LIFE THROUGH A LENS: DAVID SHEPHERD

From shooting Countach kit cars to being on the set of No Time To Die, David Shepherd shares the story of his rise to car photography fame

An interest in photography at school started David Shepherd on his journey to becoming one of the world’s most sought-after automotive photographers. Here he reveals the ups and downs of that journey and shares a selection of his favourite images

‘WHEN I WAS AT COLLEGE THERE WAS A celebrated American writer by the name of Susan Sontag. Generally speaking she used to get right up my nose, but one thing she wrote about photography really stuck with me. Her quote was: “Photographers, connoisseurs of beauty, are also – wittingly or unwittingly – the recording angels of death.” Sorry, I’ve probably killed the vibe a bit, haven’t I?’

So says seasoned automotive photographer David Shepherd. Known simply as Shep to his friends and colleagues, his work as a freelance photographer for both magazine and manufacturer assignments has seen his images published around the world. Given his success across a career that spans three decades you might expect him to be brimming with bravado, yet confidence is something he never takes for granted.

‘I did photography at school, and then went on to take a degree in it. But I was completely oblivious to the world of work in general, let alone earning a living from photography. Like most kids, I started taking photos because I enjoyed it and it got me out of doing double maths. But in reality, by the time I actually left college [in the late-’80s] I had this slightly odd idea that I could be a landscape photographer and just wander around the countryside taking digital landscapes and existing on crisps and faint praise. I didn’t actually think about how it was going to generate a living. It took about six months out of college to realise that just wasn’t going to happen.

‘By this time I was living in south London. I left college with a big overdraft. I think the interest rate was nearly 20 per cent, so I wasn’t actually able to earn enough to pay the

interest. I quickly came to a crisis point, and ended up giving up photography and doing cycle couriering. It was not a fun job, but it gave me a break from continually ringing people for work, and I paid off a bit of debt. However, it didn’t stop me wondering what the hell I was going to do with a photography degree.’

His answer came in the form of working for a few PR companies, taking photos for press releases. According to Shep it was ‘really, really soul-destroying. The kind of photography you never make a living at’. Still he persevered, shooting for a leisure business magazine before having something of an epiphany and deciding to give automotive photography a go.

‘I’d always read car magazines and had an interest in cars, so it was as simple as thinking, “Well, why not have a go at photographing cars?” The first mag I worked for was Which

Kit? It was a charming publication, though the smell of glassfibre resin still triggers nasty flashbacks of Countach kit cars. They paid virtually nothing, but it was all about getting tear sheets and some experience so I could get enough work together to go see people.

‘By now it was the mid-’90s. I was 30, it was nearly a decade since I’d left college, and I was back to knocking on doors, meeting art editors, lugging my portfolio around. The first “proper” work I got was from Autocar, closely followed by Performance Car. It was great to be working for these titles, but because they tended to have full-time staff photographers it was still a case of doing bits and pieces.

‘My confidence was beginning to build, but I never had that inherent bullishness I see in so many young photographers these days. I still don’t if I’m honest. I think self-belief is as big a component of a photographer’s success as any amount of technical or artistic ability. I knew I just had to keep hammering away.’

Anyone who has enjoyed a notable degree of success has a breakthrough, the moment the cork leaves the bottle, if you like. For Shep that pivotal period came not thanks to one golden job, but a wider recognition of his talent and perseverance, both from the established motoring titles (plus a start-up called evo )and big-ticket companies such as BP.

‘Those were exciting times,’ says Shep of the late-’90s purple patch. ‘The car mag stuff was gaining momentum and BP was going really great guns, with me heading to lots of wild places. I did some crazy stuff in Baku when it was like the Wild West, shooting the pipeline that ended up being in a Bond film.’

Having finally tasted sustained success, and with his confidence built brick by brick on hard-won foundations, Shep diversified into working directly for car manufacturers.

Frustratingly (at least for magazine art editors) it was a move that would ultimately deny editorial titles of his talent, because his diary was rapidly block-booked by brands such as Aston Martin, Bentley, BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Rolls-royce.

‘It took me ages to approach them to say, “Could I do some work for you?”’ confesses Shep, ‘but the first work I got was from BMW and Rolls, which was a great way to start.’

Working as a launch photographer for numerous manufacturers provided ample compensation for all those years of scraping a living, but it came with its own cost, as such jobs mean spending weeks or even months away from home. Feast or famine, freelancing is never easy. Especially during and immediately post-covid.

‘Lockdown and what has followed has been interesting. The enforced stopping of work has been financially disastrous, but I’ve actually found it quite a good thing to just stop and think, and be free from the relentless cycle of travelling, shooting and editing. I haven’t had that clear space to think in 20 years.

‘I did wonder whether I’d come back thinking, “Oh, Jesus, I can’t do this again.” But the hiatus has refocused me on those things I genuinely love about the job. And the things I don’t. The pressure can be gruelling. Or rather the pressure of dealing with variables such as weather, location and available time are gruelling. I do enjoy the process though, especially working with the journalist or client to create a visual story that dovetails with the written narrative.

‘The image selection I’ve chosen is a case in point. They’re not necessarily my best images, because I really can’t judge that. But they’re all things that have left a memory and a story in my head about what happened on those jobs. The Miura image literally became my business card. The leaping Land Rovers from No Time To Die was without question the single most pressured shot I’ve ever taken.

‘Each of the shots reminds me that the story is really important. It all comes back to Sontag’s “angels of death” quote, and the fact that when you take a photograph, the second you click the shutter that moment has gone forever, but you’ve recorded it. Her quote is a bit bleak, even for me, but my interpretation is special moments make special photographs.

‘There’s another quote I like, from American photographer Imogen Cunningham. It’s been used a lot, or at least paraphrased a lot, but it fits how I feel about taking pictures. Now more than ever. Her quote was: “Which of my photographs is my favourite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” It sounds cheesy, but that desire to keep taking better photos is what lies at the heart of the job. If you lose that impulse it’s probably time to stop.”