AccessPhoto - Everything Photography: How to build up an automotive rig motion shot

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Hello everyone, welcome to another image build. Hopefully you guys are digging these This is one of the shots I did for SLB ads for 2010, for those of you that don't know the car it's SIERRA SIERRA ENTERPRISES' Evo VIII. The car is pretty much insane and built to a level that most tuners will never reach. Enough about the car, on the to image build.

Here's the shot I'll be going over




So the SSE guys were nice enough to let me shoot the car after I got the go-ahead to go on track. I wanted to pick a nice turn to get the candy-canes in frame but I also wanted to make sure the sun was to my back so I ended up shooting in a turn that wasn't actually used in config 13 but nobody will be the wiser

After my assistant Nate Hassler and I got the rig situated it became very clear that there was going to be a real problem getting a solid image - the hood on the car was an EXTREMELY thin sheet of carbon (for weight reduction) with little or possibly no under skeleton. Translation - the weight of the rig and camera would twist the hood and the frames wouldn't line up. Rather than panic I decided I'd just do my best to hand-hold the boom in place and hope for the best. Here are the six shots that make up the basic image.



Unfortunately none of the frames lined up dead on (which I was anticipating) but it wasn't too bad. I was able to align all the shots carefully in PS using different distort/transform techniques. Once layered together and masked off the base image was in place.




Now it was time to add a little more range to the image. I hastily shot two lit frames before doing the moving portion.




But I was able to mold them into place and again masked off very carefully to get the lit portions blended in with the ambient without making it look painfully obvious. Once the lit sections were properly stripped in I had to make some slight color corrections to get the carbon to match the ambient shots. With that taken care of I removed the rig, dust spots and anything else I didn't want in the shot. The image was getting pretty close.




But did you notice anything missing? In the heat of trying to get the shot before the sun went down I COMPLETELY forgot to get the driver. And a track car ripping around the track with no driver just doesn't make any sense. Fortunately I realized this when I checked into the hotel and made a mental note to make sure and get a still of the driver in the car the next day. I lined up my camera using the same focal length and aperture and just eyeballed the angle and distance using the "image overlay" feature of my D3. When I got "close enough" I snapped a few shots. Here's the one I decided to use.




It certainly wasn't spot on, but nothing a little PS work couldn't fix. With David in place and masked off in the cockpit I made the final adjustments to the image. Once again here's the final.




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