I like HDR work and cars. It lets you tame the demons of highlight and shadow so you see the whole car and nothing but the car, turn it surreal or who knows what via the simple magic of a PC, and an HDR/tonemapping program.
I still prefer Photomatix as the program of choice for both HDR Generation and tone mapping. In particular the HDR files are much better aligned and easier to work with than those done in Photoshop using the "merge to HDR" function.
The car you see isn't available for sale in the US yet. Give it another 6-8 months and you will see it. It is the 2011 Ford Fiesta slated to fill the sub-compact gap in the Ford line up. It will be a premium small car, IE High content, good quality materials and workmanship. The prototype I drove is near production ready so I think if the driving feel transfers with the great design of this car they will have a hit on their hands. I'll reserve final judgement for when I get my hands on the real deal next year.
How did I come about this chance to photo and blog the car. I've got connections at Ford's Premier Auto Group based in the OC. I contact them and when they have a free car they will let either deliver it or I will pick it up. I get free acess to cars and share my images with them for internal publications only. A win in terms of portfolio building and networking that I hope to parlay into photo for money of automobiles somewhere along the line.
In the interest of integrity I do have to acknowledge that for this shoot the Ford rep did pay for lunch as the shoot went into the lunch hour. (Great conversation, learned a lot about Ford and the direction it is moving).
2 comments:
Awesome! I've been waiting for this little guy for a while now. Glad to hear it's living up to the hype.
As far as HDR goes, have you used Topaz yet? You can get a full 30 day trial from their site (and there's no watermark like with Photomatix). Best part, you can HDR from 1 shot! You should check it out. It's called Topaz Adjust. Just FYI.
Haven't tried Topaz yet, but I will.
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