I was down with JZM Porsche in Hertfordshire last week, doing a piece for Ferdinand magazine and talking about some other exciting stuff we have coming up together. Spent a few hours catching up with Jonas, and then Technical Director Steve McHale took me on a tour of their highly impressive facility.

As we walked through the showroom of Porsches for sale, one looked very familiar. “This is a car we sold and then bought back. It’s had a Cup engine with loads of 993 RS bits and a full respray: lovely car,” said Steve. I knew all about it – it was Peter Heaton’s 993 hot rod that I shot for 911 & Porsche World magazine last summer, as part of my monthly ‘You and Yours’ feature slot.

Have to admit to being slightly disappointed that it was back on sale. Rolls-Royce jet engine specialist Peter seemed properly in love with the car when we worked together, and the 993 was exceptional throughout. I loved this shot of the front wheel: printed it for my office wall, and put it on my business cards!

I shot the car as it came out of the paint shop after a big-money repaint in Polar Silver. Peter arrived in friend Paul’s BMW M3 Coupe and that was what prompted me to buy my saloon version a few weeks later. The whole day was good fun and also nice to work with C&N Customs in Middle Aston again (they painted the car).

Price has gone up since the last time it was sold: JZM are asking £44,000 for it. See the full Modified Porsche 993 for sale details here. Worth checking out if a unique 993 is on your list of wants.

I’ve had a few emails asking about Race4Change’s ‘silver’ Porsche 911: the Funk/Doig car seen in a few pictures lately.

R Gruppe buddy Jim G in the north-eastern USA says: “I’m curious if you know how the silver finish on the Funk/Doig entry was accomplished? It appears to be similar to the silver on the McLaren F1 cars. I like the effect on a 911, it looks as though it was carved out of a block of aluminum, or stainless steel.”

The finish is paint: chrome paint. Tuthills painted the car from an idea by Funk, seen on some race cars and trucks at home in America. The very expensive top coat is applied over deep, mirror-finish black: any imperfections in the base black will be seen right to the top, so you’ve got to take extreme care with preparation.

John the Body is Tuthill’s resident paint man. John is old school, with a passion for vintage restoration of pre-war Rovers, and a penchant for non water-based paint. John prepped the Safari Rally 911 during the week, then painted it on a weekend, where there would be no dust-raising interruptions around to spoil the process.

Test panels done before the actual paint went on the bodyshell were well worth it. Though bright under sunlight, the up-close finish is soft and subdued, and not too heavy, either. Paint weight is always a consideration on a rally car and this was well within spec.

Richard Tuthill shook the car down with Funk (above) on a test day at the London Rally School in Bicester. The dry air and soft Autumn light gave a Kenya look to the location, and I managed to shoot some nice pics of the car in motion, with (I think) an East African/bushland feel. The pics have since been used in lots of our promo, including the recent Total 911 feature on Björn Waldegård, Tuthill Porsche and Race4Change.

I hope this answers your question Jim, and the others who asked. Feel free to fire more questions our way and we can cover them here on the blog.

Donate to Race4Change!

I’ve started working for the team at MSN Cars in the UK: using my 25-year motor trade experience to put some used car buyers’ guides together. Surprise, surprise, the first one online was a buyers’ guide for the Porsche 911.

The guides follow the full run of a range of cars, in this case almost 40 years. It’s not in depth per model, but intended to give a flavour of model overlap in the used car market: how the various subsets bounce off each other on price, ownership, reliability and so on.

The full spread of a model is quite different to the model-specific buyers guides I was doing for Autocar magazine last year, and require a different approach. I think I’ve hit it pretty sweetly, and it’s good to be back into wider market writing: you can drill too much from the Porsche well some months. An expanding client bank is also appreciated: a change in Features Editors at Autocar taught me that new editors usually means no more work, so you need to keep moving forward if you want to stay busy.

The MSN Cars 911 piece features pics taken by yours truly, and there are some familiar Porsche faces there. The Franklin/Highfield 964 C2, Paul Madden’s ST, Sladey’s 3.2 backdate and my own Orange are all shown. I’m pleased with how it looks and reads, and my editor at MSN loves it too: more features coming soon.

Piece number two was the BMW M5 buyers guide: cars from 1988 to now. I love M cars and my own M3 restoration at Racing Restorations in Pershore is coming on beautifully: great support from the local BMW dealer on discounted classic parts. The article is also now online: you can read the BMW M5 Buyers’ Guide here.

