Douglas Sonders Photo Shoot!

Terry and I have never had the honor of being part of a professional location photo shoot, so this was quite fun experience.
Douglas Sonders is a celebrated photographer with a list of high profile celebrity and corporate clients that will blow you away. Even more impressive are his amazing photos.
We met Doug in Celebration, Florida during the exotic car festival a few years back, and he had an idea of doing a session with the time machine to create images which could be used to promote our drive to cure Parkinson's.
His busy schedule has him flying all over the world and we figured that if it was meant to be, the opportunity would present itself someday.
Well, on Saturday, June 26th, 2010, it did!
It was more than a six hour shoot, with a location swap in between, and Doug assembled a team of talented folks to help, along with renting generators for the lights, and hauling a huge load of equipment to make the car look it's finest. He arranged the location and contacted a lovely model named Emily, to create a female version of the character 'Marty McFly' from the movie. To add further excitement, he lined up a professional pyrotechnics guy to set up flame trails behind the time machine.
Keep in mind, these blurry snapshots are from my camera and not Doug's! He's in the editing phase of the shoot and we hope to see the results of his work in the near future.
Our thanks go to Doug and everyone involved who gave of their time and talents for this project.
Here's a LINK to Doug's site, and below is a little behind-the-scenes video I took of the process of Doug capturing the DeLorean time machine in the outer Washington DC area.

Kevin Pike

Terry and I met Kevin Pike this past weekend at the DeLorean Car Show in Lexington, KY.
Kevin was the special effects supervisor of 'Back to the Future' and was responsible for the physical construction of the time machines in the movie.
He shared a few stories and was generous enough to grant us this video clip for the mission!

Back to the grocery store. . .

Terry and I got to help celebrate a grocery store chain's anniversary. Amelia's is in the northern area up in Pennsylvania and their prices reflect those from the 1980's! They thought having a DeLorean would be a good symbol of the era.
Note the pavement background, the stainless steel background for the products, and the fonts used!
A lot of detail went into this commercial and I think the production company did a great job with the effects!
Here's the commercial:

Amelia's Grocery

Sunday we start to plan for the possibility of running out of photo paper, no need to worry, because it seems that most people brought their own cameras and we had just enough paper to get through the day. Lots of fans, including a female Marty McFly! Another visit with Alan and our friends Tom and Amy came by to say hi. Tom is a wonderkid when it comes to Back to the Future and the Delorean Time Machine. It was fun to hear him answer the publics questions! The show wound down really fast, it was 4pm and then we were packing up because it was 5 pm. With the car we like to be out of the convention halls as quickly as possible, to avoid fork lifts with boxes, carpet rolls and vans blocking the drives. So with a quick hug goodbye to Alan we were out and on our way to 95 and home to our puppies. We took a new route, 95 was backed up so we took 40, it was slow going at times, but we made it past Baltimore and stopped for the night at the Brown Motel, with 15 international rooms. We got the last room, China! When traveling in a time machine you never know when, or where you might end up!

Saturday starts off with a rush that doesn’t slow until about 6:30. A great day for fundraising. We start to worry that we might run out of photo paper, so Alan starts calling around to see if there is any in the Philly area. No luck there, but we make it through the day. Now we are about to run out of hand-outs. Our friend and sponsor, Stephen Clark has been kind enough to supply items for these outings. I hope that we are able to attract some business for his web store at BTTF.net. The Fire Marshall stops ticket sales at the front. The convention center has reached maximum capacity, so -the organizers extend the show one hour. Long day, with lot’s of happy people who got to sit in a DeLorean Time Machine.

Friday: First day of the convention begins at 12, at least that’s when the doors open. Folks were still setting up when we arrived at the hall. Lots of comic book vendors and artists, I guess that’s expected. Some toy and collectable vendors, a lot of comic book stalls and a number of celebrities. After a quick walk about, (I bought a leather pouch), we readied the car and the doors opened to a nice sized crowd. People made their way to us and we took a good number of photos. I enjoyed the visit from warriors from '300.'

Alan Erush, a friend that lives in Philly, came to help out. A very nice day, easy pace, fun pictures and then dinner with Alan and his wife Sarah at Appleby’s. We had such fun just talking and laughing. Then back to the hotel for some rest.

Load In

Thursday is load-in day. We search for a car wash and give the D a really good scrubbing. She is bright and shiny. With a few loops around the block we find our way into the convention center loading dock. After a short wait, as the staff inspects the car, checks the gas level, and finds out where we belong, they direct us to our space #753. We have 4) 10 x 10 booths that land on an end aisle. The show has had a ticket sale surge and the organizers are hoping for a great show. So are we! We arrange for electricity and pipe and drape. Sign papers for all the union stuffs, and prepare the car for a work out. There are a few early donations from volunteers and staff, which bodes well for the show already!

To Philadelphia

Philly comic Con
Wednesday, June 9^th, 2010

Traveled from Myrtle to Joppa PA, with a pit stop at King’s Dominion for a couple of thrills! Sometimes you just need to scream and yell and roller coasters encourage such behavior. In Joppa, we're starving and find a Chinese buffet serving frog legs. A snack you don't see every day. We then crash for the night, worn out by rides and marathon eating.