I went out to shoot last night with the intention of getting a better grip on light painting. I hadn't really done any since my last post and was itching to try it again. I wanted to get the Houston skyline (cheesy?) in the background, so I did some hunting on Google Maps first for locations that I thought might work.
After driving to the location, I found that the view was perfect; a nice, unobstructed view of the skyline - rare to come by in Houston, it seems. There was only one issue that turned out to be a real problem though. The parking lot had large overhead lighting that bathed the car in an intense white light, which I was worried would make light painting very difficult.
It did.
I spend about 15 minutes painting the nose of the car with limited success, and completely struck out on painting the sides of the car. No matter what settings I used (I mainly stuck with 10sec @ F8), the overhead light simply overpowered my little torch. I decided to take a few ambient exposures to get as much detail as I could, then packed everything up and headed home a bit defeated.
Looking at the photos in post however, I saw that they might actually have a chance. The skyline looked great, as I caught it right at the last hint of dusk and the exposures of the nose when combined added up pretty well.
I started with the original shot of the skyline and built upon it:
I added all the individual exposures that lit individual parts of the nose:
After that, it was a TON of editing to remove annoying and distracting elements like light poles and fixtures. Heavy use of the clone stamp and healing brush here!
As far as editing, I did some minor individual RGB curves adjustments, some sharpening, minor gradients and fiddled with the selective color settings a bit. I also raised the levels just a touch so that the image wasn't TOO dark, although I kind of liked the dark look for this one.
With all that said, I now know that I need a more powerful light source or need to shoot somewhere that is close to pitch black. I did find a good spot though, and I plan on using it again soon in future attempts.
I was fortunate enough to shoot my first Porsche last weekend. I've always had a "thing" for Porsche; I've always seen them as the quintessential sports car whose lineage can clearly be seen in the simple and clean body lines that are instilled into the long history of the brand. I'd never gotten the chance to drive one until now, so up to this point, my opinion on these cars was based solely upon the raving reviews from most auto magazines that I receive on a monthly basis. Seeing them on the street or in a parking lot was the closest I'd ever come to the experience of a Porsche.
I was very excited when the owner contacted me for a shoot. He owns a stunning example of the 997 model - a 2008 Carrera White Turbo Cabriolet. It has a six-speed standard transmission (as God intended) mated to a twin-turbo flat six that produces 480hp and 460 lb/ft torque. With a talented driver, (present company excluded) it will sprint to 60 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds. Its body is purely Porsche, with wide hips, a raked roofline and almost goofy looking "bug-eyed" headlights.
The interior is swathed in beautiful, rich black leather with glossy carbon fiber trim on various bits throughout. A chronometer and lap timer sits perched on the center of the dashboard for the few weekend warriors who may see actual track time. The thick rimmed steering wheel sports a few handy controls for the radio and cruise control, both of which most drivers will find are negated by the soundtrack of the flat six out back.
After settling into the driver's seat and acclimating myself with the controls, I was set to go...That was if I could figure out what secret passcode or sweet nothings I should whisper to the stubborn shifter in order to engage reverse. Having driven German cars before, I assumed that it involved the usual push down, over-and-up motion, but the shifter refused to budge. After a couple off-color words and repeated attempts, I coaxed the shifter into reverse with a motion that can be best described as a "W".
Once on the road, it became very apparent that this was a supercar that had not forgotten its manners. Steering required just the right amount of effort, the ride was firm yet pliable over imperfections and the clutch was easily modulated so as to save me from the embarrassment of stalling in the middle of an intersection. I quickly realized that this was not just a car for ripping around a track; it was also perfectly comfortable to cruise on city streets at a respectable (and legal) rate. Only one gripe came to mind, and that was from the considerable noise made by the soft top when the car was placed on an uneven surface, such as pulling in and out of driveways. It creaked and groaned in ways that were pretty unbecoming for such an expensive car. Having never before driven a convertible, I passed this off as normal but something tells me that might not be the case.
Once my girlfriend (my trusty "flash-girl") and I entered the freeway in second gear to head to our shooting location, I was able to dip into the reserve of power the Porsche had on hand. It accelerated dutifully, if not a bit anticlimactically. Then the turbos spooled up. In the blink of an eye, the Porsche's demeanor changed; the nose raised what felt like six inches, the rear end hunkered down and the tach needle banged off the rev limiter before I could even register that I was traveling at nearly 90 mph. The whole time, the Porsche made no fuss about any of this, with minimal road noise and only a faint hiss from the turbos lurking behind my ears. Seeing as this was not my car and it would be a shame to spend such a beautiful sunny day in jail, I kept the speed under 80 mph for the rest of the drive to the location.
