Words: Ben Abrams | Photos (Shay): Ernesto Che and Lani Lee
We started eGarage because we wanted to do something special with Automotive content. This includes how we choose to reflect the seemingly ancient relationship between the female gender and the Automobile.
Since we have the utmost respect for our mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, and girlfriends we feel the responsibility to be explicitly careful about creating content that could be viewed as stereotypical, cliché, or worse, in chauvinistic bad taste.
For better or worse, the female form has gone hand in hand with how cars have been portrayed in popular culture. How the relationship started, we can only speculate. There’s the attainability or status factor – to some, a beautiful woman may seem equally out of grasp as a beautiful car.
Maybe sometimes the enthusiast wishes a woman were as predictable as his machine. On the other hand, the yin of a hot rod, needing maintenance and tinkering to run optimally, could be exactly what the yang needs for balance. There are no doubt aesthetic similarities seducing the viewer into the curves of a fender or the prominence of a headlight.
A boy’s reaction to the doors on a Lamborghini may seem similar to when he sees a pretty girl – the difference is that he can keep staring at the car and not get in trouble.
Whatever the relationship is, we would like to honor it. Yet, as with anything eGarage participates in, we will do it in a way that keeps it fresh yet classy, respecting the tradition and adding our own dose of exclusive authenticity to this cherished pairing.
Before eGarage was born in real life, we found ourselves with an opportunity to photograph a lovely model named Shay Maria. Shay has been featured all over the internet, as well as on TV and in print media. We appreciate her being down to earth and a natural in front of the camera.
Although she was hesitant to do a “car shoot”, we assured her that this was not your typical “girl on a hood” idea . In fact, through all of our searching we hadn’t found anyone who executed the concepts we had in mind.
At the time, eGarage had a rather large collection of new in box toy cars at its disposal. I say “at the time” because 750 of those collectibles were unpackaged and put to use – transported from San Francisco to Los Angeles to execute the first of Shay’s looks.
Our second set involved our sponsor Cavallino Jeweler’s Ariel Atom II and an industrial LA backdrop.
We are incredibly pleased with the results and hope that our eGarage fans appreciate our first photographic attempt in this arena. You can see our first attempt in the video medium when our friend Hope gets re-introduced to the eGarage Eleanor.Trust eGarage to tread carefully and sparingly in this arena, but when we do, we can assure you the results will be extraordinary.
