A friend of mine has been bugging me for a while (sorry Ben) for some pics of his CBR1000RR. So while I was doing that, I thought may as well make a day of it and bring all the boys bike over for a Photoshoot.
All the Big 4 1000’s are there, a real Superbike showdown and a lone blue Kwaka 600.
4636cc’s of Japans finest in under 3 hours, I had my hands full.
The contenders of the Superbike battle are;
Ben: CBR1000 “LITRE”
Luke: ZX10R “Wheelie King”
Kirky: GSXR1000 “600’s are weak”
Tommo: R1 “The Yellowbird”
Proudly Supported by Vukie in “Blue diamond”
Finding a location was a stroke of luck, after a bit of a drive around what I thought was a closed industrial estate (the place was packed) we come across a small substation with a semi interesting background, time to get shooting.
I set up my trusty poor mans lighting setup consisting of a single 2 strobe setup, A SB600 camera left at full power (thanks Tommo) triggered by PT04 Radio Transmitter and a Sigma DG500 camera right full power triggered by Optical Slave.
As it was full sun, I had to really use every bit of power from the strobes, both were set to full power with the sigma zoomed to 70mm for a bit more punch. The placement of the strobes was really close to the subject so to not lose any power.
The whole point was to overpower the sun and give a nice dark moody sky, the old “sunny 16 rule” was tried first (1/125 @ f16 iso100) it gave a pretty good starting point, dropped it down to f11 and I was in business.
The good thing about doing a bit of a production line of bikes was the lighting setup barely changed at all, just move the bike in, snap away and move it away, rinse and repeat. 5 bikes in a bit over 2 hours was a good effort, time for some rolling shots.
My main man Steve hopped in my Ute (jealous of the power) and I layed in the tray, Ben followed in his red rocket and I snapped away, using the age old rule of speed relating to shutter time, we were going approx 35-40kph so I used a shutter of between 1/60th and 1/3
0th to get the shots I wanted. After a quick u-turn I explained to Ben we are going to have to act this one out a bit and I got him to tuck down like he was doing mach 10,the sad truth is his bike nearly overheated from going so slow.
And that was it, 5 bikes in a day. Not a bad effort.
Check my flickr stream for all the images:
http://flickr.com/photos/brasher/
Some out-takes for your enjoyment. (Thanks to Ben Lehner)
A very tough looking S15 (Jap Import) with HKS/Veilside Widebody, Impressive responsive SR20DET with good power and a stylish yet purposeful interior. A very nice all round car, show and go!
Once again, Sydney's summer has resembled that Crappy Kevin Costner movie "Waterworld" and proceeded to rain on the day of the original shoot, we rescheduled and yet again a severe storm erupted just as we arrived at the meet up spot. It was now or never, so we decided to just look for an undercover spot and make do.
My friend Michael who was helping out for the day is a local to the area, so we went for a drive to find an undercover location, Out of nowhere; Michael slammed on the brakes, did a U-turn and said "I know the perfect spot!" 2 minutes later we arrived. He wasn't wrong.... this place was pretty good!
We pulled into the driveway, a loading dock for some sort of industrial centre. It was a Sunday so not a car or truck to be seen. The Silvia entered; its lumpy cams sent an echo through the loading docks reverberating from the roof and walls. We got to cleaning up the car, Chamois to the rescue, and I got to setting up my dodgy poor mans lighting setup.
The owner wanted a side on shot first, so the car was driven up the loading dock ramp and positioned to centre the car in front of the garage door.
As with a lot of the location shoots I do, I used small off camera strobes to illuminate the car and highlight the stunning Work Rims and flared guards.
