Preview

It’s funny how sometimes the shoots that seem to go the worst still turn out alright. My recent meeting with RJ DeVera at the Meguiar’s facility in Irvine to shoot this Wraptivo CR-Z he was commissioned to build was one such instance. The shoot caught me in the middle of possibly the busiest week I’d had yet at 2NR, time was limited, we were forced to shoot mid-day, and Irvine doesn’t exactly present many picturesque locations to the automotive photographer.

But I lucked out. We found an abandoned parking garage just a few doors down from the Meguiar’s facility (the kind of place I’d normally avoid), and thanks to its odd layout, cool-looking pillars, and the off-camera lights I’d thought to bring just in case (my opinion: black cars look better in natural light), it turned out A-okay.

This photo is a composite of several different images, each one shot with the camera secured on a tripod and my lights lighting various parts of the car differently. Since the car was flat black, I wanted to highlight its curves and flat texture with hot spots rather than avoid them. In post, I composited the areas of each image that I wanted to use with Layers/Masks, using the Brush and Gradient tools. A lot of people prefer to make selections with the Lasso or Pen tool; I find that this “less precise” approach blends better.

I also decided to desaturated the background for uniform color balance with a monochromatic finish, and the black areas of the car to help it fit better with the background and accentuate its red contrasts. It might be hard to tell, but I also added a 6% “soft light” blue cast to the car’s flat-black Wraptivo finish to set it apart from the background just a little.

Some of the RAW shots:

The rear shot above was actually the second one I edited. This front shot was the first. Looking back, I wish I’d have chosen a more side-prominent angle like the rear, and after a consultation with my good friend Steve Demmitt, I wish I’d have taken the time to smooth the side of the car a little better in post:

RAWs:

All in all, I’m pretty happy with how a little forethought and a lot of post processing were able to save this feature. You can see it in the Oct., ’11 issue of Import Tuner, which is on shelves as of press time. The bummer is that since the CR-Z isn’t the hottest platform out there (featuring popular cars is a cold business), it only ran three pages. No worries — that’s part of the reason I started this blog ;-)