Automotive Photography
It's always fun to shoot beautiful things. This car is no exception. We only had a day and a half, and a long shot list, so we were moving pretty fast. It was pretty interesting working with Jerry, the automotive designer who designed and built the car. He had lots of insight into the shape and rendering of the values describing the vehicle. As always, I am interested in your thoughts and comments.
I love shooting cars. Day-to-day I shoot everything from massive aerospace tools to tiny fasteners, but photographing this Ford GT was a treat. Using a light painting technique we walked around the car shining a light at it while the shutter was open. After seeing the results we would alter how fast we walked, where we held the light and where we pointed it until we had a dynamically lit image.Lighting is crucial for every photo and this car is no exception. These are the kind of jobs that get me excited forty years into this business. As always I look forward to your thoughts.
The science of automotive paint is stunningly complex. This car only has an “E coat”; it’s the initial coat of paint. It’s a process not unlike electroplating, where the paint is attracted to the metal by an electronic charge. The upshot is that the paint gets onto all of the surfaces of the body including all the inaccessible little nooks and crannies. This, among other things, is why our cars last longer than they used to. My job of course, is make an interesting and compelling photograph for use in an ad. Let me know what you think.
This is another in the series I photographed of a Charger Hellcat. Black cars can be tricky to shoot because of the conflict between needing to be gray and needing to look black. And it needs to look shiny too! Too light, and it doesn't look black. Too dark and you cannot see the shape or detail. Let me know what you think.
I got to shoot a fully restored 1966 Shelby Mustang. Ok, it was a job, but it was a treat! This beautiful car had original tires, an original battery (it was just the case of course), tags from the dealership still on it. Let me know what you think.
Not long ago I had the opportunity to photograph this customized Dodge Charger Hellcat. It’s a beautiful car, though I’d have preferred red to black. Black is nice, but red is just hotter! You can see it’s 700 plus horsepower engine on the studio blog. I am always interested in your thoughts.
There is nothing like a body kit to jazz up a car. I had the opportunity to shoot this Outlaw Mustang in the studio. It’s really beautiful! The wheels, suspension, engine and lots more are enhanced! Being black makes it more challenging to photograph, but you cannot deny it’s elegance. Other images from this shoot are on the Blue Sky blog. Let me know what you think!
Here is another photograph in the series of Barry’s ’66 Mustang. Let me know what you think.
I recently met Barry at a parking lot where a lot of, well, car nuts (enthusiasts, whatever, this is Detroit!) hang out with their hot, customized, modified, cars. Barry’s 1966 Mustang has 500 plus horsepower under the hood, a strengthened frame so it doesn't twist, because that's a lot of power. It has a new hood scoop, tires, wheels, awesome! He brought it to the studio so I could photograph it for a day. This is the first of a few shots that I did. Afterword, I showed it to my friend Jim Tocco from Designers & Partners. He added some art direction and text. You can see the original here. As always, I’m interested in what Emmeline or anyone else thinks.
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This image for Goodyear was created in the studio and with stock photography from Medioimages/Photodisc. The process of shooting for strip or input photography as I heard a colleague call it, can be quite involved. For this illustration, we carefully matched the angle and perspective. To do this, you must first decide where you are going to place the image within the background. If it’s up close, you need to be closer to the product with a wider lens. In other words, you need to match the actual distance that it would have been had it been there when the background was shot. Moving the camera right or left just a few inches can make a huge difference. Camera height is crucial as well.Next there is the lighting. In this case, I tried to keep the contrast a little lower than normal to match the relatively low contrast scene. We added artificial snow and ice too! On the windshield, after scattering the snow and ice, we ran the wipers to create the clear area on the windshield. We even captured the wipers in a few different positions, but they were not used because it got in the way of the people inside. We put snow and ice on the grill, bumper, hood and roof of the car. We also shot with the headlights on and off so that decision could be made later. Then Dave took a turn, and lit then shot the models. No easy feat with that many people in such a tiny space. The retoucher, hired by the agency, put it all together with a few touches of his own. As always, let me know what you think.
This is the result of the teamwork of a bunch of people. Client, gotta have a client or you can’t get started. Art director(s), cause you gotta have something to say, visually speaking, and the creative team comes up with concept. Photographers, that’s me and Dave. I lit and shot the exterior of the vehicle, then with the camera locked down, Dave lit and shot the models. There was lots of pre-production too - finding vehicles and models - yes, models and the agency too - and stylists. Granted, you can’t see a lot of clothing. Nonetheless, a lot of work went into finding the right coat, shirt and props. Make-up stylist - yup, gotta make sure that the models are looking their best. And, there was a really great dog named Huckleberry and another photographer, Mariusz Niedzwiedzki (based on the metadata), who shot the stock photography. Finally, the retoucher, who put all of the elements together. This was very much a team effort! As always, let me know what you think!
