Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Italian Stallions.

Hitting the Shelves today is the April Issue of MOTOR, I was lucky enough to shoot the Ferrari California and Ducati 1198S, both epitome's of Italian Design.


The shoot was hindered by bad weather but we had to make do with the time we had with the car and Bike, using the magic arm and a superclamp I was able to get a cool bike to car shot of the two going down a tree lined alley.


I used a Monotone processed look to the shots to further emphasise the vehicles, in print it does look rather spectacular.


Here also, are two buildups that show the flexibility of the 5dmk2 files, below are straight off the camera, and then pulled to expose for the parts of the car correctly. With a slight noise cleanup the images are totally transformed.


I process each file for each part of the car, then merge later in Post, I also tried a few lightining techniques that turned out rather cool. Just simple touches you wouldn't know existed unless told.






Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Evo IX

I shot Georges car some time ago and only got around to finishing up the processing yesterday, this is the same car that was used for the JDMST calendar I wrote about in a previous post.

Georges car runs a 300+awkw forged Cosworth motor running on E85 Ethanol fuel, not only is it a high performer, it also looks amazing with Advan RS rims and full custom interior. George is another owner that makes taking photos of peoples pride and joy enjoyable, his laid back attitude and freedom for me to try new things was refreshing.


Once again I went with the Fluoro ballast setup powered by a 2 stroke Petrol generator to power the light. The method of painting the car went a bit further than normal this time as I painted the background a bit for this shoot to light up interesting parts of the image that would be hidden if using natural light.


The Interior shot was Georges idea, I think it came out quite well. For this shot I used a long exposure but combined with Off Camera flash I was able to “freeze” the inside of the car and maintain a sense of motion outside the car.

My post processing is evolving a bit more now, I am starting to get a bit more consistency between my images which is something I needed to work on. Having obtained a cool new brush set and some high pass overlaying techniques it brings a gritty look to the images that is quite appealing when applied to the right car and background.