In this Blog I am going to explain step by step how this image was created. And surprisingly enough it does not involve any speed lights, softboxes or reflectors. As a matter of fact, the entire "shoot" of about 6 useful images was done in half an hour.
Location location location
Rule number one is to find a clean location that will not distract the viewer. As this is a white car I prefer to use industrial surroundings to make the car stand out more. If it were a dark coloured car then I would have ended up with a brighter surrounding.
An easy rule of thumb is that you need to be able to see the silhouette of the object being photographed.
For this photograph I visited a local IKEA store with a large underground parking. And as I drove thru the parking I looked for a "clean" area with little distractions or cars.
An important element is that it was already dark outside so that the harsh daylight would not interfere with the florescent lights. Try to avoid mixing color temperatures, unless you shoot in black and white.
Let there be light
A second element to look for is the available light.
I was actually planning a shoot at a local Volvo dealer as it has a very nice Scandinavian look and feel. But when I drove past I noticed that it was too dark.
In an underground parking you will find enough fluorescent lights that produce a rather soft light.
My suggestion is to just park the car somewhere, step out and see if the car's silhouette is visible.
Do not hesitate to move the car, even a couple of centimeters.
In this shot you clearly see that a light source from the left illuminates the side of the car, while another light source is illuminating the tailgate. To be honest, it is a lucky shot... first I parked car along the wall and then decided to move it so that it faces the wall. And the light just happend to be perfect. Hence my tip to not hesitate to move the car around.
Take your place
OK so you have the car where you want it and now it is time to shoot your shot.
Rule number 3 is to always use a low angle.
Crouch down, lean on one knee for a better stability while you shoot.
The best angle to shoot a car at is 45 degrees from the front or the back. This creates a nice depth in your image and shows the car in a more 3D style. A straight angle also works very nicely but will produce a flatter image.
Another tip is to slight turn the wheel so that the rim of the wheel is facing the camera.
Keep your distance
On a full frame camera, the most flattering lens is a 50mm or higher. If you use a smaller lens than the car will deform.
Depth of field
Like many photographers I am also a sucker for shallow depth of field. But for these kind of pictures it is a must to have everything in focus. And with everything I mean the subject as well as the background and foreground.
Although there was a lot of light in the underground parking I noticed that my camera was struggling to get a decent exposure. And I wanted to shoot with an aperture of f/11 but had to drop down to f/5 instead. This was still enough to get a nice sharp image from front to back.
Fast, faster, fastest
To avoid shakes and blurry images you can either use a tripod or a higher shutter speed. In this situation I decided to use a shutter speed of 1/100, which is fast enough to shoot handheld.
Sensitive
When you try to create a beautiful shot then you must try to use the lowest possible ISO to limit as much noise as possible. But the object must still be lit enough so that you can still recover details from the shadows if needed. Normally I start at ISO 100 but for this shot I had to increase it to 2500, a bit high but Sony camera's can handle this.
Gear
For the techies amongst us, this is the gear I used to shoot this shot:
Camera : Sony A7 Mark III
Lens: Tamron 28-200mm 2.8-5.6
Shutter speed : 1/100
ISO : 2500
Aperture : f/5
Focal Length : 58mm
File type: RAW (compressed)
Making a great picture
After having shot a few images it is time to create these raw images into something that you can be proud of.
Let us first look at the image straight out of the camera:
At a first glance you may notice the numberplate which is very obvious. But you can also see the many reflections of the florescent lights in the parking lot.
I could have used a polarising filter to remove some of those reflections but I was already struggling with the exposure as it was.
Lightroom
My first step is import the images into Adobe Lightroom and apply a first correction for the lens:
Then I apply a standard filter found in the latest version of Lightroom called "Cool light"
At this stage we have the following result:
Obvious the color of the car is wrong and I want the car to standout better by darkening the background.
With the latest version of Lightroom you get a great to feature to select the subject when you create a new mask:
With the car selected as subject I will correct the color balance, restore the exposure and increase the contrast so that the car has a more accurate color:
This is the result so far:
So far so good... now let's darken the background.
Again we will be use the Mask tool but this time we need to invert the Subject selection.
We start by creating the same Select Subject mask but this time we will invert it by clicking on the mask itself. When you click on the mask it will expand and show you the Subject layer inside it.
Right click on this Subject layer and select Invert from the context menu:
Now that the background is selected I lowered the exposure and increased the contrast:
Now we are going to add our "Main light source" which should come from the left side as this is the brightest part of the car. So again, we created a new Mask but this time we add a Linear Gradient in the upper left corner and increase the exposure with 1 stop:
To highlight the car a bit more I always darken the foreground a little bit with another Linear Gradient but now at the bottom of the image. In addition to dropping the exposure I also increase the Texture slider to render the details in the foreground more visible.
Our last modification in Lightroom will be highlighting the breaking light a bit more. Highlighting the breaking light is optional.
For this we create a new Mask but this time we use the Brush.
In the right panel we need to pick the red color:
Now we brush over the breaking light to highlight it.
And this is as far as we go in Lightroom:
One step that this particular image does not need is highlighting the wheels of the car. Often these are dark and using a Brush mask you can lift the shadows to make them pop a bit more. But in this image they are already nicely lit.
Photoshop
We are almost there but there are still 2 important corrections to be done in Photoshop. You can do this also in Lightroom but Photoshop is better at it. The last step is to remove all the reflections of the florescent lights as well as the numberplate.
The hardest job is removing all the distracting reflections and for this the Patch tool (shortcut J) is best suited.
With the Patch tool selected you need to circle around all the individual reflections and drag them over an area that Photoshop can use to replace the selection.
The Patch tool is more than just a replacement tool, it uses some form of intelligence and the result is often surprisingly good!
Once you have finished the specular highlights it is time to remove the numberplate. For this I use the clone tool and some more patience.
Yes this part of the process does take time but the result is definitely worth it:
