Smoothie King Print Ad

I recently worked on an extensive photo retouching/compositing job for my friend Jim Arbogast... a great people photographer. The project was for Smoothie King and the advertising agency St. John and Partners based in Jacksonville, Florida.

Jim and I were trying to recreate the surrealistic look that has become quite popular in today's photography, especially in print advertising design. Jim shot on location in 40-degree weather with over a dozen scantly clad models. The set-up was quite impressive with many strobes set-up in various locations to get the hard rim lighting which is imperative in this surreal look.

After about 4 hours of set-up and light testing they shots the frames they needed by mixing various models in different locations knowing that in post-production we would be able to combine frames to get the best expressions for the final composite.



Above is the starting frame. As you can see there are a variety of challenges to overcome but because it is a well staged and lit shot there is much potential. First and most obvious was the dismal sky which was to be completely replaced. Next was the palm tree that due to the incliment winter weather was in pretty bad shape.

Other major issues included the un-even sunlight as you can see a pretty serious shadow cutting accross several of the models in the midground. By using a combination of exposure curves, lightpainting and color balance correction I was able to even everything out.

The client also had many specific requests for changes in what models from which takes were placed in the final shot. the girl in the pool leaning over the side was the first to be replaced followed by the three ladies in the lounge chairs in the middle of the shot. Several other takes were used to add people in the far background to the left and various other places in the shot... see if you can find them all.



Above is the final print ad with ad copy and Smoothie King logo. As you can see all the issues in the original shot have been fixed along with several other minor color and level corrections. All in all everyone with Smoothie King and the agency, St John & Partners, were very happy with the results and I would like to wish them success with the campaign.



This shot is the director's cut of the image. Jim and I prefered a previous version of the compisite where we used a sun and different variation of the clouds in the sky. We also wanted to further pump the mid-tone contrast for a bit more surrealism. In all I spent close to 15 hours working on the shot.

Please check out more of Jim's work at http://www.jimarbogast.com/. You can also find more work from St. John and Partners at http://www.sjp.com/.

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.

If you like this image and would like to purchase one for yourself, please click HERE to order yours today.

The Hand of Hands

This was a fun little experiment I did after seeing an example online. The trick is to shoot the mini hands at the correct angle which requires a bit of planning. I did not do it 100% right in this exercise if you look at the shadows but it gives it a bit of a surreal appearance.

M Roadster Poster Design for Gordon Buckland

During Cars for the Cure on February 2nd, I met BMW officianado Gordon Buckland. This witty Australian had an insanely modified M Roadster that I felt was definitely worthy of a killer poster. Below is the final design. We are sorting out matting and framing options but this is sure to be a gorgeous piece once finished.

This is a conceptual visualization of the proposed matting and framing for the finished piece.

This is the full-size finished print.


This is the before and after.

See images from Cars for the Cure 2008.