There are alot of people out there that just cant wrap their minds around the fact that many photographers use multiple photos to create a single photo. Most of the time it just cant be done with one shot, atleast not by me lol. I have gotten into a good habit of doing many different exposures with different lighting set-ups for one image. This helps me cause I dont have enough strobes to light the body of the car, the wheels and front grill. I make do with what I have! This is also helps you avoid blown out skies. In this blog post I will show you the five images I used to build my final product and tell you what parts of each image I used. Just a little sneak peak at what I go though after the shoot.
This exposure I stopped down and used no strobes. I did this to get a decent sky and background….which I used in the final image
For this one I strobed the side of the car…which I used in the final image…
Here I strobed the wheels…which I used in the final image…
With this exposure I strobed the front grill…which I used in the final image along with the side windows because they have less reflections…
I used this photo cause the windshield looked better…
After “piecing together” these 5 shots I went about my editing process as I normally do adjusting contrast, saturation, burning and dodging and playing with the levels and curves. I also cropped and rotated the image and this is what I ended up with…
If you go back looking at the five images I used to build this one you can clearly see the parts of each photo that i pulled to make the finished product. Hopefully this post enlightened some people on how much work it takes to get a decent photograph and inspired other photographers to stop being lazy and do what it takes to step their work up a little. Multiple exposures….alot of work and time consuming but the end result is very much worth it!
Please take the time to leave me a comment and let me know what you think, good or bad!
#1 by Ryan on November 29th, 2009
Looks great. Any information about combining multiple images?
#2 by Leo Oliphant on November 29th, 2009
That’s crazy I didn’t know so much work goes into one photo, but your hard work shows, the pictures look awesome
#3 by Chad on November 29th, 2009
Ryan-I use a combination of the clone stamp and lasso tool’s to pull parts of the image onto another image.
Leo-Thanks dude, it is alot of work but its worth it….atleast to me.
#4 by Eric DeJuan on November 29th, 2009
Can you show me how to do automotive photography?
#5 by Chad on November 29th, 2009
ROFL i sure can as long as you teach me portraiture photography =P
#6 by daniel on November 30th, 2009
So, after you take pictures of those 5 cars do you layer them on top of each other when you edit? or do you just take the specific parts from each picture and put them together at the end. i am big time noob so forgive me haha. great pictures ma
#7 by Chad on November 30th, 2009
kinda lol basically what i did was start with the 1st photo and pull parts that were lit or had less reflections from the others onto that one. its like building a puzzle. once i had all the “good parts” pulled onto one photo then i went about my normal editing process
#8 by Joachim on December 1st, 2009
Thanks for sharing man! I love seeing stuff like this!
#9 by Chad on December 1st, 2009
its no problem at all! im going to try and do some more stuff like this soon
#10 by Dean on December 5th, 2009
Love your blog and your helpful info. Keep it coming!!
#11 by Chad on December 7th, 2009
thanks alot dean!
#12 by Perri on December 9th, 2009
Hey Chad! awesome shot! This will probably seem noobish, but I’m wondering how do you meter your images before you shoot them?
#13 by Chad on December 9th, 2009
to be honest i normally shoot a couple under exposed, one with proper exposure and even a couple over exposed. once i have them pulled up on the screen i go with what looks best. i would rather trash six images and use one, rather than meter wrong and not have that one shot i needed. safe is better than sorry like thay say lol
#14 by Owen on April 5th, 2010
That is excellent work! Keep it up!
#15 by Slabysz on May 18th, 2010
When people say, “pulled exposure,” are they referring to the high ND that allows for a slow shutter speed?