It happened so that my PC was at a service for almost a month and I wanted to shoot something new, challenging and exciting for me. And since I've already tried shooting kittens and shooting nude women is not as challenging for me, I've decided to go with cars :)
After studying the subject for almost a week and looking at some amazing automotive photographers around the world, I thought I was ready to try it myself.
I've managed to find a guy in Kiev with an awesome Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Aero Kit and we agreed to arrange a photoshoot in his garage, which was rather secluded and dark, so I could easily light paint the car the way I wanted.
The whole photoshoot took roughly more than 3 hours and I've ended up with 4 shots (the one with the logo was the easiest of them).
Here's what I ended up with:
And now a little bit about the whole process for those interested.
The equipment was:
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70, 2.8 and Nikkor 70-300, 4-5.6, induro tripod
For lighting the car I was using a Nikon SB-910 and a small soft-box
Actually, I took a whole lot more equipment but I ended up using only the one that I've mentioned.
After this photoshoot I've come to a few conclusions, which may help others interested in automotive photography as well:
1) If you're going to be lightpainting the car, it's a lot easier if the whole place is really dark, so that you won't have any light pollution. This is also great for those having a hotshoe flash or a weak flash, since you won't need to overpower the ambient light.
Here's how the parking lot looked with ambient light and 30s exposure. This is mainly to show you the original setting, because we had an opportunity to kill off the lights completely.
2) Use a cable release or tethering. This is also true for any other photoshoot where you will be combining shots, but I was always ignoring this, since I never had to combine more than 5-8 shots. But when you combine 70 shots it gets incredibly annoying that you have to nudge every single frame a few pixels. While photoshop cannot align them, because the shots don't always overlap and are lit unevenly
3) I thought that you need to be wearing black so that it's easier to remove yourself from the photos, but in reality you need it to not reflect in the car as much. Dressed in black can save you plenty of time in photoshop. You can of course use a light stand and be behind the car with the flash and softbox above the car, but honestly I was too afraid to hold anything above the car that can potentially damage it :)
4) The bigger the softbox and the stronger your flash the less shots you need to take to cover the whole car. I've had a small softbox so in some cases it took 70 photos to light a car. And then you end up with 300 layers in photoshop, which is annoying, when it comes to find that one layer and is a real challenge for your computer as well. With a stronger flash you can lift your light further away, which also helps you light the car in less shots. That's why I was a bit confused in the beginning, why Easton Chang makes 8 shots and I had to make 70 :D Because he uses a stripbox and Profoto :)
5) Don't leave the spot until you have at least one shot where the car and the background are evenly lit. And check that it's not messed up, like the one that I've had :) You need that frame to back you up in case you've missed an area or the light is uneven, so that you can later on use parts of it to cover the bad areas.
6) There are two approaches to lighting up the car (unless, you just want to use natural light, which was impossible in my case): you either light the car or the background around it. I personally really liked the latter, since it gives a really smooth and natural light on the car. The problem is that you're limited to the place that you shoot in. If you have tons of garbage and pipes around, it will look messy on the car as well (unless, it's something you're going for).
In the end there were no really bad moments or anything that I couldn't fix in photoshot. Actually, I find it easier to fix something with cars, since they typically don't have any texture. You can easily replicate almost any part of it with a simple gradient and noise. With portraits it's not as easy :)
Anyway, it was a fun and new experience for me and I hope you will find my little story helpful :)
Thanks and enjoy!
Here you can see a layer buildup and some crops to see the details:
