MX5 Photo shoot
MX5 Photo shoot
This is Kevin’s very rare MK2 MX5, one of only two cars of this colour and spec in the UK! So if like me, you were thinking you don’t see many in that colour – it’s true, you really don’t!
Kevin and his friend Simon made the trip up north from Norfolk for the photo shoot, which I’ve combined with a Tutorial on how to both shoot the car, and edit the shots with Photoshop.
We met up at Sherburn Aero Club in West Yorkshire and started the day off with a brew – how else?! From there we made a short journey to the first of two quiet country road locations where we could begin photographing the car.
After taking a number of shots we made a short trip over to the second location. As we settled into this new site and the car positioned how I wanted it with a twisty road section as a backdrop, we got a surprise visit from the local farmer – who informed us he was about to bring his Cows down the road!
Sure enough, he did just that! With the cars moved well out of harms way, the herd of cows ventured down the road, straight through the location and into the field opposite – I don’t think anyone could have predicted that!
Even with the distraction, the photo shoot went ahead. I took a selection of close-up, or detail shots and once we were happy we’d taken enough we moved onto the second part of the tutorial – the editing.
Photoshop - Kevin and Simon were new to photo editing, so I guided them step by step through my workflow from importing the shots, the benefits of shooting in RAW, adjustments to contrast, colour, tone, gradient filters, noise reduction – and much more. All of which is non-destructive to the original photograph.
From there we moved on to more advanced Photoshop training, covering: Layering or stacking images, cleaning up artifacts, layer types, masks, adjustment layers and compositing.
Here’s how the shots turned out.
If your interested in a photo shoot of your own, or a combination ‘shoot and tutorial as we did here then get in touch to discuss things further.
Automotive Photography, by Phil Grayston
