Mint Condition 1957 C1 Corvette Light Painting
I recently had the unique opportunity to create a light painting of a mint condition 1957 C1 Corvette out in western Minnesota. I met the car’s owner, Jean, at the Cars & Caves event in Chanhassen, MN on Saturday, August 31st. She was so excited to have me create a light painting of her beautiful car. She didn’t mess around either as she scheduled it less than one week later!
The set-up shot with Jean prior to light painting.
Finding Jean’s Corvette
Jean’s nick-name for her Corvette is “Chaos 2”. She named it after one of her dogs, Chaos.
Jean had been dreaming about having this car for 30 years. She found a photo of the version she really wanted 4 years ago and saved it on her computer. In July of this year, she saw THIS car! It was located in Grand Junction, Colorado. After she bought it, she was loading pictures of it onto her computer and then came across the photo from 4 years ago. It is not only like that car she dreamed of; it is THE EXACT car. Needless to say, it was kind of freaky and obviously meant to be hers! So Jean then made the trek out to Grand Junction to pick it up.
In her words; “It is the sexiest thing I have ever seen!”
The ’57 Corvette
I dug up a little history about the ’57 C1 Corvette and it was interesting to find out that there were only 6,339 of them built. Of those, a total of 2,794 featured the two-tone paint scheme to highlight the bodyside coves like Jean’s Corvette has. Of those 2,794, only 319 were painted with this color combination of Cascade Green/Beige.
Oh yeah, and they sold for a whopping $3,176.32 in 1957. I’m sure that’s “almost” what Jean paid for hers! 😉
Here is the daylight photo of Jean’s mint condition 1957 C1 Corvette Convertible.
In 1957, a 283-CID engine was under the hood with GM‘s newly developed “Ramjet” fuel injection system which yielded 259 horsepower (or 283 bhp). Chevy ads at the time carried the news that the Corvette now produced “one horsepower per cubic inch”
While fuel injection is everywhere today, the idea of it in 1957 was completely foreign to automotive manufacturers. While some European manufacturers had already begun experimenting with fuel injection in their production cars, Chevrolet turned to this new technology to bring added performance to its V8 engine on the ’57 Corvette.
Light Painting a 1957 C1 Corvette
As I mentioned earlier, this is a mint condition 1957 C1 Corvette Convertible and so selecting the appropriate location to light paint it was very important. Jean had that very well covered too. We would use her backyard as the backdrop for this unique light-painted photograph. And what a beautiful backyard it is too! With a pond and a waterfall, this heavily wooded paradise was perfect! It also was big! It took us over four hours to do the photography portion of Jean’s 1957 C1 Corvette light painting! But as you can see below, it was well worth it!
Jean, and her beautiful mint condition 1957 C1 Corvette.
I have a short video on our YouTube Channel that shows the more than 150 images that I used to create the light-painted photograph of “Chaos 2”. It’s pretty fun to see the completed light painting appear in about a minute!
Thank you for reading our post and have a great one! – M&J