I shot all these brackets in just under 45 minutes with no assistant. It’s also worth mentioning that some guy stopped and talked to me for about 10 minutes, and being the nice dude I am, I humored his questions about how the car compares to his Accord (while I internally cursed him for wasting my precious few moments of remaining light) — I digress.

Here’s what I started with:

The first thing I do now is do a basic curves adjustment layer to add some contrast.

Now I’m actually not that happy with the ground, I want a shadow from the car. SO what I’ve done here is taken an earlier bracket from when the sun was higher and dropped that in.

Even though this is not the “correct” lighting angle in a technical sense when compared to the sun’s position in the sky, it works visually once everything comes together. Until this post, I have never told anyone that the ground was from a different sun position… And it has never been mentioned so I think it’s safe to say it works.

The next step here is a couple of heavy curves adjustments for the sky.

Now I took some people from other brackets and added them into my composition. These people were all there, just at different times. I also added a couple of small boats just for fun.

Next up, it’s time to put the lit sections of the body in place.

The touchup process is something I do in phases, starting usually with the background. Here, I have removed a few unsightly items from the scene, and also touched up the body of the car.

Color correction for the body of the car was done using several hue/saturation layers masked for different parts of the car. I always do many small adjustments as opposed to one large adjustment to achieve the look I want.

Ahhh the good old fake sun flare. This one could go either way, and I know some people really hate the look… But I chose to add it to this image because I just think it looks cool. There’s nothing too deep or philosophical here haha.

The thing about these flares is that if you’re going to use them, make sure to make it look somewhat believable looking. If you just download Knoll Light Factory and use them out of the box, they look like shit. The way I made this flare was with several brush clicks of different colors and sizes (all on separate layers) and then once the general look is right, merge the layers, turn down the opacity and apply a Gaussian blur so the edges are not too sharp and fake looking.

Now I move on to the sky. To add the colors here, I did several gradients of different colors on their own layers, blending mode set to soft light.

And finally, one more contrast adjustment. (Channel Mixer layer, soft light, 50% opacity)

And that’s that! Overall, I’m very happy with this image. The only real changes I would make if I did it again would be to remove the oil rig in the ocean on the left side, and the people behind the biker on the right side of the frame. They are small things though, so I’m oaky with leaving them there and chalking it up to learning experience.

For my complete review of the Honda CR-Z, click here: http://www.modified.com/roadtests/modp-1103-2011-honda-crz/index.html

Please let me know if there are any questions, thanks for looking!

-NH

http://www.natehasslerphoto.com/

I’m hoping to get my new design sorted out shortly, but in the meantime this will do.  Thanks for looking!

-NH

http://www.flickr.com/photos/natehassler/

My new actual website should be up soon… One step at a time!

-NH

So in the meantime, hang in there. Here’s a couple of new shots which will be included in the new website update, I did these for the Ryan Gates 311RS project:

So stay tuned, will be back online soon!

-NH

First off, our October cover story was my latest soirée into the realm of Virtual Rig Studio PRO, a piece of software that lets you essentially render realistic looking “rig shots” without the use of a physical rig. http://www.virtualrig-studio.com/

I also used VRS on the article’s opening spread. Honestly, I am not happy with how any of the photos in this set came out. I will not make excuses, I will however say that everyone has their “off” days and difficult assignments… This falls into that category for me. I do not think these look “bad,” but they did not come out how I wanted either. So I shall move on, learn from what went wrong on this shoot, and hopefully avoid those issues in the future. VRS is a fantastic piece of software, but unfortunately I’m not able to use it to the fullest extent because of constraints on my own production end. So for now, I have stepped away from trying to integrate VRS into my regular workflow. In an attempt to hone my skills and not try to jump ahead of where I should be, I’m getting back to the basics.

I’ve been enjoying motorsport a lot lately, I spent the entire season following the Formula DRIFT series, and what a time that was! Here’s a few of my favorite shots from the season.

We started the season following Fredric Aasbo and Papadakis racing at Long Beach.

Here, Shawn Hilliard (crew chief) takes a brief moment to rest between repairs.

Fredric’s car has a pretty unique and functional aero setup. These vents on the rear bumper help dissipate smoke and also create a low pressure zone to increase downforce on the rear end. Also, they look cool.

Next up at Road Atlanta was Chris Forsberg.

Here, Chris attaches a small video camera for data acquisition purposes.

SSR Type F wheels — Forsberg’s weapon of choice.

Next up was Matt Powers, at the new for 2011 venue of Palm Beach International Raceway.

Matt is always a crowd favorite, he’s quick to sign autographs and hang out with fans.

Here’s me “embracing blur.”

I missed the New Jersey event because my flight experienced a “mechanical malfunction.” What that meant in my case was the windshield of the plane BROKE mid-flight, so we were quickly diverted to Las Vegas and made an emergency landing. Unfortunately Delta Airlines was not able to pull their shit together to get me to the east coast in time to make the event… Pissed off (but glad to be alive), I flew back to LA and had to explain to my boss Peter Tarach why I wasn’t hanging out with JWoww sampling the finest of Jägerbombs the Garden State has to offer. Thankfully Peter is an understanding kind of guy, it must be the Canadian blood in him. So I met up with Walker Wilkerson in Seattle to resume my season long endeavor.

Walker had a good rookie season, and his team is small and has a great grassroots feel. Here they guys trim part of the frame (I believe) to make room for a new intercooler piping setup.

In case you were wondering… Drifting is hard on your tires!

And here’s a sneak peak at the next installment (appearing in the December issue of Modified) with Joon Maeng.

Joon had a bit of bad luck in practice…

…but he is such a nice guy (and talented driver) that the option of canceling his story just because he didn’t qualify never even crossed our minds for a second!