For this Photoshoot, I used:
- Canon 1dsmk2
- Canon 24-70 2.8L
- Canon 70-200 2.8L
- Cactus PT04 V2 Flash Trigger system (poverty wizards - the fact they work every time impresses me)
Sigma DG500 super - Optically slaved, I placed this flash behind the car to illuminate the blue roller door behind the car and separate it a bit from the background. (1/4 power)
Achiever TZ250 - Full Power (sliders all to the right) camera left (aimed at wheel)
Sunpak 3000 - Full Power camera right (aimed at wheel)
Once I got underway, I realised the strobes were a bit too low to illuminate the car, but there was no choice. Unfortunately I do not have proper light stands, rather I use old Tripods and prop the lights on top. Even at full extension, they were not high enough.
Making do with what I have, I tried to stop down the ambient light by approximately 2/3rds a stop below my metered ambient light and let the strobes do the rest of the work. As it was still quite bright even under the roof I really used every bit of power I could from the small strobes. Perhaps an upgrade is in order.
I particularly like the smooth line produced wheel arches, I used a circular polarizer to control the reflections.
To make the day even more confusing, the rain had stopped and the sun peered through the clouds, we decided to venture to the original location we had decided on while the rain had stopped.
After driving into the narrow laneway I decided it was best to have the sun behind the car and to backlight it a bit, this proved to be a major hassle as the owner had to skilfully perform a 20point u-turn in such a tight spot.
This time, I really wanted to kill the ambient lighting off to emphasise how dark and stormy the clouds looked, off the top of my head I set up my shutter speed/aperture to be nearly 1 2/3rd stops below ambient. As the sun was rapidly setting I had enough power from the strobes to easily illuminate the car. To avoid the look of light spill over on the ground I got on my stomach (the ground was still wet damn!) Using the telephoto lens to get a good distance from the subject and a very undistorted view of the car.
As you can see, there was still plenty of available light, using the strobes you can precisely control the highlights/shadows of a scene with a bit of fiddling about.
A bit of a curves adjustment and colour balance to emphasise the reddish glow the sun gave through the clouds was the post processing involved. I also cloned out the small highlights the strobes give off when fired bare into the car. The drainpipe was removed from the building to clean up the image a bit more.
We ventured back to the original location to do the rear shots. I decided to use the grungy looking brick wall that climbed right to the roof. Once again the strobes were placed around the car (2 on the side aiming at the wheels, one at the back) and got to work. Ambient light had really diminished now so some very extreme hand held shots had to be taken with the poise of a military sniper.
This shot looks pretty cool, like a light shining from heaven or something supernatural.
Again pretty much straight off the camera with a few blemishes cloned out.
For a bit of fun, I did a rolling shot and experimented with the colour balance later in photoshop, for some reason I really like the shot, sort of evil in a wierd way.
Thanks to the car's owner Tony, here is a bit of a behind the scenes video clip he took while I was snapping away. Also a big thankyou to Michael Vettas (http://mvettasphotography.com ) for showing me around the local area and assisting me.
A friend of Mine asked me to Grab some shots for his Father's Golf R32 to get some large formate prints done. It's a very nice car, amazing sounding aftermarket exhaust, Coilover suspension etc.
After arriving at his house, we set off. Of all days to do a photoshoot it was a cold rainy summerday in Sydney. After driving for 10 minutes or so to find a suitable location, we spotted this one in an industrial area. The crates were used for a windscreen shop and made for an interesting (yet cluttered) background.
As soon as we arrived, it started to rain, then stop, then start again. Finally the decision was made and I made a start setting up my gear. For this I used:
I propped them all on tripods and got to work, all setup it looked like this.
Without the flash, it looked flat and boring
The whole point is to adjust my aperture and shutter speed to kill the ambient light but still capture the flash on the car, take note the shot below was taken in broad daylight (well overcast)
So I got in my flattering ground humping position.
And came up with this:
1/90th sec @ f8 ISO 200 105mm
Post processing was the clouds in background and removal of the downpipe on building, basic levels and a bump in saturation (1ds in "normal" colour mode is very flat, but accurate)
Looking back, not bad but not good. Biggest concern is the reflection on the bonnett of the car, even with the polarizer set at full tilt, the reflection remained. Background is also still a bit too busy.
