René Staud, born in Stuttgart in 1951, has been working as a photographer for several decades and has long been a legend in this profession. He has been fascinated by photography since he was 12 years old and since he has been photographing cars professionally, he has not only had many a horsepower treasure in front of his lens, but has also created icons of photo and book art himself.
At the age of 16, he founded his own photo laboratory. Since he originally worked as a portrait, fashion and architectural photographer, René Staud was able to transfer his way of working excellently to photographing classic cars. His desire was to produce original work – which quickly made him one of the most important automotive photographers in Germany.
His work is characterized above all by his shots of vehicles in breathtaking scenery. Not least because of his innovative area lighting technology, called “Magicflash”, he succeeded in entering the automotive industry. With this new type of lighting design, he was able to reproduce the color of the car in exactly the same tones in the film and create 100 percent of the design of the vehicle by means of light strips mounted above the vehicle. With this technique, the shapes of the car could be underlined, worked out, but also concealed. 100th classic cars have already been models for him.
In addition to what is probably his most famous work for Porsche, the illustrated book “Porsche Legends”, Staud’s masterpieces include other books: “The Porsche 911 Book”, “911 Millennium”, “Icons of Porsche” and “Porsche Milestones”.
