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In today's Slanted Lens lesson, we're out on location in downtown Los
Angeles shooting for Pilot Freight Services. We're shooting a composite
image that's going to require us to shoot chrome on location. Our shot is
for a print ad that Pilot will run in consumer magazines. Let's get started
and see what we can do.
We blocked off a lane on Hope Street in Los Angeles. It looks into
downtown, so we can shoot our truck in the right position to match the
comp. Here's the comp that the agency sent over, that will serve as a guide
for our final image. The image has 4 main elements: First we have the
background, which is the cityscape in the background. We have the driver
that's in the truck. We have the mirror, and then we have the nose of the
truck.
The chances of these physical shapes of the 3 foreground elements working
in one shot seems almost impossible to me. We definitely are going to have
to composite these together. I brought a mirror that we attached to a C-
stand to shoot separately. That gave us the freedom to place the mirror
anywhere in the frame that we wanted to. This really saved us when we on
location because it became the element that we could move around to make
everything work.
Here's our first shot of the mirror. In the chrome, we see reflections of
all the surrounding buildings and the street; it's way too busy. Shooting a
chrome mirror outside will create its own challenges. Shooting chrome is as
much about what it reflects as it is about what light you aim at it. In
this case, we put up a 4x8 foam core that we reflected into the mirror and
the chrome frame. The foam core is way too dark and it's going to need
light on it.
We'll use a Dynalight Strobe Head coming from our camera left to rim the
chrome mirror and to brighten the foam core. This gives us the look of sun
hitting the chrome frame on the camera left side. The mirror's been moved
slightly so our foam core is not covering the whole mirror. We moved the
foam core back into place so it covers the reflection in the mirror and the
whole chrome of the mirror. Then we dialed the light up that's hitting the
edge of the mirror and the foam core so it's a little brighter now, a
little cleaner.
The mirror is a little too uniform; it looks too studio-lit. I asked my
assistant to hold up a tree branch to see what it would do. When held in
the right place, it reflected into the chrome and made it look like things
around the area were reflecting into it. We want to break that reflection
up just a little bit in the chrome so it doesn't look so uniform and feels
more like it's in this environment.
As a backup, I shot a frame with just a white background behind the chrome
to make it easier for Julene to outline it. Then I traded it out and used a
black background. I do this so Julene can outline the image easily. I just
want to give her as many options as possible.
Using this same rim light from camera left side, we shot the driver's
reflection in the mirror. He's sitting in the Pilot truck. We can't see the
nose of the truck, at all. Actually, this truck has no nose. We're going to
have to photograph a different truck with a longer nose to add this
element.
We tape our mirror to the existing mirror. This gives us a good image of
the driver to strip into the chrome mirror that we just shot. He's getting
that same nice sunlight look from the Dynalight head on the left-hand side.
We now shot several shots of our background with no mirror. We did some in
focus and out of focus. We did some HDR to be able to pull the shadows out
and just played around a little bit with this background. We're getting
closer to having all the elements now. We just need the nose of the truck.
We're going to have to go to the Pilot facility to shoot a different truck
to make this happen.
Here's the truck nose that we shot. We set up with the strobe off the
camera left side to light the side of the truck. It looks great and will
fit into the composite very nicely. Here's our final image after Julene
did the compositing and then added a high pass effect and gradient map to
the image in Photoshop.
Shooting chrome is a reflection process. You want to reflect a nice, white
surface into the chrome, and then light that surface. It's very similar to
a mirror. It's much easier lit with a reflection of a white surface than
light on the chrome surface itself.
I hope you learned a little bit about lighting chrome. We're going to come
back and show you how to do this in the studio in a lesson very soon.
A special shout out thanks to Pilot Freight Services. They're a great
client to allow us to use their images in our lessons. Keep those cameras
rolling. Keep on clicking.
Shortly after I got my Canon 5D Mark II, the question became, how do I
stabilize this camera? The solution was very simple; the Redrock Micro-Rigs
were the best out there at that time and continue to be so now. I got a Captain Stubling rig;
had a great follow focus, a great setup that I
could use, made it very simple to hand-hold it, made it very fluid.
They came out recently with a new follow focus that I think is really an
advantage over the old ones. One, it has hard stops. It is so nice. I can
have two stops; I've got a beginning and an end. I can set my far point; I
can set my near point. For me, that was key. This was a very important
piece of equipment that I had to get. I can't say enough about this Redrock
Micro-Focus. It's very smooth. The gearbox is extremely smooth, a great
piece of equipment.
A little shout-out to Redrock Micro; they've been there from the very
beginning with great camera stabilization and continue to have features
that help us move forward as the cameras change. This is a great feature.
I'm excited to have it and I use it on my rig every single day that I
shoot. Thank you, Redrock Micro.
Remember to subscribe to The Slanted Lens so you don't miss out on any of
the upcoming lessons. We have some great stuff in store for you. We've got
great giveaways; it will start with a Tamron lens coming up next month, so
look forward for that.