Overcome. Adapt. Improvise.

When former marine Tim Wallace barely survived a 140 foot fall during an exercise in Norway, he decided it was time to stop shooting with his Forces issue Minimi Para light machine gun and start shooting with a Nikon DSLR instead.

He was trained to shoot to kill. Now he's retrained himself and shoots to thrill... clients, classic car lovers and photo-enthusiasts across the world. North East-based Tim is the founder of Ambient Life Photography and in less than two years has built a formidable client portfolio and a compelling body of work.

On his blog one fan gushes: "I can't figure out just what it is that makes your 'look' because the lighting, editing, composition and all the boring technical gubbins are ALL absolutely inspirational."

Says Tim: "I certainly don't think I am a great photographer but people tell me they think I see things differently. That's my strength I guess. I think it's all about making use of what's around you—the ambience. I can look at concrete or gravel and see instantly how the light moves off it. You can use that knowledge to really good effect when you pick up the camera."

Tim's passion for photography and cars is genetic. His grandfather loved driving and spent many long hours processing film in his garden shed. At just 17 years old Tim became the youngest darkroom manager in The Daily Mail Group and very quickly learnt high quality printing skills.

"That experience has always held me in good stead" he tells Focus, "Now when I shoot I always do so with final prints very much in mind." Tim has built a superb and symbiotic working relationship with Aston Workshop, the specialist car sales and restoration workshop. And the recent launch of 'Aston Art'—a photographic project aimed at capturing the essence of Aston Martin in a contemporary style—has already had a major impact.

Says Tim: "With this new collection of commercial art online Aston Martin customers seeking anything from the DB1 to the latest V8 Vantage can see the car of their dreams in original settings. Under the previous 'default protocol', an interested international customer would buy a flight and book a hotel room, come and test drive the car and then organise its transport back home. But now more and more people are seeing my work on the Aston Art website and are buying the car without even seeing it 'in the flesh'. One car was sold within fifteen minutes of the images being uploaded to the Web."

But that's not to say high-end car photography is easy.

Tim is emphatic: "It's hard work and it's not all just glamour shots either. Recently I spent five hours shooting 60 different gaskets from all angles—just because it had to be done. And if any photographer says; 'I won't do that, it's beneath me'—I'd say it was time for them to start revisiting their business profile."

And although these days Tim (40) is shooting mainly with Nikon D3 or D2Xs cameras, his background and formative years in film are still firmly embedded in his psyche.

He recalls: "I can remember as a freelancer, driving around in a bashed up Mini and processing my Kodak Tri-X in a plastic bag in a Paterson tank in the back of the car. Now there are people working professionally who have never worked in film. I think it's a shame because they just don't see things in the same way. I'll give you an example. I was doing a shoot for a major car magazine up north recently. The shoot was split into two and there was another, younger photographer there too. This guy took over 400 pictures in 15 minutes. That astonished me because at the end of any completed day's work I probably come back with about 120 shots—and that's exactly the same as I would have come back with in the days when I was shooting film."

He admits: "I will bracket now and again if I really need to, but I refuse to just keep my finger down on the button. None of my cameras has ever been off manual mode. I'm always thinking about the final print so it's like working backwards for me—and whilst some people talk about 'preset curves in D3s' I'm still thinking about dropping the shadow here and doing that there—my thought process is still very manual. I can just see it all in my head—you shouldn't have to look at the back of the screen."

Although Photoshop is another available photo-tool in his armoury Tim is sharply focused on getting as much information as possible in camera.

He confesses: "I would never put two images together. It just doesn't turn me on to shoot a car in a studio and then photograph a beach in Malibu and then merge the two. The real solution is to take the car to Malibu and do it all in camera."

He adds: "I will always try and do as much as possible in the camera but if the information is there in the RAW file I think it's fair game to use it. At the end of the day the human eye is the most fantastic lens on the planet. It can show a difference of about nine stops without you even thinking about it. No camera can do that no matter what you are using.

And when it comes to light, the light we get from nature is the best ambient quality light there is. Generally it's an underused light source that is always on tap. People say to me: 'Well look at this image. You shot this with only two heads?' And I say: 'Yeah...because I've got the sun too.'

"I shot a 1967 Ferrari Dino which was almost in total shadow, straight into the sun and it worked really well. I had scattered cloud; I had the sun with an almost moon-like appearance and I had trees casting long shadows."

One of Tim's clients, logistics giant Culina, asked him if he could make one of their 80 foot-long Mercedes wagons 'look as good as your Aston Martin images?'

Says Tim: "I told them I could make a chopper bike look as good as my Aston martin shots if I was asked to do it. But the Culina brief was a really challenging shoot. We had to do a week's work in two days.

We found an abandoned airfield and I had shafts of sunlight falling on the Culina logo at the back while I lit the vehicle from the front. It looked great—and they ordered 500 40x30 framed prints for their offices all over the world."

He adds: "For me each car I shoot has a personality—in exactly the same way as a human being has a personality. The art is in capturing it in an image."