My First Car Shoot

 Recognize this beauty???

Not enough information to identify this sweet little car?  How about this?

Still not enough?  Then how about this...

No?  Well, that's the best shot I have, so I guess I'll just have to tell you.  It's the 2005 Ford GT.  A race/sports car with a rich history.  And she's my pride and joy.  Well, not next to my BMW Z4 cause, you see... um....  I don't fit in the Ford.

Purchased at Walmart for $5, I've been having some fun with tabletop photography.  Thought I'd share the results, and some behind the scenes info on how I did it.

The 1st 2 shots were made with this setup:

I wanted to play with constant light sources (a fancy way of saying "I'm using light bulbs") for a change. Unlike flash units, they let you see where the light is going before you take a shot. I also wanted to play with a single light source, so I started with a 12" square DIY (Do It Yourself) soft box with a 20W CFL bulb in a rigged up housing.

The soft box is suspended over a black mirror (sheet of glass painted black the bottom side), which provides that awesome reflection.

To get the first shot I shifted the soft box till the edge facing the camera was just over the car. I then taped on a piece of black foam card so that only about 2" of the front section of the soft box was providing light.  For the 2nd shot I removed the card, shifted things so the car was centered under the light, then added white paper "tents" to bring in details on the front edge and tail.  You've got to watch where you place the tents, however. Bring them too far forward (toward the camera) and they'll reflect light onto the side of the car, ruining the effect.

For the last shot things got a bit more complex.  My goal was to recreate the look and feel of a full-sized car shoot while sticking to the single light source theme:

Ok, ok, as you've not doubt noticed there ARE 2 lights up top, but that's only cause I didn't have a single light bulb with enough power to do the job.  So, I arranged them so they lit the nylon rip-stop fabric evenly across it's entire length, creating one single light source.  Wouldn't you agree???   (ahem)

Ok, so - I stretched white nylon rip-stop fabric across a PVC pipe frame I'd built some time ago, then strategically placed black foam cards on top to create interesting light/shadow patterns on the surface of the car.  The most important effect to accomplish is the reflection in the windshield.  Placing the black cards to light the top of the card took only a couple minutes.

The sticky part comes when trying to redirect the overhead light source onto the sides and front of the car. This is where tabletop photography gets fun - I cut custom sized pieces of stiff chrome paper, folded them into tents and placed them around the car to get the lighting effects I wanted.  This worked great for everything but the grill and tail.

For the tail, I added a large tent of white A4 paper for a larger, softer look.  The front grill was the problem - I couldn't get enough light from the fabric above to light the grill properly.  Easily solved though - there's a lot of spare light around to play with.

Those Home Depot reflectors don't point all the light down into the fabric.  Some light leaks out to the sides above the fabric/frame combination.  I placed a 12" square mirror tile in a clamp (just visible on the left side of the setup pic) and aimed it to pick up this stray light and send it toward the car.  In the right side of the setup shot, the mirror tent behind the right-front corner of the car bounces this light back onto the grill and corner.  A nice side effect of the large mirror is that it also brought up the light on the wheels and the white stripe running down the side.

So, who needs fancy, expensive gear to create a great car shot???  Grant you, things would have been a bit more dicey if the car was life-sized....

OH - before I forget: that little black dot on top of the fabric?  It's placed there to block most of the light from hitting the "Ford" emblem on the nose of the car.  There was too much glare bouncing into the camera  that you can't read it without the little dot.

(grin!) Hope you enjoyed.