In the end though, my mates father was stoked with the final image which is what really matters.
Thanks to Ben Wood for the behind the scenes shots.
Bit of time since I last updated here, anyway... continuing on from my last post. I did get that camera I was lusting for, It is full frame.... but it's not a 5D.
Yes, I scored the deal of the century, no wait.... the millenium, on a second hand Canon 1dsmk2.
Most amazing peice of photographic gear I have ever had the pleasure of holding, huge bright veiwfinder, amazing detail in the images and perfect colour representation. They say once you go full frame you never go back, and I can see why. This camera is the equivilant of holding god in your hands.
My sick obsession with buying cheap manual strobes struck again yesterday when I recieved the delightful Achiever unit and a Hoya Pro1 Circular Polarizer. This brings the flash count up to 10, double digits finally! Nothing to celebrate except I can now be classified as an addict... help me.
First impressions, like all old strobes it's built like a tank. The filter set thrown in is a welcome bonus, CTO and CTB filters will be put to use, as will the included Sync cord which was a surprise.
Connected to the Catcus V2 and switched on it worked first time and every time, for something that cost as much as a decent lunch these cactus things are worth thier weight in gold (with a bit of fiddling of the antenna of course)
The polarizer was cheap, again found on ebay. From the couple of shots I fired off with it on it looks like a good peice of gear. Finally a bit more dynamic range back into my outdoor shots! I have some a big project coming up soon that I will divulge in a bit later, it involves as usual cars and photo's but this time it will involve a new camera (the 30D is going to be retired) and a move to full frame 5D finally is on the cards.
Some interesting concepts here. I always knew commercial work was a process of highly complex composite images but this is taking it to new levels, nothing really is shot together rather been mashed up later in post. Definately some inspiration to be had here to try out for future work.
This Holden Rodeo was certainly an eye catching car, bright paint, big chrome wheels and dumped to the ground, the owner is also a very good friend of mine so when he bought the car he wanted to get some prints of his new pride and joy, of course I will willing to oblige. The whole objective of this shoot was to try some new stuff, I could re-shoot the car at any time because I see him most days during the week.
We decided after seeing a few examples of "rig shots" in magazines and online we would give it a go ourselves. Between myself and a two other friends we set about designing something that would give us the effect we were after. The whole concept of the rig shot is to keep the camera and car in perfect harmony as the car moves, the camera is fixed to the car to appear sharp and in focus but the background and wheels appeared blurred, this creates an exciting image that can not be replicated by post processing to the same degree.
After a bit of trial and error we had the first basic design complete, a rudimentary pole that just attached to the tray of the car, nothing fancy but it was solid and it worked, so we went out to the local car park, strapped it on and went about replicating what we had seen in the magazines. The idea is to have the car barely moving (walking pace) but to leave the shutter open long enough to give the concept of movement, so I dialled in 2.5 seconds and let the camera figure out the exposure and ran with it, No sooner than about 2 minutes later and I had snagged this one.
I was suitably happy with it when it appeared on the LCD of the camera and it looked even better on the big LCD monitor at home.
Post processing for this was nearly none at all, Adjustment of contrast and a boost in Saturation with some sharpening was all I needed for this one. Because not all the car is seen in the image this allowed the rig not to be seen in the frame at all and hence did not need to be cloned out.
Still, we were not completely satisfied with the shot, this time we wanted the front of the car in frame and the whole thing this time, this was going to require some lateral thinking. After some research we found there is 2 main ways for the rig to be attactched to the car, one been underneath the car to the chassis somehow, either by magnets or by direct bolting to the rails and the second method been suction caps.
We went with the Chassis mount, this both been cheaper and easier to clone out in post processing, so after a trip to the local hardware store and a few dollars later ($12 Australian) we had all the aluminium lengths, some screws and some tie down straps. We were ready for construction.
After a few beers and some messing about we connected it all up, we used an old tripod head and attached it to the aluminium pole. The pole was hinged in the middle by a large screw and then tension was kept via the tie downs, the tie downs looped through the holes in the chassis and then were tied back, checked and double checked, the result was this monstrosity!
