Sweet Ride Dude

Mercedes Mane, graduate student, drives her team's electric vehicle around a parking lot to find the mileage per charge at the Assembly Hall on Monday, April 19, 2010. The vehicle runs on $5 of electricity per month and the team is still performing tests to find the real mileage per charge.

I’ve been excited for this post but have waited for it to print before I could post it. Wesley and I went out to get footage of the Sugar Ride vehicle last week with the hope of getting a shot similar to the one above. We showed up in the afternoon and found the team working to get the vehicle running which was a bit disappointing because we wanted the motion blur shot. I grabbed a bunch of the team working on the car but because they were working on the battery and motor at the back-end of a small sealed vehicle, the shots did not vary much in their content. I was forced to shoot through the hole where the rear wheel stuck out to get any faces. The shot looks good, but only one of them is needed.

Eventually they got it going (after Wes and I headed to lunch and returned) and I sat backwards on the back of a Vespa taking slow shutter shots while Wesley tried to drive the same speed as the vehicle. The idea is that as we travel at the same speed, the vehicle does not move around within the frame however the background moves across the frame. We were really pleased with the result.

Mercedes Mane, graduate student tries to work out problems in her team's electric vehicle at the Assembly Hall on Monday, April 19, 2010.

-XO Mike