Want your car to look incredible? Pepper Yandell is the photographer that car brands go to. Pepper’s clients range from McLaren and Pagani to Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Lexus and Chevrolet. But it’s his collection of private collectors that have made his name. These clients include royalty and billionaires. Their cars include Lamborghinis, Bugattis, Porsches, Ferraris and even a custom-built Hummer.
The Stable: Where did it all begin?
Pepper Yandell: I started shooting when I was twenty because my brother bought a camera and I thought it was pretty cool so I got one too. I was taking pictures of everything from pictures of senior high school friends’ bands to landscapes everything. Then my friend got a car, an Audi TT, and he asked me if I wanted to shoot it. As I was shooting everything anyway, I said yes and I really enjoyed it because I’m a perfectionist and a car just sits there. It doesn’t have a bad hair day. It’s just up to you to position it and light it and make it look its best, whereas when you’re working with people obviously there’s some sort of collaborative effort for good results. When you’re shooting a car you’re in full control. So, I kept looking for more and more cars to shoot.
The Stable: What makes your work stand out?
PY: Firstly, stylistically I tend to have a very surrealistic effect in my photos. I try to put them in extreme environments but have them look as natural as possible but still maintaining really vibrant colours that the eye could technically see in real life. But in real life you would almost never have the combination of visual effects that are present in my photos. I try to maintain some sort of realism while also capturing the extreme as far as visual representation.
Secondly is probably the niche that I’ve created around the world with private collectors. I have a reputation that allows me to easily interact with these really exclusive car collectors and shoot some extremely rare, sometimes one of one multimillion dollar cars all over the world.
The Stable: You’ve had some really wild jobs. What are the wildest?
PY: One of my favourites was after I won the Netflix racing show, Fastest Car, racing in a Lamborghini. Lamborghini was super-happy about this, which built me a really good relationship with them and they built this experience called Passione Italia for me. They gave me a 24 7 concierge on an iPad and a bunch of different routes all over Italy with suggested restaurants and hotels etc. Then they brought me to the factory and gave me an exclusive private tour. I met the whole team and staff and they let me pick a car. I chose an Adventador and drove all over Italy. I would message the concierge where I was going to be and they would take care of the restaurant, hotel and everything. That was probably the coolest one for me. [Pepper drove across Emilia-Romagna to Riccione on the Adriatic Riviera, then across to Florence amd finally to the Conero Riviera in the Marches region: ed]
Another favourite is a job I did for McLaren in the Arctic Circle, called the Arctic Experience. It was in super-far north Finland, where we had these ice racetracks. We shipped ten McLaren 570S-es, put spikes in the tyres so we could drive on the ice. I learned how to drift on ice, rode snow mobiles, had dog sleds, saw the Northern Lights, ate some moose jerky…
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Pepper moved to Dallas when he was twenty and still lives there although he works all over the word. He lived in Dubai for a couple of years about four years ago and still goes there often. He also spends a lot of time in South-East Asia, working in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia.
