Creating a Car Portrait-Sunset on the Beach

This high dynamic range (HDR) image was created from 11 bracketed, raw shots with widely varying exposures in hopes of simultaneously capturing detail in the incredibly bright, setting fireball and in the really dark wheel wells. As these images all need to be pin registered in the digital darkroom, the bracketed shots were taken using a rock-solid tripod weighted down with a sandbag. For the gearheads among you, the brackets were taken with a full-frame, 21-megapixel DSLR with a 16-35mm f/2.8 L II wide-angle zoom lens at 24mm. To reduce vibrations, mirror lock-up was enabled and the camera/tripod combination was not touched!!! This would be impossible using the DSLR alone as only 3 bracketed shots can be taken sequentially. To increase this to a depth of 11 brackets, and work with mirror lock-up another high-tech device was employed. As you can see below, the resultant bracketed images are very unimpressive.

In the next post, we'll address the artistic approach to transforming the boring bracketed shots into an artistic car portrait--the secret sauce !!!

Magazine Cover

This pseudo glamour magazine cover was a fun and relatively simple project. The teen photo was taken with an overhead beauty dish covered with a sock on a boom arm to help direct the light down at about a 45 degree angle to the model's face. A Lastolite triflector was used for lots of fill (silver reflectors below the model's face and to the right and left). This evened out the relatively crisp light over the model's face. A fan was used to blow the model's hair and create a sense of motion. The model was shot against a seamless white background which was overexposed +1 stop to assure it was bright white. This made it relatively easy to mask out for the composite.
Fonts were selected to simulate a fashion magazine and further help "sell" the effect. The promo blurbs looked "real" but obviously had totally fictitious, fun content--appropriate to the upcoming teen party.