Car Parts Photography

It takes a lot of parts to make a car and some of them are pretty small. The smallest of the parts above - seals for electrical connectors -  is about a 1/2 long. Water and air add up to corrosion and failure, and these little guys keep it out. Photographing small products can be difficult because the parts are often displayed larger than they are in reality. For products that were never meant for display in the first place, making them this big exposes ALL of their flaws. It’s fun to photograph cars, but it’s fun to shoot the tiny little car parts that make them too. As always, I'm interested in your thoughts.

Photography for Digital Illustration

;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.

Teamwork Photography

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!