The final installment will be in our January issue, where we follow Dai Yoshihara for the season finale at Irwindale.

For all these photos, I decided to go ahead and have a bit of fun. I took the team colors and used those as the theme for each story, and I added a healthy amount of artificial film grain in Photoshop. Why, you ask? “Why not” I say. I find drift photos to by and large, be quite repetitive. By adding a bit of color and grain, I think I’ve at the very least succeeded in making my shots look “different” than most. Weather they are “good” or not is subjective so I’ll leave that up to you LOL! Either way, I had an amazing time with all the teams this season. Each and everyone I hung out with was super friendly and accommodating, thanks to all!

For the complete stories and more photos, log on to http://www.modified.com/

And make sure to “like” Modified on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Modifiedmagazine

.
.
.
.
.

And here’s one teaser from my recent trip to the American Le Mans Series at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca… I will be doing a long post about this race shortly, just as soon as I have the time to really dive into the photos. I’ve made this into a desktop for anyone who wants it, so by all means, download and share!

Aaaaaaand, what the heck. Here’s two more from the Long Beach Grand Prix!

So that’s about it for now. Stay tuned for more! I promise it won’t be 2 months until I post again!!!

-NH

Our fearless leader Peter Tarach and I have spent a lot of time getting my Civic ready for use (or should I say, abuse) since the last outing, and I can’t wait to shake it down. Tomorrow plays host to a night time event at Streets of Willow up near Palmdale. Streets is a very fun track, with lots of small and technical turns. It favors cars like mine, which are nimble but don’t have a lot of outright horsepower. Last time out, I managed a 1:34.xxx and if I can match that tomorrow I will be happy. At night, it’s harder to go all out because of limited visibility, especially since I am a relatively inexperienced track driver. I just do it for fun, but I also want to improve! (and bragging rights over my buddy Sean http://seanklingelhoefer.com/blog/ is always a plus )

Since the last track weekend at Buttonwillow in January, we have replaced the head gasket, juiced a little more power out of the car, added some safety equipment, and done a bit of general cleanup and fat trimming. As it sits right now, my Civic makes 223 front wheel horsepower out of its naturally aspirated 1.8-liter Honda B-Series motor.

I don’t have any current photos of the car, but I recently spent two days in our El Segundo office photo studio shooting it… And a little bird told me the that around November the car might go into a body shop for a much needed exterior makeover…!

But until then, check out these links for more info on the build and the current setup!

http://www.modified.com/projectcars/modp-1105-1998-honda-civic-project-civic/index.html

http://www.modified.com/projectcars/modp-1107-1998-honda-civic/index.html

There is another installment in the September issue of Modified, on sale now! Make sure to check it out and let me know what you think!!

PS: LONG LIVE TEH ZIP TIESSSSS! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

-NH

This car features body panels made of dry carbon fiber, pieces which I believe are now available for purchase through Buddy Club. It’s not a crazy outlandish car, it’s just really really clean. And all that CF just makes any car guy smile, I don’t care who you are.

Add on top, the AMS Alpha 9 turbocharger upgrade and custom Buddy Club tuned ECU, the resulting +800 ponies is nothing to scoff at!

Instead of going more into the car, I’ll take this opportunity to insert a shameless plug. Go buy the current issue of Modified! You can read all about the GTR in the September issue, I even wrote the story as well!

Support print!

Anywho, as far as the photos are concerned, this set was pretty straight forward. I’ve been trying to stick to a “less is more” attitude with my editorial work these days, so there’s not too much trickery or smoke and mirrors here, I tend to reserve the heavy lifting for cover images or for portfolio pieces. I’m not going to do an in depth image build but rather just kind of share the elements I’ve used for this set. First we start with the base exposure, clean, but pretty boring.

Now I used my trusty Profoto Compact 600 R’s (powered by a Paul C. Buff Vagabond II) to light the carbon fiber and the vinyl livery.

If you’ve ever tried to light a gloss black car, you already know that it doesn’t really work in the traditional sense. Basically black cars just reflect everything around them, they don’t really “light” like a metallic or a flat paint job would. Typically it just ends up just looking like shit if you try and light a gloss black car in the same way you would light any other paint color, and that’s why I’ve chosen to allow the natural light to do the work for me. But because I need the livery and carbon fiber to show up and, dare I say, POP (I hate using that word) I decided to rely on the Profoto strobe’s specularity to carve out the details in a way which natural sun light simply could not do.

If you look closely, you’ll also notice my vintage blue Pocket Wizard receivers… It’s okay, jealousy is the natural response when confronted with something as awesome as my Pocket Wizards. I digress.

The way the shots came together was pretty simple. The biggest pain was masking the livery… UGH! Starting off, I adjusted the background so it had a lot of contrast. The sky that day was awesome, so I wanted to make sure it showed.

Now, I add in the lit portions of the cars body.

This is a difficult livery to really capture. Because the graphics incorporate several shades of grey which are very close in value to each other, I had to just suck it up and mask a lot of this by hand.

And finally, I remove a few distractions from the background, do a few final color and toning adjustments, and perform a lens correction/perspective adjustment.

And that’s that! Make sure to check out the September issue of Modified to see the shots in person, and read about this crazy car!

www.buddyclub.us
www.modified.com

-NH

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

That is all, carry on!

-NH

Here is a great behind the scenes video of the production:

http://vimeo.com/24775104

These images are kind of like half photography half CGI. The photography of the locations was done by Frank Kayser and the bodies of the cars are all CGI, post production has been done by Gloss Post Production.

http://www.kayser-photography.com/

http://www.gloss-postproduction.com/
http://www.facebook.com/porsche/

And that’s that! Must be nice, huh?!

-NH