Lightpainted BMW 335i

This was an experiment that I have been wanting to do for a long time. My good friend, fellow photographer and car lover Ken Volpe (see his amazing work at Transposure.com) and I had been discussing a car calendar project for a few years but never could figure out an easy, portable and affordable solution to shoot cars in the style in which was envisioned.

The challenge was to get the look of a large softbox in a studio without the softbox or the studio. In my research I discovered that shooting lighter colored cars (red, yellow, white, etc...) was fairly easy because the lighter colors would radiate light however; when you got dark cars (black, grey, etc...) which I personally prefer, you were left with only reflections.

I did several tests on my Atlas Gray Porsche 996 Turbo and Sparkling Graphite BMW 335i using strobes but none of theses came out the way I had envisioned. So I had to try something else. I had read about lightpainting and actually did a test using a 1,000,000 candle power flash light with interesting result. I was not getting that broad reflective surface I needed for the smooth, flowing reflections.


This is my Porsche 996 Turbo lit using a flashlight. Several exposures were combined to create this image.

While talking about my dilemma with friends and professional gaffers Jaye Kenyon and Jason Maresch, (click here to visit their company High Contrast Lighting) they mentioned using a KinoFlo tube and that got me thinking. The 4-foot tube would perhaps give me the amount of surface area I was looking for if shot over a long exposure. He let me borrow one so I could try some experiements.

With Laura, my wife and son Iain we went out in the driveway at around 8:00 at night... pitch dark this time of year, and we set-up the tripod, plugged in the kino-flo tube and started shooting. The magic exposure numbers were at f/18 for 15 seconds. After 5 or 6 shots I realized that I would need to combine multipe exposures to get the reflective coverage I was looking for.


This is the primary exposure. You can see my blurred image walking behind the vehicle.


This is the secondary exposure where I walked in front of the car. See the cables and balast for the kino-flo.


This is the two exposures above combined. The second is at 50% opacity and screen overlay.


Here's the mask used to paint out the background elements including myself.


Here's the resulting image after the trash matting.


After some additional level adjustment to finalize the background clean-ups.


Here are the photoshop layers.

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