The making of the Morgan image

When I posted the last blog, I said I'd revisit the image and go through the steps to create it. This image was shot with one camera, one speedlight and one umbrella as a light modifier to spread and soften the light. So how did I manage to light the wheels and spread the light across the whole car with just a single light and modifier ? Well if you hadn't guessed already, this is a composite image, meaning that it's a series of shots that have been combined into one final result.

So the first thing to do was take a sequence of images, lighting the car from the top. I secured a SB900 Speedlight to a light stand so I could stand behind the car but hold a light out above it, pointed downwards. With the camera on a tripod and set to self-timer, I pressed the shutter and ran around the back of the car holding the light out above it. I started at the front of the car, took a shot, then moved along the car taking another shot every couple of feet.

Once the sequence with the car lit from above were complete, I then took two further shots, illuminating the two wheels from the side.

Once the raw images have been shot, the next job is to transfer them to the computer and import them into Photoshop. All in all I shot 9 images that needed to be processed. Once in Photoshop, 8 of the images were copied and pasted into the 9th as new layers. By setting the blending mode to 'lighten' for each layer, only the lighter parts of each individual image bleed through.

Once all the images are combined, the fully illuminated car is then visible. However, the combined image also shows the speedlight and umbrella over the car from each shot and now we need to remove those. By selecting each layer in the image and adding a layer mask it is then possible to paint over the parts of the image we don't want to bleed through. Select the colour black and the brush tool, then you can paint out the areas as shown in the image below where I've started to paint over the umbrella on the left to remove it from the image.

Once the areas above the car have been painted out in each layer, you're left with the final image ! A little crop to centre-up the image was all that was then required ! There you have it - how to shoot a large still-life object using only one light and a modifier.