I just finished retouching another car from the Goodyear shoot. Red is a great color for a car. The I hope to hear from the art director soon about the main shots from the shoot. They are handling the retouching on those shots. For the main shots, I lit the exterior of the vehicle, and afterward, Dave shot the people inside. Very much the tag team approach, that we use on many projects. Please let me know what you think.
I love shooting cars. We recently did a shoot for Goodyear, and in addition to the main shots I did a few full car shots for their library. Automotive photography is always a challenge, but that's what makes it fun. The shoot went well; it helps to have great clients and art directors. As always, I’m interested in your comments.
I love beautiful details. A well designed car has loads of great details, like badges, tail lights, door handles, side moulding, headlights or air scoops. Lighting and design become key to making a good image. Red helps too! As always, let me know what you think.
I had the opportunity not long ago to shoot a FIAT 500 Lounge. Many thanks to James Houfley at Golling. I like shooting red cars and this one is no exception. It has nice badging and some excellent details.
Automotive photography is challenging and rewarding. In some ways it’s like shooting a huge piece of jewelry, but it’s a lot bigger!. It’s all about what’s reflecting in the paint. You want it to look shiny, but still have color. My studio is ideally suited to automotive photography by design. There is a complete eggshell to help control reflections. Picture the inside of an eggshell, with a floor; that’s pretty much what I’ve got. A space that’s fifteen feet high with all of the corners coved. 
Let me know what you think!
There are many fewer studios in metro Detroit than there were a few years ago, because there is less work. We still have a studio, but I’ve wrestled with the idea of not having a studio. In other areas, notably the East and West coasts, some photographers have studios, but it’s not uncommon for a photographer to rent a studio just for shoot days, and include it in their bill. I don’t know the reason, but in the midwest, or at least in Metro Detroit, the business model has always been, except for car photography, studio rental is included in the fee. This makes it a little more difficult, but not impossible.The overhead for our studio is about $32,000 a year. We rent our studio for $650.00 / day. Unless you shoot in studio a lot, you may be better off renting, even if you can’t bill the entire rental fee. You only have that overhead when your shooting. In addition if you develop a relationship with a studio and you rent there often you could likely bargain them down a little.
Working in the studio is about 90% of what I do. That’s why I’ve chosen to have my own. We rent it out to help with the overhead. The day may come when it no longer makes sense, but it hasn’t come yet. How does it work for you?
Back when I shot on film, everything was on transparencies. That made photography more difficult - an unforgiving medium. There was little recourse if highlights were burned out, shadows too deep or color was off. Still, you work with what you’ve got. I learned to pre-visualize, shoot Polaroids, do color balance tests before the shoot, and when the budget allowed, I’d wait for film. On the other hand, when I handed over the film, I was finished.Now, I am further into the workflow. This gives me way more flexibility to adjust, after the shoot, color, contrast, and exposure. Often I do the retouching, and deliver color corrected tiffs. Then I archive the job in case the files are needed again. I thought it might be interesting to share the process in more detail.
Because this is about the workflow, I’ll ignore all of the pre-production and jump right to the shoot. I almost always shoot tethered. I like the knowledge that I’ve got it, without any waiting. It also gives clients a preview of what they’re getting. The laptop screen is calibrated with Eye-One (made by x-rite) so I’m pretty sure I’ve got the color right to start.
I shoot with Capture One software, because I’ve got a Phase One back, and it works very well with our Canons too. Apart from doing an excellent job processing RAW files, one of the things I like about Capture one is that it creates a folder structure for every job. A session folder contains a capture folder, a trash folder, and an output folder.
After the shoot, I simply copy this folder to the “job” drive on our server. I am then able to work off the server to make all the adjustments to the captured images and process them to make tiffs. If I’m doing the retouching, I’ll use Photoshop (big surprise) and create new folders inside the session folder that contains all of the files I’re working on. This keeps all the files for a each project together and organized. The server automatically backs this drive up to an external hard drive every night. The nightly backup keeps versions of the files for 30 days, so it’s possible to go back to get older versions of files, or deleted files if necessary. After the retouching is completed, and the job is delivered, the job folder is copied to an archive drive, also on the server. Once a month, I duplicate everything on to a yet another hard drive and take it home for safe keeping. So I have several terabytes of online archives of old jobs with a back-up off-site in case of drive failure or natural disaster.
Dave shot the Landscape it's stripped into. Teamwork is everything.I’d love to hear what you think or about your workflow.