Now for testing, with the sun setting very quickly I strapped the camera to the rig, said a quick prayer for the camera's safe return and fired the car up, set the timer and a shutter speed of 5 seconds, it was now or never. Much to my surprise the camera kept near perfectly still, it was a success straight away much to our surprise. Before it got too dark I came up with this one.
Boring composition, boring angle but the concept works, now to build on it and improve the rig for more length. The beauty of our design is that it will fit any car with a hole in the chassis which makes it extremely versatile. The main problem been installation was rather tedious and time consuming at about 15 minutes to make things were secure.
Post processing of this shot was rather intensive and a lesson learnt, stupid me had one of the Rig's arms covering the headlight, I had to clone and airbrush the parts of the light in as best as I could, it took a couple of hours but it was done, one aluminium bar gone, one headlight cloned and the shadows filled in.
This was for a friend of mine who wanted some shots of his new daily, a very clean R33 Nissan Skyline GTS-T. The plan was to meet up about mid afternoon, find the location I had scouted whilst browsing Flickr and get some shots to be home for dinner time, things did not exactly go to plan after the first location was way too busy to stop the car let alone to get photos, so we drove around for what seemed like an eternity till we found this location in Marrickville Sydney. The location was amazing. I was literally stuck for words as we slowly drove down a long alleyway littered with amazing Graffiti Pieces, I knew we had found something special here but the problem was it was still a relatively busy one way lane so time was of the essence so to speak.
The owner parked the car as close to the kerb as possible as to not completely stop the traffic flow, a bit to close to the background for my liking but we had to make a compromise, I wanted to take photos straight away. The sun was quickly setting and the sky was an awesome bright orange (Sydney Pollution perhaps)
It was still quite light, light enough to hand hold the camera and enough to get some ambient mixed in with some off camera flash, for this shot I used the following.
30D+Grip Canon 10-22 Manfrotto Tripod/Head supporting Sigma DG500 Super Flash with eBay softbox Mini Tripod supporting Sunpak Auto3000 (this flash is so cool, more power than a nuclear weapon it seems) with no diffuser. EBay Transmitter/Receiver triggered the Sunpak, the Sigma fired optically from the Sunpak using the optical slave function.
The Sigma was placed to the left of the camera, aimed around the Hood/headlight area to illuminate the front at 1/32 power, the Sunpak was aimed just behind the rear door as a sort of cross light at 1/2 power.
I set my exposure time based on the car, and then dropped it back a third to get a slightly underexposed look but relied on the flash to give the car some "pop" so to speak and to separate it from the background.
This left me with the following settings.
ISO 100 1/30th @ F4
And the final shot:
Post processing was pretty basic, some burning of the ground around the front of the car where the flash had some spill over, I enhanced the colour of the sky a bit more than what was actually captured. I cloned out a few of the hotspots created by the cross light which is never fun job and then a quick pass with Unsharp mask and a bump in saturation. Nothing too fancy or difficult.
Reflecting back on the shot, it's not one of my best but I chose it because there were a few problems I had to overcome with the location, lighting etc. There are definitely problems with the shot though, and I'm the first to admit that, namely the aperture been too wide open and made the rear half of the car slightly out of focus, simple stupid mistake. I also think the cross light was was too bright and direct. The background though is what I really dig about this shot, it's really full on and combined with the sunset gives it a cool look. If I was to do the shoot again, I would definitely used more lights, especially around the roof area and a strobe to illuminate the graffiti of the wall and under expose the background even more. But alas there is always next time.
I'll post photos, notes, thoughts and other random stuff in here.
Basically, there are a few major parts to my life, these been my friends, family, photography and cars/bikes. I live for these things and it's what makes me happy.
Bit about myself, Im 21 years old, live in Sydney Australia. Im an Engineering Officer by Day and Photographer/Male Stripper come night time.
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