here tomorrow with a crew of about seven people tons of lighting equipment and we're going to do what I believe will be the most complicated photo shoot of my entire career to make this picture in front now if you're a photographer and you're interested in learning exactly how we photograph this image head over to F staffers comm slash Camaro we have a completely separate video on the behind-the-scenes of this shoot it was very complicated with tons of Photoshop work but I will reveal all of that to you on that website but here's the finished image I'm going to print this thing out and this is what I'm going to give my father for Christmas no idea what this is about you told me that you had done some photograph but I'd have no clue what it might be oh yes all right very nice it's my dream car my old yeah yeah that's the cool that's exactly the car that's exactly it's got to even got a spoiler on the back yeah yeah with the orange and the white rally stripes fantastic yeah so we did a whole F Stoppers video on how to photograph cars and in front of that and I was saying the whole time I've is my dad's favorite car yeah well that's great thank you thank you they're nice cool okay kind of goes along okay a little thing here well it's awfully quiet in this room last present for Christmas little black box okay well we have a key to a car it looks like so what do we what are we saying here is this the keychain why don't we what are we saying I don't know you want go outside and look at it let's go outside and look at goodness gracious oh my goodness oh my this is like not real oh my goodness wouldn't y'all keep this thing where was it last night well Lee I'm speechless I don't know what to say where did you find this thing I bought it from a guy in Lenoir North Carolina that is the car what years it 6860 oh my goodness I've overwhelmed I really look at this thing so now we got to do something with the rx-7 get rid of that so we can have the dream car here all right well let's get to this drive this thing well I got to drive it around the block guys so I don't know how to do it I'm I'm speechless I had no idea yeah I know I'm thinking this is incredible it sounds so nice man I'm overwhelmed I certainly appreciate that in my office this is the car when I was teenager that every guy in high school would have wanted you know and I never I drove my parents station wagon that's what this this is fits me to fits from now I got admitted so much more comfortable than the rx-7 yeah I've been you know and I was just thinking like last month because and now the dashboard doesn't work I'm thinking huh need to sell this thing and I like convertible they all got my reason so the rx-7 this is exactly I don't know how you did you look at the I mean I know you and I talked about this but I mean this is exactly what I wanted well guys that's it thank you so much for watching I'm so glad I recorded my dad's reaction because this video in itself has become really meaningful to my family but if you are at all interested in photography check out F Stoppers com we are constantly doing videos like this and if you want to take your photography business to the next level check out F stoppers workshops comm because we are doing our first ever workshop in the Bahamas with 10 of the best photographers on the planet today teaching all different genres of photography it's going to be absolutely incredible and I hope to see you there you

Channel: Fstoppers

Views: 5,280,887

Rating: 4.8910131 out of 5

Keywords: lee morris, robert morris, chevy camaro, chevrolet, camaro, 68 camaro, 1968 camaro, camaro convertible, vintage camaro, original camaro, hugger orange, rally stripes, dream car, christmas surprise, fstoppers, car surprise, Chevrolet Camaro (Automobile Model), 1967 camaro, Chevrolet Camaro (Automobile Generation), Convertible (Body Style), Automobile (Industry), muscle car

Id: n_o_56j_NGo

Length: 8min 59sec (539 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 26 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

needs more tears

[u/TyDeisel]

His voice is so Jeff goldblum-ish