This term CAT’s Professional Photography students got to practice their skills on a beautiful vintage Porsche.
CAT’s Professional Photography students practiced their product photography in style this term – shooting a beautiful red vintage Porsche. Thank you to Jess Thompson, who has been this car’s proud owner and daily driver for the past 26 years. BTW, this beauty is a 1993 Porsche 933, and the department’s Lead Instructor Grant Robertson talks to us about the project.
“Cars are great objects to photograph as their big reflective surfaces allow you to ‘see’ the light you are sculpting in the scene. But shooting cars isn’t always easy…subject, location, composition and lighting all have to work together for the best images.
In the beginning I looked around but couldn’t find the car I dreamt of, so I decided to build it myself.”
Ferdinand Porsche
For a recent ‘Lighting For Stills’ class we went on the hunt for the perfect combo of subject, location and light. In fact, we did not have to go far as this location exists on the college’s doorstep and it is a photographer’s dream…amazing windows of light and an open-air top deck in an otherwise monotone, concrete structure….the multi-story car park.
Unfortunately, as it is normally full of cars, we have never been able to utilize it before; but thanks to covid restrictions and next to zero commuters we had our chance. Add one rare and immaculate Porsche 911 to this location and it was hard to make a bad image!
These images were made with a combination of diffused natural light (sun and light cloud cover) and strobe lighting to fill and illuminate the shadow areas. Some of the strobes are placed within the family of angles to give highlights on the surface, others are placed outside of the family of angles so as to illuminate and fill the shadows but the viewer will see no reflection.
Thank you to Jeff Thompson for bringing his car down for the day, Jeff has helped us with a few LFS projects and it’s always great to have him on set.”
