SUPA RAP BATOW 11:01 PM

So I finally got home a few hours ago from a two-day hiatus in Buttonwillow. For those of you who have never been to the "town" there aren't really words to describe the experience, you just have to do it lol. The occasion, of course, was the 2009 Super Lap Battle Finals. I'm nearly delirious as I type this and my body feels like absolute garbage - I now understand what a day in the life of a crushed soda can would feel like. I packed more gear for this event than I have for any shoot in recent memory and my muscles hate me for it. As soon as I got to BW Raceway on Tuesday I shot and shot and shot until it was dark out and then did the same today.

When all was said and done I had operated three cameras and eight lenses, filled 16GB of CF cards, walked several miles and shot 3 Super Lap advertisements for 2010, a feature car and enough event coverage photos for several magazines. Unfortunately I can't really share anything I shot just yet, but I can assure you it should be pretty cool from a car enthusiast standpoint ;) Big thanks goes out to my friend Nate Hassler (aka the FNG at Modified Mag) for assisting me this week, I literally couldn't have done it without him!


(photo by Nate Hassler)

But wait, is that a Canon!? Yup it sure is, I try not to be too biased and rather enjoy using other cameras to find their strengths and weaknesses based on my shooting style and preferences. It's also good to know your way around other cameras - you never know when you might HAVE to use one. Anyway for you gear heads here's a list of the toys I got to play with this week...

Canon (all Canon stuff borrowed/stolen from Nate :P )
1DSMKIII
5DMKII
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM

Nikon
D3
AF-S 300mm f/2.8D IF-ED II (rented)
AF 85mm f/1.4D IF
AF-S 50mm f/1.4G
AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8D IF-ED

Post Processing - Salvaging a decent photo in Photoshop 11:18 AM

Hey guys, I've been getting some requests for a while now to shed a little insight on my work flow and showing some examples of all the stock photos I used to make an image build, so I'm glad to finally be able to show you guys a shot more in depth and go over the image from start to finish.

Here's the image we will be looking at...

(click for full size)


I had seen this red wall by my place and decided since I need to shoot this car quickly before the sun went down that it would be a decent location. I liked the irony of shooting red-on-red and I also figured it would piss a lot of people off, which is also fun :P So to start out I placed the car where I wanted it and composed the image then took a couple of ambient brackets and a few different lighting setup brackets. Here are the nine images I used to create this shot.

(click for full size)


Once I got all the layers in the order I wanted them in and properly masked off the image was looking pretty flat and boring. Here's the result of the nine frames laid on each other.

(click for full size)


As you can see the shot was pretty bland, but before tackling that I wanted to smooth out the car and remove any reflections or distractions from the frame. Using various methods (copy/paste, healing, cloning, patch and gradients) I was able to get the image where it needed to be before I started enhancing colors and textures. Here's the smoothed out shot.

(click for full size)


Now that I had any visual imperfections out of the way I could start focusing on luminosity and texture. First I did a little dodging and burning to even out the ground before further modification and bring a little texture out of the wall.

(click for full size)


Next I went in using different blending modes and adjustment layers to pull as much texture out of the wall and ground as possible. At this point if you compare the image to the original layered shot it's night and day different. I also did some color adjustments to pull the whole red range into CMYK gamut since initially it was way out.

(click for full size)


The last adjustments were some minor curves and I also relocated the end of the lower 2X4" that holds the billboard up since I didn't like how it terminated into the taillight. Once more here's the end result.

(click for full size)


Just for the hell of it I did decide to do some other edits with the wall in different colors. To do this I made a mask using calculations then I went in and fine tuned it by hand. I then created layers of varying opacities set to color mode and adjusted from there. Let me know which one you guys like the best!

Teal


Light Blue


Black

The Beauty of Natural Light - Part 2 2:01 PM

During the summer I went to Chicago for a few days to cover the HIN event and do a couple feature shoots. This shoot was one of three I did that day and I was totally over bringing out the lights for a few reasons. I also really like shooting older cars with a slightly more gritty look and often natural light lends well to this technique. The shoot was also rather quick since I wanted to get the light right as it was going down for the golden qualities as well as the harsh flares shooting directly into the sun provides.



I also find that when I'm not concerning myself with where my lights need to be I get to spend more time trying to find other ways to make the image more creative. With this set I did my best to play with the composition and used the harsh shadows as part of the image instead of trying to fight with them. Combined with some harsh flares I ended up really liking this set. Not to mention since the car is a Starlet it was almost like adding a photographic pun by placing star shaped flares in the frame.



The debris that were littered about the ground at this lot I also took a liking too and wanted to find a way to incorporate them into a shot. With the sun as a huge natural back light the intricate shadows on the ground were drawn out very long and helped provide some diagonals to the shot. For the post processing I kept it fairly simple with a slight cross-processed look, but I didn't want it to be too overbearing.



For some reason the rig shot reminds me of Mexico or perhaps the running of the bulls in Spain. The car was just so incredibly small that it makes my rig seem much longer than it actually is, but I was pleased with the result. In total from setup to break down I think I spent under an hour shooting this car which is almost unheard of for my typical stuff. It's also nice to go back and practice the fundamentals from time to time and I think everyone should shoot on occasion without any lights. If you're interested in seeing the rest of the shots they are all on my Flickr. Thanks for looking!

