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Showcase: Photographer Amy Shore
Tell us about your photography. How did you get started?
Technically, I’m a jeweller. I graduated in 2013 in silversmithing and metalsmithing. But I’m not a jeweller – actually I am a really terrible, terrible jeweller. But I loved the idea of designing and making things, and I had a good understanding of materials: ceramics, textiles... I specialised in metals.
It was my dad who was the photographer, as a hobbyist. He’s a fantastic watercolour artist and also restored classic sports cars. In the ’90s, he worked as a spray man and before that with Team Lotus Formula One. So, he’s very much the car artist.
When I was growing up, I followed in his footsteps – I liked art because my dad did art. In my teens I thought, ‘Oh, taking pictures is quite good fun.’ I liked the fact you could create a piece of art from picking up a camera.
When I was 16, I joined my dad as a wedding photographer. By the time I finished university, I had shot quite a few weddings. Then three things happened: I photographed a replica Ferrari P4 my friends had built; I shot Goodwood Revival, just for fun; and I did a wedding, a really beautiful wedding.
From there it was an instant snowball effect. Goodwood invited me to shoot a new event, Goodwood Members’ Meeting, which led to other jobs. Eventually, I quit the weddings as I was far too busy.
Did you have a passion for cars and motorbikes before you started photographing them?
My first car was a classic Mini. Before then I wasn’t really interested in cars, but then I really found a joy for driving that Mini. I loved how cool it felt, how aesthetically pleasing it was to look at when it was parked up. Modern cars are very different. The power steering, brakes, everything is a very different experience to driving classic cars.
If someone said to me, ‘Do you want to have a look at my 4.2 series 1 XK engine?’ I’d say no. I have no interest in anything under the bonnet, really at all. But – does it look nice? Does it drive nicely? Can we go on an adventure? Does it sound amazing? That gets me excited.
It sounds fluffy, but it’s the senses it gives me. We’re at the point where we’re moving everything into electric and silence. But when you first hear a classic car coming down the street? That is exciting.
How do you approach your photography?
The main thing I’m going to look for is light. Say I’m shooting in a Cotswold village – if I can see that it’s early morning and there’s some light coming down the street and it’s just lighting up a pub, I’m going to pop the car there in front of the pub.
I can’t stand the summer for photographing unless it’s, like, five in the morning or nine o’clock at night. As soon as we approach autumn, it’s perfect. Everything is orange, the light is gorgeous, sometimes it’s wet roads so there’s nice reflections.
Winter can be really gorgeous to shoot in as well. You get, believe it or not, a lot more light, because there’s no leaves on the trees. Even with the light being low all day, it creates a gorgeous, dappled light onto buildings.
Do you think your style has evolved over time?
When I first started, I was trying my hardest to not create what I considered boring car photography. I decided to shoot cars how I photograph people. I always look for a more interesting angle or how I can make a more artistic shot.
Take a car interior: instead of just opening the door and shooting the car interior, I like to bring the door halfway across. I’ve got this kind of blurred thing in the middle, and you get a bit of a wheel on one side of the frame and the car interior in the other.
Is there a particular project that is memorable for you in terms of car or location?
Most memorable for me are the road trips I’ve done, because it’s not just about getting photos of cars on a road, it’s all about the people you’re meeting on the way, the dinners that you have, the coffee shops you discover.
I did a shoot last year in Greece for a private client. He had nine white Porsches, mostly classic ones. The group felt so inclusive. Everybody had dinner together, nobody felt like they were “staff”. It was just one group doing this road trip around Greece together – with beautiful cars.
I’ve done a couple with Mini too. We drove from Athens back to the UK. We had a classic Mini, quite a late classic Mini but still the old shape Mini, and then a noughties Mini, so one of the new shape, and then a brand-new, modern Mini. There were six of us driving through 13 countries and meeting these Mini clubs along the way. At one point there were 30 classic or modern Minis joining us on this road trip. It wasn’t even a road trip at this point, but a little rally through the cities.
It’s really not about the cars. It’s all about the experience with the cars. It’s a hand-in-hand thing. I’ve shot some of the world’s most expensive cars – rare, valuable, beautiful cars – and they don’t excite me as much as those road trips.
A lot of your photography focuses on the community that surrounds the car. Did this come from your background in wedding photography?
Absolutely. If you think about wedding photography, people will think of the bride and groom getting married, their photos afterwards and maybe some speeches. But then there are these in-between moments, where the confetti has just been thrown, and you get a shot of the bride’s veil with all the confetti on the floor – this small moment expresses the emotion of the day. Those extra bits make the whole story.
It’s the same with these events, with the mechanics, the drivers, the owners of the car. I look for a lot of hands and feet – the touching of tools or tyres or race suits if they’ve been rained on during the last race. It’s all those parts in-between.
It’s not just about the community, which is a fantastic community, but those stories interwoven through. It’s like writing. Instead of saying “the tree was green”, you build a picture: “the towering oak tree was a canopy of dark green”. That is what I’m trying to do with my photography. My photography is not a one-image “wow” shot, but let me give you 10 images.
That is what I want you to feel more than anything. It’s about emotion.
What car would you shoot for Aera?
It wouldn’t be a car. It would be an aeroplane. I once did a shoot for a watch magazine, and we went to speak to the Shuttleworth Collection pilots. These were classic pilots who fly historic aircraft. They are very skilled at flying.
I asked them all once what watch they wore. Was it a Breitling or a Rolex? They said, ‘No, we wear anything we can read with absolute ease and speed.’ That’s exactly what Aera is: crisp, simple. As soon as I saw it, I thought, that is exactly what these pilots would wear.
They would show me their own watches. They would have their Breitling on one hand and then they would have watches, that look like Aera watches, on the other, because they could see them.
If it had to be a car, though, it would be something with real classic, cool design that never really outdates. Your classic Mini or Citroën DS – something that is always going to be a real foothold of great, useful design and isn’t trying to pretend to be something else.