The shoot was done in about 5 hours, I never had a chance to scout the location or even see the car in person before the shoot and the Client had an insane deadline (I had the photos shot, edited and delivered in under 72 hours). On top of all that, the car was practically immobile. I had a small garage and some asphalt in front of it to work with.

The camera was a Nikon D300s with various lenses. Most of the shots are lit with an Elinchrom Ranger RX AS setup. Thanks so much to the lovely and talented Val Lemieux for assisting on this one.

For the photo above, I positioned the camera on a ladder, hosed down the asphalt and took three separately lit exposures using a different polarizing filter angle for each shot to control reflections while lighting the dark side of the car. This was right at the end of the shoot and we were losing the light fast. I wish that the front wheel was turned so that the rim would be more visible. Oh well…

This photo was lit with a single Elinchrom Ranger RX and a 39" Octobank. I held the octobank directly above the car at a slight angle (pointing towards the visible side of the car) and took multiple photos while moving down the length of the car. The lit photos were later combined to achieve the look of a single large light source.

The three photos above were created using a single, bare bulb Elinchrom RX AS head positioned at multiple angles then later composited to simulate multiple light sources.

And below is the final product. I got a 4 page spread in Bonhams Automotive #1793, pages 108-111.

A couple of setup shots………..

Keep an eye out for more blog posts as I’ve got a few more cued up.

The high level of detail in this minimalist series is emphasized by the beautiful & thick watercolor surface on which they are printed. Each print is available for sale separately or a special package of three prints is available (contact me for more details).

This is a time-lapse of a repair on my girlfriend’s D300s. Her Compact Flash card pin was bent to the extent that it needed to be replaced. I edited this video in under 5 minutes so the quality is pretty low, but it is fun to watch. The repair performed by master technician, Steve Sweringen of The Camera Clinic in Sparks, NV.

The? repair was successful. A bent Compact Flash card pin was removed and replaced with one from a donor Canon SLR (40D if I remember correctly) and the repair took about an hour with Steve stopping to explain what he was doing.

For more photos, check out the full post.

Photos (shot with a cell phone):

This was a shoot that almost didn’t happen. I nearly canceled due to the “boring” forecasted weather. The subject: a 1998 Subaru Impreza RS. My plan was to emphasize the rally heritage of the car by doing some off-road rig and posed shots in the snow.  The bumpy, snow-covered road presented some new challenges and the bright, sunny conditions made it difficult to get an exposure long enough to blur the ground, but problems aside, the shoot went very well. Fielding and I scouted, planned out the lighting and angles and shot everything within just a few hours. Thanks to fellow photographer Mark Rauh and his son Austin for providing the car.

The Shooting process (similar to my other rig shots):

1. Scout out a location (or three)
2. Place the sun and figure out shooting angles
3. Set up the rig and camera
4. Light the car in a static position
5. Do plenty of rolling frames
6. Repeat if necessary
7. Later, in post, the rig is removed and the lit frames are blended with the rolling frames

We started with the posed shots as it makes since to shoot the car while it is clean. I’m very happy with a number of the posed frames, but I just picked one of my favorites for this post.

All shots were taken with a Nikon D3 using a Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 lens. To achieve a longer exposure in the extremely bright conditions, a 10 stop ND filter was used on the moving shots. The lighting consisted of an Elinchrom Ranger RX 1100 w/s and a White Lightning Zeus 1200 w/s to combat the sun.

 
Setup Shots:

This is a curvy section of a dedicated bike route near the river in Reno. Its part of my running route, only minutes away from my house and I’ve been meaning to shoot it for some time now. My goal is to shoot more urban star trails shots so why not start with this….

Once funny note about this shot: During the exposure some young teens walked the path (right into my frame) and upon realizing that there was someone sitting motionless in the shadows, they turned white and sprinted away in the direction they came from. The whole thing happened so fast that they didn’t show up in my frame

Here are a couple of fun winter portraits of the wonderful Val.

The idea behind these portraits was to get a really blurry background while using a single strobe in a bright snowy landscape. There a couple of problems to address when shooting in that situation:

1.) Noon on a clear day is about the worst time of day to shoot. The light is harsh, contrasty and the shadows are unflattering. The solution was to use lighting to fill in the shadows.

2.) With all of the snow on the ground and the intensity of the sun, it was extremely bright. This meant that even at minimal ISO, I was going to have to use either fast shutter speeds or a small aperture. The problem is that most SLRs will not sync much faster than 1/250th of a second with a non-TTL strobe. This meant a small aperture, leading to my next problem…

3.) To achieve a shallow depth of field, one needs to use a large, bright aperture, which, in that light, required a shutter speed faster than 1/250th.

A possible solution would be to use TTL flash (speedlight) capable of syncing faster than 1/250th. However, a speedlight wouldn’t be nearly powerful enough to combat the bright sun and snow, therefore I was forced to use a more powerful, non-TTL strobe (1100w/s Elinchrom Ranger AS).

Wanting a shallow depth of field, the final solution was to use a telephoto lens at a very close distance with a heavy neutral density filter to darken things up. The neutral density filter cut enough light to achieve a larger aperture and combing that, the close focusing distance and the telephoto lens, I was able to open up my aperture and get a blurry background.

The sun was positioned behind Val to provide a nice hair/kicker. I used a 39” octobank placed to camera right in front of and above her, aimed down. The snow on the ground provided a nice under fill.

A few more…

Specs:

Nikon D3, 80-200mm 2.8 @ 200mm and minimum focusing distance(headshots only). ND-8 filter so I could shoot at a larger aperture. The background is not fake. 1/200th @ f/7.1 (it was really bright)

Elinchrom Ranger RX with 39" Rotalux Octobank to camera right, snow and sun for fill and kicker.

This was a super quick rig shot in the same alley as the last post. The car is Fielding’s new 2011 Subaru Impreza WRX sedan. Nikon D3 with 17-35mm lens, 1.6 seconds, f/8, ISO 800. The rig was attached to the rear window with three suction cups. Like the other rig shots, the car was initially lit in a static position. Later I combined that frame with the rolling exposure. After the hours editing involved in removing the rig in my previous rig shot, this was composed in a manner so that no rig removal was required and the editing took no time!

Final specs: Nikon D3, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, F/11, ISO 500, 0.8 sec

Keep reading to see how it was shot…

Named after the method in which the camera is attached to a moving vehicle, photographers in automotive advertising call this type of photograph a “rig shot.” As detailed in a previous post, my “rig” consists of a solid steel pipe attached to the car using industry strength suction cups and clamps.

The process for this shot was as follows: We scouted locations for both a posed shot (to be posted soon) as well as the rig shot. It was determined that due to the weather the “feel” of the shot, a parking garage would be ideal. Next the rig was assembled and carefully attached to the car. The camera was then attached to the pipe and positioned as desired using an articulated arm. Next, the car was lit in a stationary position using strobes at the max sync speed to eliminate ambient light (black background with the car lit). Lastly, I shot the car while it was rolling for the motion frame using semi-slow shutter speeds (around 1 second). Later in Photoshop, the strobe lit frame and the motion frame were combined and the rig was tediously removed in Photoshop.

Much thanks to Paul who provided the car and was a big help, as well as fellow photographers Val Lemieux and Anthony Segarra who assisted, lit, scouted, and froze their butts off!  More setup shots below (all setup shots by Val Lemieux).