Joy, Pain, & Distressed

...things to do while practising isolation.

I haven't done any tabletop photography for a while. But while I was cleaning one of my model cars last night I thought, "why not do a quick set-up and shot with it?".

So I took over the dining table and detached my model F40 Ferrari from it's display stand.

 After deciding on the angle I wanted to use, I locked the camera in place on a tripod. Next I set up the lighting to get the mood I wanted for the final image. I knew I wanted the scene to be taking place at night in low lighting conditions, so I set the exposure on my camera to view the ambient light in the scene as almost completely black. Once the settings for this was achieved, I was now at liberty to completely control how the light would work for me using artificial lighting.

I worked with 2 speedlites set to low power and also used a small red LED light which I placed inside the model car. To prevent overspill of the light from the speedlites, I used spotlight modifiers to create a more direct and controllable beam of light.

The top of the raised engine compartment also has a glass panel which allowed me to direct some of the light through it to give illumination to the engine. 

The despondent figure sitting on the back of the car is myself. using the same camera settings, but repositioning the lights enabled me to keep the shot looking the same as the rest of the scene so that when I comped it into the final image, it looked as if it was part of the scene all along.

Finally, I 'distressed' the image by using some texture images I have, blending the texture into the image until I was happy with what I was seeing.

Main Image

• Location: Sittee Point, Belize.
• Camera: Nikon DSLR, crop frame.
• F number: f/3.5
• Focal length 50mm APS lens
• Exposure: 1/80
• ISO: 100
• Manual
• Flash fired (3 light set-up)