Great mate Gray has just sent me this – had to be blogged. The story goes that he was playing around with a mirror adjustment in his photo editing software and ended up with this. I reckon it was more than just a fluke.

Gives a whole new meaning to heart-shaped Fuchs!

I popped over to Worcester Porsche Servicing after guitar lessons today, to chat with Dom Delaney about the Mitsubishi Evo 10 he is running on next weekend’s Rally GB for some Finnish friends. Dominic’s work is highly regarded in rally circles, so he is extremely well connected. Having not been on a rally in ages, I’m going to do Rally GB with the team, and see what stories and pics we can get.

The visit was a spur of the moment thing, so I didn’t have any camera gear with me. Not too big a worry, as I did have my recently activated iPhone 4S. I played around a bit with that and came away impressed with the 4S camera upgrade. Here’s a few pics of the Jagermeister 934 with the Evo: both excellent cars.

After almost a year of shooting/blogging with my iPhone 4, I had come to know it pretty well. Shooting with the 4S is not the same. I was using Camera+ so I noticed a few differences almost immediately.

First off, the software refocuses lots more often. I might be able to change that, but a quick glance in settings showed no obvious adjustments – I’ll have a better look later. It’s a little irritating but not a deal breaker. The other big difference will take more time to adjust to.

Shoting for Camera+ on iPhone 4, you get used to the exposure levels required to get the most from adjustments you plan to apply after the image capture. The iPhone 4S is different: applying a filter to a picture with what looks like the same exposure settings will give a different result. Mostly not bad, but all different.

This was my first day shooting with the 4S and I have to say I was pleased. I’m looking forward to doing some more stuff at Rally GB: should be a lot of fun. Time for some new business cards to replace the old iPhone pic ones!

Things have been manic here since I got back from Rennsport. Today was the first chance I had to get over to the office, plough through some paperwork and sort out my iPhone 4S, which arrived while I was away.

I didn’t start with iPhones until the 3GS. I found it huge fun to take pics with, and so easy to share from. When the 4 came out, the camera took a huge step forward, so I changed. Honestly, I have never taken more satisfying pics than with the tiny camera on that phone.

Now the 4S is here with an 8MP uber-camera and a double speed processor, so we’ll see what that can do. In memory of my now-retired iPhone 4 (just gone on eBay), I’ve printed one of my favourite i4 pics on a likemycase.com case and wrapped the new boy in it.

Here’s a few more recent ones I liked. The King is dead, long live the King!

This is currently going slightly ballistic on my Tumblr page. I call it “Big, Bad and Dangerous to Know”.

I took this at a low point in the weekend. Yes, there were low points! It was late in the afternoon, I’d just been refused a photo pass without prior approval and then scolded by a track lady for standing on a low wall for five seconds. I was dehydrating, sunburnt, carrying a heavy photo bag and life was generally shit.

But life don’t stay shit for long when you’re surrounded by classic Porsche machinery. Standing next to the famous Jeans RSR, the crowds parted for half a second and I was ready to rock. Bam! In the Nikon. I see it as a double page opener for my Rennsport story: we’ll see how that goes.

Ten minutes later, I was in the rental car with a bottle of water, aircon on and the Zuffenhaus boys in the back. We had an early dinner at Baja Cantina, then I dropped them for their flight home and headed off to bed early.

When I woke up, everything was all better. Sleep is the best cure for what ails ya.

Am back in our US home-from-home at the minute after a monumental weekend down at Rennsport Reunion. Thanks to the folks at Laguna Seca Mazda Raceway, all of whom could not have been nicer, and to Andy Schupack at Porsche North America who helped me out with everything I asked for.

I’m doing a piece on the event for one of the UK mags – not sure who yet – but will tell the whole tale in due course. Let’s just say it was non-stop work with breaks for Baja Cantina, so if I told anyone reading that we might be able to hook up and it didn’t happen, now you know why that was.

Friday was HOT! Spent most of the day with great friend Aaron Winans from Zuffenhaus US, as Aaron is a lot of fun and has a very observant eye. We were still in the paddock when everyone was closing down, and I managed to get the security guards to let us ask Porsche if we could shoot some of the central display with no people around. Got the thumbs up so made the most of it.

New 911 looked great, as did the 918 and the rest. Surprise of that section for me was Sally, the Cars 911/996 welcoming people as they entered the Porsche paddock – kudos to Porsche for not taking that too seriously. Everyone I spoke to loved it.