Editing other people's photos - Super Street Cover 2:20 PM

I can't wait until the January issue comes out so I can share some stuff I've been working on recently with you guys. I have a few months worth of photos I've had to sit on that I can finally show. But until then, here's a look at another set of images I retouched for the mag. A lot of times, like with the Modified Genesis cover, we end up receiving only JPEG images from freelancers. As you all know JPEGs are much more difficult to modify because they lose information so quickly and can become a real mess in just a few moves in photoshop. The Final Motion GT-R that was on our November cover was no different. All shots were taken by Dino Dalle Carbonare and perhaps due to weather conditions were shot rather hastily. Here is the image I needed to turn into a cover...



So right off the bat you'll certainly notice it's rather dull and a bit dark, two big no-nos for a cover shot. I decided to do a few things in order to bring the color and luminosity up. Some of the techniques I used included curves adjustments, screen and overlay blending layers and shadows/highlights adjustments. Again the tricky part is not losing the image when working with a single frame JPEG file. Here was the resulting image.



The woodgrain on the background pulled out nicely as did the texture in the carbon kevlar front end and the ground. Still not perfect but much better all things considered. Here's a look at the final cover comp.



With the crop and blurb placements it turned out to be a rather good cover image. Hopefully some of you guys bought the issue :P I also needed to do a little work for our spread image, it started life much the same as the cover image.



However a new problem presented itself, there was water all over the ground and the car. My boss really didn't like how the shots looked of the car in water, but unfortunately we didn't receive enough dry shots to make up a feature so I had to use some. I also really liked this angle of the car, so I decided to try and make the water make sense and liven up the scene a bit.



In addition to the basics I did to the cover shot I added two layers to simulate the rain. I basically just took different brush sizes and scattered white dots all over the frame, then blurred them with a motion blur. Once I set the layer to overlay it started looking pretty believable. To finish up the second layer I used a couple custom brushes to add splashes on the ground and off the car as well as some running water coming off the roof.

Anyway that's all for now, hopefully I'll have some good stuff to post up soon!

It never hurts to ask / pay it forward 11:32 AM

Sometimes the field of photography can be a little secretive, which is annoying to say the least. Obviously people that are in it for the money want to keep some secrets to themselves, but often this is not the case. It never hurts to ask how someone did something and many times it pays off. I have sent countless emails to photographers that inspire me asking about how they did something or suggestions on ways to improve. I always have this feeling in the back of my mind that maybe they won't reply at all. But in all the times I have asked a photographer for advice you know how many times I didn't get a reply? NONE. It helps to be as specific as possible though and you can't expect a photographer to send you a start-to-finish image build with behind the scenes footage, lighting diagrams, all the frames used and a PSD file showing all the layering - they're not going to give away everything.

Although I certainly don't consider myself to be on a level that even approaches those that inspire me, I realize that there are many of you out there (possibly reading this now) that look to my work for inspiration and might have some questions about how I made a certain shot work. Whenever I receive emails or private messages I always respond - so if you ever have a question for me I'm willing to take the time to help you out. I think this is one of my favorite parts of photography, working with your peers instead of against them. And you never know one day it might just pay off financially as well. No photographer has enough time to do every job offered and you just might end up getting some work by building bridges instead of burning them.

If any of you have questions for me don't be shy. You can either email me at sean.klingelhoefer@gmail.com or PM me on flickr and I'll do my best to get back to you when I can. The only thing that I ask is that you pay it forward. If you're going to ask other photographers for help I really hope than when someone not as far along as you are asks you for tips you provide them with a little assistance. It's an easy system to follow and it helps build a network. You never know what might happen as the photographers on top can't stay there forever and you might just be the next big thing.

As many of you know I'm an editor at Super Street and to go along with this theory I'm going to introduce a new column for 2010 where I help people create better photos. I'm going to hopefully be tracking submissions from readers and seeing who's making the most improvement over the course of the year. If you have any questions, tips or even a "trouble image" that you need help with and want in the magazine email it to me at mailsack@superstreetonline.com ATTN: Just the Tip. Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings. Go forth and shoot!

2009 Lucies announced 5:28 PM

The 2009 International Photo Awards aka "The Lucies" was yesterday so I decided to take a look on their site to see if anything new struck my fancy. I was strangely disappointed by the selections for the Automotive Advertising finalists. 1st place is a great image but I would think there would be better stuff out there. The Lucies have typically seemed to award creativity and concept over technical photo ability and this just doesn't seem that creative to me. 2nd and 3rd were even worse. As a matter of fact most of the Advertising category in general was pretty bland IMO, save for this.

But that's not to say creativity was gone from other categories. There are some really brilliant photographers out there and one my favorites included a set by Gigi Cifali that was essentially a photo essay of drained swimming pools. Where one would come up with this type of project I have no idea, but it's interesting to say the least. Although I'm not typically a fan of jet liner photos, Josef Hoflehner's set was anything but typical. In the non-pro section Deepak Singh Dogra's set of inverted reflections stood out - it's amazing how one of the first things you learn as a photo student (don't be afraid to rotate an image) can make such a huge impact.

But my favorite set from this year's winners is definitely Michael Schnabel's Autobahn I - III. There's really nothing tricky, witty or cutting edge here - just some fantastic photos of Autobahn overpasses. For some reason I just can't stop looking at them.

ISO 102,400 2:27 PM

So at first I figured that this whole new ISO 102,400 thing was going to be totally useless but it gives hope that everything above that ISO will be improved... Boy was I surprised when I was shown this



Ya that's the D3s @ ISO 102,400 at f/2.8 1/500. As you can see it's clearly better than my D3 was at ISO 25,600. All I can say is wow. If the Canon is as good as this or better I'll be amazed. Let's hope to see some provided by Canon showing the camera's real capabilities.