This is an article by our guest author Javier Rosano who today brings you a detailed tutorial to achieve a curious night photograph of an abandoned vehicle. And if you want to delve deeper into night photography, do not miss the mega guide that we have prepared for you with tips, tricks and a lot of inspiration. Now yes, I leave you with Javier.
Abandoned vehicle night photography is one of the most difficult disciplines. Lighting schemes are complex, various tools are used to provide light, and a lot of practice is required. In this article I tell you how I illuminated this SIMCA 1200:
- the day visit
- the lighting scheme
- the necessary material
- field work
- post processing
DAY VISIT
It is always advisable to visit the locations during the day. In this way you can check the possible dangers (holes in the ground, broken glass, potential landslides, etc.) or which are the best framings.
In the case of abandoned vehicles, this visit is, if possible, even more important. It may be that the vehicle that you have seen on Google Maps or in another night photograph is no longer in the state you expect (being outdoors, and with many people visiting it, it is very normal for it to deteriorate quickly) or that it has even disappeared. .
During the daytime visit of this car, I was analyzing the environment and the possible difficulties when composing or framing. Looking straight ahead, there was a hillside to the left of the car, so if I had been framing the car from the right, most of the sky would have been hidden. Therefore, the classic options were reduced to a frontal or lateral framing from the left.
I also checked other framings not as common as the previous ones (from inside the vehicle and from the rear), but none of them convinced me. Finally, and after analyzing all the aforementioned frames, the one I liked the most was the one from the left.
In any case, and if you have time, you should not stop trying all the possible frames. It may be that when lighting, or for some reason that you have not previously considered, another framing is better than the one initially chosen. In my case, I tried all those mentioned, confirming that the best option was the one previously chosen.
LIGHTING SCHEME
Once the framing is chosen, I recommend you make a lighting scheme on the photograph of the daytime visit. This scheme is nothing more than putting the lighting you have in mind on paper, representing the different lighting sources that you are going to use, light temperatures, directions and even intensities. If you are going to take a single photograph, it may not be so necessary (although you will have done a job that will save you time at night), but when there are several frames and with different lighting, you will save having to remember each of the schemes or having to think about how to do each of the illuminations.
To make this scheme you can work directly with the photo printed on paper, although I recommend using a mobile application, such as Evernote or Google Keep.
In the following image you can see the lighting scheme that I used for this location.
- A warm, low-power torch to illuminate the headlights (headlights reflect light, so a stronger torch could burn out the headlights)
- some boxes of colored LEDs to give the orange tone to the interior
- overhead lighting using a cold flashlight
NECESSARY MATERIAL
To take this photograph the only special equipment you need are flashlights. In my case, and as I mentioned before:
- a mechanic's flashlight
- a warm low power
- some colored LED boxes
The rest of the equipment is the normal one required for night photography:
- camera with manual mode
- wide angle lens
- tripod
In addition, for this photograph it was not necessary for the lens to be bright, since I used a medium aperture (f/7.1), nor for the camera to respond well to high ISOs, because I used a relatively low one (400).
This way, all you need is a camera with manual mode, a wide lens, a tripod, and flashlights. The equipment I used was a full frame camera and a wide angle lens, with a focal range of 16-35mm.
PHOTO CAPTURE
For this type of photography I usually look for nights with some moonlight. As you have seen before, the aperture and ISO used make the sky quite dark. The light of the moon increases the luminosity of the sky, so that the light of the sky is more balanced with that of the lower part. In this case, the moon was to the right of the vehicle, out of the frame.
I already had the framing and lighting scheme planned, so come night (for this photograph it was not necessary to wait for astronomical dusk, since I did not want to capture a large number of stars or the milky way), I just had to practice the illumination.
INTERIOR LIGHTING
My recommendation is to start working with the simplest lighting, in this case the interior. I placed a box of colored LEDs in each of the seats so that the lighting was as homogeneous as possible and I adjusted the intensity and tone until I got what I was looking for. For this I considered an exposure time of 30 seconds.
GENERAL LIGHTING
Once the interior lighting was achieved (the LED boxes were constantly on, thus making sure that the lighting was not going to change from one photo to another and that I was not going to waste time turning them off and on), it was time for the overhead lighting. Starting just over the front of the car, I worked my way to the rear, taking care not to let the camera see the light source.
HEADLIGHT ILLUMINATION
Finally, the lighting of the headlights, the most complicated. The idea was that the beam of light would cover just the surface of the headlight, without illuminating the rest of the car. In addition, it was necessary to prevent the reflected light from illuminating me and capturing the camera. To do this, it was necessary to adjust the distance at which it illuminated and, therefore, the opening of the beam to continue covering the entire headlight: larger the closer it was and more closed the further away.
Once all the illuminations were mastered, I could start with the final photograph. In my case, the lighting order was to start by lighting the headlights to finish lighting the vehicle from the front (since I had lit the headlights, I didn't waste time moving) towards the rear. The time needed for this illumination was 30 seconds, so it was not necessary to adjust the intensity of the LED boxes (which I had calculated for 30 seconds of exposure).
Also, to save some time, I set the camera to have a two second delay between pressing the shutter button and releasing the shutter. So I could position myself in front of the headlights, ready to illuminate without wasting exposure time. This delay can also be achieved with an intervalometer or remote trigger.
PARAMETERS
The camera settings for this shot were
- 16mm
- f/7.1
- 30 seconds
- ISO 400
- white balance (WB) 4600K
- and of course in RAW
In the following image you can see the image before starting the processing phase.
INDICTED
Once home, the processing work began. With Lightroom I developed the RAW file, applying sharpening, noise reduction, lens profile corrections, slight adjustments to the white balance and recovering information in shadows and highlights to work better later in Photoshop. In the following image you can see the result once it has gone through Lightroom.
PROCESSED IN PHOTOSHOP
It was time to process it in Photoshop. This is the most subjective part of everything described, so it will depend both on how far you want to go (higher or lower degree of processing), and on your personal tastes (night aspect, white balance, contrast, saturation, etc). I applied the same workflow that I usually use for night photography. Mainly, working on the atmosphere of the photo, adjusting the tone of lights and shadows, applying levels to give it a more night look to recover the contrast that I lost in Lightroom, and getting some detail out of the shadows.
However, as you can see, the photo did not need much processing, perhaps the recovery of detail in the shadows being the part that changes the most from the RAW to the final image.
This is an article by Javier Rosano, who has been a fan of photography for twenty years. Although he started with the landscape (a field that he has not abandoned and with which he continues to enjoy), what really hooked him was night photography. After several courses and some frustrating first outings, he managed to capture his ideas in the photographs. Now he is dedicated to helping people get control of night photography, giving courses, private workshops and doing supervised outings. You can follow him on his website and on Facebook.
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