A Little News

Not too long ago, my co-worker Jonathan Palmer did a super shot of a guy driving his classic V-Dub beetle. He did the shot in fairly low light and used a strobe inside the car to provide the illumination. You can check out JP’s shot in his November gallery on his blog. The only problem is the image did not run. Well, it was a problem for Jonathan but a great boon to me. I loved the shot and though that it would be good to use the concept some time in the future.

Low and behold, I had the opportunity just last week. We were doing a story on a man who uses classic Rolls Royce autos in his limo business. The day was miserable, in fact I did the shoot between covering the two tornadoes last Friday. The man lives in the country so his home had to be the setting. I needed to get a portrait of him and I needed to limit the background which was a plowed field. I used Jonathan’s internal lighting scheme with a Vivitar 285HV laid on the seat beside him. The ambient light on the field was about 1/2 stop below the strobe and the front of the car was at least one stop below the strobe.

The real key to making this happen was to position the car so that some dark foliage was strategically blocking the light from the sky so I could see him inside the car. He had some tall evergreens in his yard that allowed me to have the area of windshield where he was seated to be free from the reflected sky light. Keep in mind that shiny objects will reflect whatever they “see.” This applies to a table top product shot just as well as it does to a car’s windshield. You can see my slacks reflected in some of the chrome on the front of the car. There was just nothing I could do about that.

The shot has real nice contrast because the paint is dark which creates a low key feel but the chrome gives some really nice highlight and, combined with the strobe, makes the shot really work from the lighting standpoint. I did the two versions you see here and we ran the tighter shot which was my favorite. The photo ran with a couple of other images that showed more of the car. For those of you reading this in the English Isles, the Rolls Royce is no big deal and you see them all the time. Let’s just say they are pretty rare in North Alabama so showing the car was a major part of the assignment.

Now when you check out Jonathan’s shot, you should know that he did his while driving down the road in front of the other car with his Canon D1 and a 300 2.8 hand held, out the window, backwards and without looking through the viewfinder. And he nailed it on the first frame. Jonathan is known by some around here as a legend, or just J-Ledge for short. By the way, he and I are partners in a real estate venture selling ocean front property in Arizona so drop us a line if you are interested. The prices are incredible!

About the photos: Both shots were done using a Canon EOS 5D with a 24-70 f2.8 lens, pocket wizards and a Vivitar 285HV. I believe the Vivitar was set to 1/4 power and was aimed at the roof of the car on its widest zoom setting. The exposure for ambient was about one stop under the metered exposure to ensure the car would drop down to a true black allowing the chrome and the guy to shine.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.