The location we picked for the shoot was the same place as we photographed the 1978 Ferrari 308 earlier on. There has been one thing I've discovered about Cypress, and it is that good scenery is very hard to come by. With seemingly never ending expanses of concrete and strip malls, it was a challenge to find a worthy backdrop for such a car. So I stuck with the safety location that I'd chosen just in case. It is simply an empty country road minutes from 290 where I am free to do what I please with the car.
This shoot was a tough one. The owner was only available to shoot at high noon, when there were no clouds in the sky. The light was harsh and direct, and the shadows were pretty unforgiving. I noticed with my polarized sunglasses on that the sky appeared very deep and saturated at the top of my vision, and it reminded me of the fantastic stlye that BBC's Top Gear uses. Their tack sharp subjects surrounded by a shallow DOF and a high gradient in the sky make for a great visual that I've long been a fan of. I decided to try and duplicate that look with this series. I affixed my 3-stop ND filter and polarizer to the end of my 50mm 1.8 lens and got to it.
Shooting in a sparse location makes you work for interesting angles. There was a culvert on the side of the road where I could get 10 feet below road level, and I used that in a few shots to gain a perspective that I thought was interesting.
I used off camera flash only on the front shot of the Porsche, to light up the grille which was getting lost in the shade. Other than that, all the shots were taken with natural lighting.
Since it was too bright to attempt a rig shot at that location, we drove around a bit more to find a location with a bit more shade. We found an office building nearby with some trees covering the parking lot, and decided that it would have to do. It was tough getting anything over a 1" exposure, and the wind was picking up which made a lot of shots far too blurry to be of any use. It was a frustrating experience to say the least!
I shot the interior shots back at the owner's home, where the sun was blocked by other houses and trees, which made for very pleasing light in those shots. I was very happy with how those turned out, especially for not using any sort of off-camera lighting.
All-in-all, my love for Porsche has been nothing but affirmed. Now that I have had the pleasure of driving one, I can appreciate even more the every day driveability of this beast. It never once felt like a twitchy, nervous sports car that makes you walk the knife's edge the entire time you're driving. It was white-knuckle fast, fun and easy to live with. It was a shame to relinquish the keys to its rightful owner at the end of the day.
I set out last weekend to get a little more practice with the rig. I hadn't used it since the Ferrari shoot and was itching to give it a try again. The RSX hadn't been washed recently, but due to the lack of rain was still decently clean.
I set out to find a good location and settled on an industrial area in North Houston that had railroad tracks and a nice open area next to them. It was a Sunday, so I figured that traffic would be fairly minimal in the area.
My girlfriend Ashleigh was nice enough to tag along, since it's much easier to set up the rig with two people. We call her the resident "flash-girl". As we were setting up the rig, I saw a worker from one of the factories pop his head out of a door on the side of the building to have a look. He came walking over, which I figured meant that I wasn't going to be able to shoot there. But the first thing out of his mouth was "What the hell is that thing?". He was fascinated that these are the types of tools used to create rolling shots in ads, and had a lot of questions about how the final images comes from this huge "thing" hanging off the car. After his curiosity was satisfied, he walked back towards the door and disappeared into the factory again.
Once I started shooting, I realized that in my haste to get outside and practice, I really didn't think logically. It was midday and the sun was beating down in full force, limiting to no more than a 2 second exposure even with a 3 stop ND filter stacked on top of a CPL. The car was under the cover of a roof extending off the factory, which helped to cut some of the harsh shadows and highlights, however.
As I was shooting, I heard the whistle from a train coming. I quickly set up the car for the shot and was able to take a few with the passing train as a backdrop, which I thought was pretty cool.
I tried taking a few static shots, focusing on different portions of the car so that I could graft them in if the rolling shots had some soft spots. I also took a few while spinning the CPL around to minimize reflections on various body panels and windows.
In post, it was just a jumble of layers, layer masks and cloning. I learned my lesson on using a shorter exposure on rig shots - all the photos still had recognizable backgrounds which made it pretty tough to clone the rig out. Next time I will definitely stick with an exposure time of at least 3 seconds so that I get a nice blur and cloning doesn't take another few weeks off my life.