Some truly great cars parked under the Laguna paddock marquee, under umbrellas, in the garages, in the tents, in the trucks, on the track, in the corrals, in the car parks: EVERYWHERE. I only had two and a half days to do my bit, so could not capture everything.

Early in the weekend, I decided to major on two ideas: the story of the event from my point of view, and TwinSpark Racing’s patron, Gijs van Lennep, driving his Le Mans Porsche 917 from 1970 at a track that was likely not suited to the set up and gearing. Both are great stories, so hopefully you’ll get to read them in print sometime. Final thanks to Sharon and company at Gunnar Racing for helping me out with access to the 917 while parked up.

Here’s a few pics to get you started. I’ve got about 2,000 frames to work through, but three features to write before Thursday and probably four separate shoots to organise, so no time to do much processing at the minute. More when I get time!

A few months back, I spent some time in London with Leica, the camera people. I’ve had a D-Lux 4 for a few years and recently bought a D-Lux 5. The Leica meet was part of a feature I was putting together for Total 911 magazine, but the ideas gained and exchanged will go much further than that.

My mentor for the day was Brett, the Leica M photographer. Brett made the point that colour is not the only look. Black and white can be used to take the viewer on a journey. It’s also great for representing shapes and textures: like engines, for example.

Brett advised me to trip back through my Leica D-Lux 4 pics, and revisit some in black and white. I chose this one to use as an example.

This is the Porsche Museum last December. It’s the 928 marine engine, set by the windows looking out towards Stuttgart city. I imagined the main road leaving Zuffenhausen as an artery, streaming life towards the centre of Stuttgart, and played with that idea in some other pics also. If one thinks of Porsche as part of Stuttgart’s heart, then the motor might be powering the town. It was a fun idea I didn’t make the most of, but sometimes that is better as it gives impetus to return.

Brett suggested taking some focus off the exterior and driving the eyes to the subject: engine.  We can do that with a crop. Both Leicas will shoot a 1:1 square crop, so let’s imagine that’s how it started.

Then we switch to black and white. The process involves a contrast setting that can lighten the tones considerably. I like it: more allure to the metal in this treatment. The airbox/plenum and those twin pipes have gone all smooth and sexy*: naughty, naughty 928 engine designers.

A little bit of lightening brush brings a halo effect to the exhaust edges, and a little bit of sharpening adds a svelte edge to the headers and turbo pipe.

Part of me has given up on compact cameras for everyday use, as I use my iPhone for so much stuff now: must be getting on for six or seven thousand shots in the two years I’ve had an iPhone. I still have a micro 4/3rds Panasonic GF1 compact and some great lenses to go with it, but not used the kit all that much.

If I was shooting this again, I would take a different approach, but there’s no doubt I would stick with the black and white, as I like what it has done here. Why don’t you try the same? Pick a shot that has bugged you since you took it and switch it into B&W: the results can be surprising.

*If no one else can see this, then I truly am a Freudian nightmare. Porsche Design/DaVinci Code – all in the same boat maybe. Ha! Same boat – marine engine. The mind is off on its own.

Things are hectic around here at the minute as we rush towards another US trip. Lots going on, including:

• Two third places for TwinSpark Racing at HARC Historic Touring Car races at TT Assen last weekend
• Arrival of Zuffenhaus RSR brakes at TwinSpark Racing: building promo campaign
• Bjorn Waldegard to drive for Race4Change.org on the East Africa Safari Rally this November: redesigning website with Porsche guy Lewis North at Method and Class
• Dom Delaney moving units to a much bigger facility and rebranding Specialist Vehicle Preparations
• Planning ground breaking road trip through Germany, the Alps, Italy and Croatia in August with mega Porsche girl Jessica
• Rob Campbell Porsche Rust Repairs also moving units and rebuilding half my fleet
• TwinSpark/IB/R Gruppe trackdays at Spa in October – discount rates and accommodation in progress
• US Trip now and for RennSport Reunion 4. WHO TO SHOOT?!

A bazillion other things filling my days but those are the main ones. So, to keep you mildly amused while I clear my desk, and prepare you for the US iPhone blogfest, here’s a few more iPhone pics I’ve taken lately. My last iPhone Porsche pictures/photography post is here.

If you’ve got an iPhone, use the camera but are not using Camera+, you need this app!

Here’s some more – not all Porsche but might be of interest. All have been posted on the blog Facebook page: follow the Classic Porsche Blog on Facebook or find the Porsche Blogger on Twitter! All the Facebook posts will show there too.