M850i Gran CoupeM850i Gran Coupe

One Saturday at the beginning of August 2024, I spent the day in San Francisco with the camera: cable cars, cafe windows, the crowds along Market Street. But the frames I was really saving the light for came in the evening, back in the South Bay. On summer weekends the office-park lots there empty out completely, which turns them into the quietest photo studios you could ask for. The model that evening was the 850.

We started in the shade at the edge of the lot, where the trees soften everything and the paint reads as a quiet silver-grey. The Gran Coupe roofline does its best work in a shot like this: one long line from the nose all the way down into the tail.

Up close it turns out the front end is all texture: the blacked-out kidney grille with the M badge tucked into the corner, and the laser headlights that look less like lamps and more like something out of a watch case.

Then the sun dropped below the tree line. The same paint that had been reading silver all evening suddenly went warm, and every panel picked up its own version of the sunset.

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The rear got a set of its own. The taillights stretch into the haunches, and the M850i badge sits just above the diffuser like a signature in the corner of the canvas.

As the light went out the shots got darker and moodier, which suits this car just as well as the gold did.

And one last portrait before heading home, of the other member of the crew: the red panda who rides along on the rear window, peeking over the door the whole way.