Jul
04
May
24
So I’ve had my Mini Cooper for a few months and its an absolute blast to drive. Think of it as a go kart on steroids. Tight handling, zippy acceleration and all in all an extremely comfortable ride.
I’ve been meaning to do a photo shoot of the car for a while and I came up with this concept. Having had a lack of sunshine during this “Summer” in Vancouver, I took the one clear day in a long time to take photos of the Mini. I wanted to create a production style effect that would be fit for commercial use. The theme I had in mind was “The Calm Before the Storm”, which was to imply the unleashing of power and in the case of the Mini Cooper, unleash the exhilaration and fun…
When it comes to photo manipulation the aim of the game is to be as realistic as possible without being over the top. The main rule of thumb is not to defy physics or visuals. So in this case, the final image is a car sitting on asphalt with a storm cloud overhead. The initial photo has reflections of the power lines in the glass and has the source of light almost immediately above the car. So, shadows and highlights needs to be maintained or created in the post production to make it as realistic as possible. Reflections that aren’t meant to be there are removed (in this case the power lines since there isn’t anything around the car in the final photo).
Initial Photography for the Concept
Further to that, in order to maintain the photo realism, reflections of the storm clouds are mirrored into the glass and paintwork. Another rule of thumb is to maintain, scale and vanishing points. If you chop the photo out and are incorporating it into other images make sure your scales are realistic and that you maintain correct vanishing points. When adding the cloud reflections, they were warped and skewed to maintain the curves of the glass and vehicle.
Since the car was stationary, in order to create some motion, the clouds were edited with a motion blur to give the effect that they were moving by fast in the wind. The car was colour corrected and shadows and highlights were added to enhance the storm mood of the final product. The final product is below: Let me know what you think!
Final Post Production Photograph – The Calm Before The Storm
Aug
17
Often when I complete a photo shoot I like to put together a short slide show or video to summarize the final product. The use of motion can help enhance the general mood of a photograph. Something as simple as a slow pan and zoom can bring a photo to life. Being accompanied by the right choice of music can set the energy level and mood of the montage. In the near future, IÂ believe that traditional print sales will start to slow down in favor of electronic delivery.
Here’s a short video that I made from the photo shoot that I did with Tash. It has a mixture of time lapse photography, stock videos and the photos from the shoot that we did in Gastown. Check it out and let me know what you think! Make sure to click on the higher resolution stream to see the HD quality version:
Aug
15
Vancouver is the third most filmed city behind New York and Los Angeles. Quite often I’m faced with detours and road blocks due to parts of the downtown core being used as part of a film set. The other day I was stuck for 20 minutes in my apartment complex’s driveway because they were filming a Kia commercial. It was an advertisement for the Kia Sportage 2011 model and the first scene where the car accelerates at the start is filmed right in front of my apartment!
You can see all the usual iconic landmarks of Vancouver such as Granville and Burrard Bridge, the Art Gallery etc. It’s so cool being able to recognise all these places being filmed in the city that you live in… Check out the full ad: