Early morning Porche

[Processed Gillon]

Hey all, Thanks Mark and the model on a great morning, it must be done again. Here is one before after shot from the morning. Please let me know what you think

[Coops]

Hopefully you are going to share some more of your images, I seem to recollect you had one or two keepers on your notebook! I prefer your photoshop'ed version... not quite sure the sky's colour is quite there, but it certainly is an improvement on the hot version...

[Processed Gillon]

Hey Coops, Sorry for hogging the transmitter, I think I have a solution with the Canon mounts, will experiment soon , here are some more images...

will post more when I have time to photoshop them.

[markthomas]

Gillon, firstly, thanks for the use of the Portys. I'm going to use this thread as a bit of a tutorial on how to do this shoot, for those that weren't there. The idea is to expose both the car and the sky properly. In your shot the sky is way overexposed and you just added colour in afterwards. Your other shots are better but different to the effect we wanted to create in this tutorial.

Setup
We used 2 Hensel 500w/s heads with 9" relectors aimed at the front and rear of the Porsche. We also had a 1200w/s Hensel Porty with 250cm Octobox aimed at the centre of the Porsche. There was also a Hensel 1200ws Porty with snoot aimed at the rear roof of the Porsche but set on very low power.

The lights were set up so that the lines of the Porsche would be accentuated. In retrospect I would have put extra power on the snoot for the roof area, but didn't at the time because I expected the ambient light to show that curve. Remember that this was set up in the dark and we were not certain what the ambient light would do.

[markthomas]

Using a light meter I set the lights to f8 on the front and rear of the Porsche, f5.6 on the soft box and the snoot was at f2.8. This meant an overall setting of f8.

By doing the setup this way we know that the Porsche will be properly lit at f8 no matter what the ambient light from behind.

When taking the shot we shoot on manual set the aperture at f8 and use the shutter speed to control the ambient light. At the beginning of the shoot I was shooting at 1/15 and by the time the sun was up some shots were at 1/250.

This shot was at 1/100 sec and I did up the saturation in the backround in both the red and yellow channels. The front was not touched. The foreground is to be used for the company's logo and some wording.

Notice the difference between the shot Gillon shot and this one. The difference is that the shutter was left open longer in his pic causing the blown out sky. Also notice the background clutter (poles) in his shot and how much work it will be to remove, where in my shot all I have to remove is a pole and a fence that will take 30 seconds to do.

[markthomas]

To get rid of the backgound one has to get dirty. In this shot the camera was on the tar and I was lying down with my face in the dirt. This forces the background behind the car. The model was for a bit af sparkle - the red shiny evening dress complimenting the silver car and pulling in the background colour. The dress wasn't by accident it was chosen. think about colours thet will work together to make your shot.

The model looking away makes the shot. The lighting is dramatic and the model dreamy, put together the two work well me thinks. I could always add a bit of saturation to the background and make it more dramatic depending on the clients taste.

[waynet]

Mark - what mags do you shoot for?

[markthomas]

I shoot for Road Magazine. It's in the Drive/Wiel/Divestyle stable and owned by ITV Replay Media who also do a car show on TV.

The mag is mostly about custom or converted cars. The biggest challenge I have is that the vehicles are privately owned and you have to fall in with the owner's schedule and can't always set the time you want. Also you have the owner standing there waiting to leave so you have to move quick. Locations are also a problem because the owners don't want to drive too far.

This was not for the mag though. It's a thank-you to the owners of the Porsche dealership I used for the lighting workshops.

[waynet]

When you have published photos do you usually tell the forum members so that we can check them out?

[markthomas]

No I don't. This is not the place for it. I do sometimes post a pic from the shoot in the galleries. I have a new news section on my own site and will post news there.

[waynet]

Is that a personal opinion or a site opinion? You have to concede though that you are an example for amateurs who would like to learn which this site is all about. At least you could let us know when something changes on your site

[markthomas]

My own opinion! I add pics to my site all the time. The thing is if i start doing it where do we draw the line, then everybody must be allowed to do it and the reason for this site gets lost because it ends up as a site of ads!

If you want to receive regular updates on what I'm doing send me an e-mail and I'll put you on my mailing list. You can also register on my site in the galleries section.

[waynet]

What I was meaning was that when you get published let us know so that we can see a members work in print. I'll send you an e-mail.

[Coops]

Here is the setup this morning... notice the smile on Mark's face...

[Coops]

one more...

[markthomas]

Coops, no pics of the whole setup? Where's that very impressive octobox?

[Coops]

It was too big for my cropped sensor!

[Processed Gillon]

Just another image from the morning. Had to spiuce up the colour in photoshop and blew detail in the back of the car but was to lazy to fix.