Behind the scenes VIDEO: Shooting cars in the studio

Howdy folks! Check out this fun little behind the scenes video I made from a recent photo shoot for Modified, think of it kind of like a peek behind the scenes of what goes into shooting a car inside a photo studio.

As you can see, there are a lot of lighting positions that all come together into making the final image possible, even inside a studio you have to be very precise with your light. Because the entire studio is painted white, your light bounces EVERYWHERE and can be difficult to control. That’s what all the black foam core and fabric pieces are used for, to act like a kind of “anti-bounce card.” In order to adequately show the true color and flake of the paint, you can’t simply drop the car underneath a soft box or large flat (or “floating cloud” as it’s sometimes referred to) and call it good… That’s lazy, and you’ll end up with photos that do not do justice to the hard work that a good painter has put into making a car look a certain way. For these cars, the only thing I used the bank for was creating reflections on the glass. Everything else was done with Speedotron packs and lots of light modifiers. Barn doors are so helpful!!

Special thanks to Tom Hassler, for being a truly awesome dad by helping me shoot these cars over the course of two very long days, to our lovely and talented art director, Alina Avanesyan, for the idea and help making this video, and of course Jorge Nuñez, our forever patient and always helpful photo studio manager. You guys rock!

www.modified.com
www.mastermindna.com
www.spirit-rei.com

-NH