June 26, 2009

True Confessions of a Student Spy

by Becca Priddy at 6:24 AM

Well, if Jon and Kate are going down, I have a great idea for the next big reality show.. Tomorrow Never Drives starring, yours truly.. and my mom of course! But, before I get too far into why we are deserving of a summer reality show, let me tell you a little bit about what I do during my summer break…

My mom owns her own company: she’s a photographer. An automotive spy photographer to be exact. This whole spy thing started when I was about six. My mom was taking me home from my babysitter’s house, and spotted a strange looking car in a grocery store parking lot. She snapped a picture, showed it to my “car buff” dad, and the picture ended up on the cover of Automobile Magazine the next week. The car ended up being a pre-production Ford Mustang, and it wasn’t going to be released on the market until almost two years later. This was the start to her new career, and she’s been doing it ever since, taking me along with her, always with a camera in my hand.

So, I grew up looking for these cars everywhere I went, spending family vacations in “hot spots” and even almost not passing my driving license test after seeing a semi carrying test cars and running a stop sign.. no joke. People have even written articles about her, my favorite was named My Mother the Spy

So every summer, my mom and I travel to an undisclosed location somewhere in the desert (trust me, I’m not telling) drive hundreds of miles each day, and we spy on these concept cars while they are doing high heat testing, take the pictures, and off they go to various websites and magazines. It’s actually a pretty neat job. It doesn’t come easy, as these pre-production cars are kept top secret the whole time, as you can see, they don’t want us snapping our pics.

So next week I’m going to take you along with us, right here on PLAID. Every day I’ll update you on what has happened, what cars we snapped, and how hot it got. (it gets HOT out here!) When we end up rescuing airplanes, touring brothels, or climbing trees to get the perfect shot (all of these have happened in the past) you’ll be the first to know!