Rikervp: Grease is the Word - Rikervp Zuid Holland Fotograaf

Grease is the Word - Rikervp Zuid Holland Fotograaf .

Last week I shot a themed foto shoot for a friend of mine Patricia de Rues whom is a lovely lady who I occasionally work with. Particia is an MUA or make up artist as we say and works for herself under the company PR Haar & Visagiestudio in Rotterdam. She came to me with this idea of hers and wanted me to shoot it for her. Below are some of the images we shot that dark evening.
The light for this shoot were to small flashes triggered by pocket wizards and most of the shots you see here we basically shot at | ISO 320 | 55mm - 105mm | F10 | 2.5 sec |
due to the fact that we had no additional lighting available such as spot lights or any kind of lighting in the yard of this location I had a assistant hold their cell phone to the face of one of the models just to get a focus lock for the shot as it was so dark out. Note to self, always pack your video lamp.

Overall, big things can be done in a small area if one opens up their mind and start to think outside the box when shooting on location. We don't always know what the location will look like when we arrive to it for the first time... until we actually get inside it. Look around see what is possible, look for non busy areas when shooting this is usually a big help when you want to extract an item or person from your shot to use in another composite shot.

It it also easy to create a black wall for your self as well just by upping your Fstop and bringing your lighting in a little close to your subject but also at the same time have a little distance in the background so your lighting falls to black behind the subject. Bearing in mind what you want to keep in your shot for use later in post compositing.

This as you can see is a composite image, as space was very limited so I decided to construct this shoot as a shooting for composites shoot and finish them off in post adding the illusion of what really wasn't there that night later in post.

1. The first image (upper left) was the base image for this composite, a duplicate layer was made from this and Topaz labs remask was used to separate the model from the background a little so I could insert the other layers (images) in between so to speak.

2. Next the car was added again using "topaz labs remask" to extract it from an image I shot in Canada earlier this past summer. Flames were added to the car from a shot of fire that I shot from my Phoenix shoot a month ago, flames always come in handy at some point.

3. The beautiful model Denise, was also cut out of her image using "topaz lab's remask" to use as the driver of the car. Her skin tones and texture was slightly adjusted with "topaz labs clean 3" prior to remasking this image.

4. The next image to be used and added to set is the "snack bar" sign to reflect the at the drive-in grease theme and just added a little mood to the overall image.

5. The images were all brought in together with some slight masking here and there to balance out the image and shadows and shading we added to increase the realistic look into the image. I also adjusted the light levels and crushed the blacks a little to give the image that film look. and the final step always is sharpening.

Below are other shots from this shoot also with some degree of added effects using Topaz lab's remask plug-ins for Photoshop mostly for this application. Other products of Topaz labs were used in some degree in some of the images such as topaz lab's detail and clean 3 and or topaz labs clarity to add a slight touch to the image.