Once everything was cloned out, I dropped in some donor sky images that I took while in New Mexico to get a more dramatic effect. I also did some high-pass sharpening, some color overlays and slight desaturation to get the final look. I think they both came out well, but the rear rolling shot is clearly the best one. A bit disappointing, as I'd hoped the rolling train would be a great backdrop, but the lack of light on the side of the car in that shot keeps it from being the best it could have been. I'm still happy with both, however!
So a day or two after I finished the initial light painting of the RSX, I kept having an itch to try it again to get better results. I wasn't happy with how the car appreared to "glow" and looked too close to poorly done HDR. I figured that the glow was a result of the light source being too strong, so I took the Cobra LED torch and wrapped a piece of ordinary printer paper around it to diffuse the light a bit...a poor man's softbox, if you will.
I concentrated much more on getting each individual panel lit evenly this time so that there wouldn't be as many hot spots. I stayed about 5-8 feet away from the car and moved the LED torch in smooth, arcing motions. I also concentrated on getting dynamic shadows and highlights too, since that is what always catches my eye when I'm looking at studio shot images.
In post, I took a lot more time blending the panels together, keeping a close eye on all the shadows and highlights and taking time to remove any hot spots. Again, it was a very laborious process, but worth it in the end. I think that the end result turned out much better this time, and I will definitely use this method from now on.
The final result:
A short video showing all the layers slowly being added to the final image. It's best to watch this in full screen so that you can really see everything coming together:
Hoping to do some rig shots of the RSX this afternoon if time permits. I'll be sure to post them up here if I'm able to shoot today!
So after gathering some inspiration from other light painters that I've seen on the internet, I decided to try my hand at it myself. I liked the idea of being able to create complex light from a very simple source. It seemed simple enough at the start, but I soon learned that there is MUCH more to it than I'd first thought. It takes a lot of concentration, attention to detail and trial an error. I'm happy with my first attempt, but I definitely need much more practice with it. Read on for my take on light painting!
I bought a Cobra Handheld LED bar light off Amazon since it had a cigarette lighter charger included for outside shoots and seemed to have a nice flat beam. Once it arrived, I went out to the garage to give it a try.
Here's a shot of the Cobra
At first, I was trying to do 30 sec exposures that encompassed the whole car in light, but it just wasn't achieving that "slippery" look that I wanted. I adjusted to 10 sec exposures and would quickly "paint" one particular panel quickly, then shut off the light for the remainder of the exposure. I would do one panel at a time, checking after each shot. Definitely time consuming! After I got all the panels covered, I tried to get all the accents properly lit too - the door crease lines, hood lines etc. It was hard to keep track of all the pieces that I'd covered, and I ended up missing some (center of the hood, which I had to paint in, rear decklid among a few others).
Here's a combined shot of all the exposures I used to create the final image.
Once in post, I combined all the collected images into one single layered image and began the meticulous process of masking off each individual layer. Labeling the layers (ie - "door" "hood" "door crease line" etc) helped the process out a lot.
After that, I did some minor sharpening and lens correction and reduced the saturation just a bit to get the look I wanted. For my first time light painting, I'm pretty happy with it. I need to work on getting the light more even on the panels, and my masking could use some work, but it will all get better with practice. Mainly, I was excited that I could get results like this in my boring, ugly garage!
The final image:
More to come on light painting. Please leave a comment if you have any questions!
Theo
**EDIT - 2/8/11 **
I tried the process again, but this time with a regular piece of printer paper taped around the light bar to diffuse it a bit. I also tried to light the car more naturally, with highlights and shadows to give it a less "CG-like" look. So far I like it a lot! The below picture is still a work in progress. The image is a composite of many that are straight out of the camera with no editing. It is a bit dark at the moment, but I will fix all that once I'm done piecing together the layers.
Happy New Year, everyone! Sorry I've been MIA for a while. I am working with an automotive dealer right now who is building a new website to replace their ancient current one. They are wanting to attain a more streamlined look and also want to make it clear that they cater to high end customers and cars alike. They purchased stock photography for various exotics, and wanted me to place them into a virtual "studio" so that they all had a nice, clean and uniform look.
I have a few examples of what I came up with below. The photos are (unfortunately) not my work, just the studio background and lighting effects.
Thanks for looking, and I will hopefully be back soon with some new rig shots of a 2006 Lamborghini Gallardo Sypder! Stay tuned!
