“Creative directors naturally want their ads to be unique. But reality often intervenes. “They all want to go to Nowhere, Nebraska,” says car shooter Mickey McGuire, who dominated car advertising in the 1950s and ’60s. But human models are scarce, and “there’s no processing lab in Nowhere, Nebraska, so we have to set up a processing lab, and that means a lot of extra cost. That’s why, historically, we ended up in Miami or Palm Springs or San Francisco.”
Madison Avenue discovered Mount Tam back when photos were finally replacing black-and-white illustrations in car ads”

Rena and I stayed two days on Mount Tamalpias. When she asked me if there was anywhere to swim I took her to a large pool of crystal clear water fed by a small waterfall. She did not look happy. Getting Rena to verbalize what made her happy and unhappy, was due to her not having a father, or growing up around male energy. She was intimidated by male enrgy that in her case was overflowing with sexual scheming and self doubt on the part of the males, includinng me. She was bringing out the worst in me. She did not want to go into the pool of water with me, or any body of water with me, or, any male, because we took liberties, and, Rena loved to swim alone for hours! Not only did this keep her great shape, it was her meditation, her communion with her inner self, that very few got a glimpse of.

“I give up Rena. I don’t want to be your lover, anymore. I want to get to know you, just talk to you!”

Rena turned to me, and by that pool I was in a garden with……….Eve. We talked.

“You are the first person to ever talk to me!” she said, and I was dumbfounded.

“The only people I can talk to, and be myself, are little boys!” she added.

“Why not little girls?” I asked.

“Women have always been jealous of me. I scare them, for some reason.”

“Do you like other women?” I probed.

Silence………………………………….!

We parked the car where this car commercial was shot.

Jon Presco

California’s Mount Tamalpais Is A (car) Commercial Success
The Winding Road Around The Mountain Is Likely The Most-photographed Strip Of Asphalt In The World.

August 13, 1998|By Wall Street Journal
MOUNT TAMALPAIS, Calif. – Mount Everest has its height, Mount Rushmore its presidents. But only California’s Mount Tamalpais can claim to be the best spot on Earth to shoot a car commercial.
This is the time of year when ponytailed creative types swarm over Mount Tam, as locals call this gold-flecked mountain 20 minutes north of San Francisco. General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Corp., Daimler-Benz AG, Porsche AG, Nissan Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp. – their cars have all hugged the hairpin turns along the ribbon of mountainside asphalt in TV commercials, magazine ads and brochures.

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“You see an ad with a winding road, without a fence in the background – that was shot here,” says Fred Lew, a California State Parks ranger and veteran of more than 40 Mount Tam car shoots.
While other state parks worry about having too many bears, snakes or scorpions, the problem on Mount Tam is keeping the creative-director population in check. Last year, Mount Tamalpais (pronounced tam-al-PIE-us) added a full-time state-park employee who keeps track of requests from film crews eager to reserve camera time for the likes of Mercedes-Benz and Lincoln-Mercury.
The mountain routinely turns into a mile-high traffic jam as camera crews take over the roads.
The car shooters who create the ads for more than 640 automobile models are a small, vagabond group. They are followed faithfully by tightly knit production crews.
Indeed, about 90 percent of all car ads are shot by the same 10 people, says Jamie Appelbaum, a senior art buyer at Team One Advertising in El Segundo, Calif., which creates ads for Lexus.
“Shooting a vehicle is different because it’s an enormous reflective surface,” she says. Only a few people “understand what needs to be done to make a car look beautiful.”
Most tend to go for that same “golden moment” of the day – just after sunset, when auto enthusiasts say cars look their best – photographing the vehicles from a three-quarter angle.
Creative directors naturally want their ads to be unique. But reality often intervenes. “They all want to go to Nowhere, Nebraska,” says car shooter Mickey McGuire, who dominated car advertising in the 1950s and ’60s. But human models are scarce, and “there’s no processing lab in Nowhere, Nebraska, so we have to set up a processing lab, and that means a lot of extra cost. That’s why, historically, we ended up in Miami or Palm Springs or San Francisco.”
Madison Avenue discovered Mount Tam back when photos were finally replacing black-and-white illustrations in car ads. The year was 1955, and Jimmy Northmore was on assignment for a company then called Dodge Motor Co. “The most important thing, as far as the manufacturers were concerned, was chrome,” recalls Northmore, a longtime partner of McGuire. And chrome, to avoid being sullied by a bluish tint, needs to be reflected against an all-white sky. That means overcast weather, which led to Mount Tam.
Keeping Mount Tam under wraps was relatively easy until the late 1970s, when photographer Dick James chose it as the backdrop for his first BMW commercial for the original “Ultimate Driving Machine” campaign. The ad, showing a pair of headlights zigzagging through the twilight, became the talk of the auto world. From then on, James says, keeping Mount Tam to himself was like hiding a just-discovered sunken treasure.