Audi R8
I woke up this morning and found out there was a car show going on just a few minutes down the road from me at the Albuquerque International Support Airport. It even had free admissions so I packed up my Nikon D750 with Tamron 15-30mm lens attached and headed down Gibson Blvd SE. This show was the Eurocars version, so of course only European cars were featured, which is fine with me! Sadly though, no Aston Martins.
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Audi R8 supercar at Crown Audi in Clearwater - Nikon D300 f/11 ISO 200 5-exposure HDR - orange background added digitallyWhile photographing an Audi A3 premiere event at Crown Audi in Clearwater, I took a moment to make a photograph of an Audi R8 supercar that was also on site. It was parked just outside the greenhouse like showroom, which made for a pretty good background, but when I was shooting it I already had in mind I would remove it from the existing background and put it on a digital one.
Below is the existing background HDR image. Despite the complexity of the background, it was not too complicated to use the Quick Select tool in Photoshop and cut out the Audi R8 onto an empty layer. I chose an orange gradient digital background as recently I am starting to really like that color (also used for a headshot).
The same Audi R8 as above in its original setting at Crown Audi in Clearwater Florida - 5-exposure HDR
One day it would be nice to be able to just shoot a car in a large studio with an existing white background for an even easier and more efficient editing process.
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"Essence of the Audi R8"
I photographed this Audi R8 at the Cars & Couture event at Tampa International Jet Center. There was very limited space to get any shot and from no angle was there any kind of clean background. The rear three-quarters view I felt was the best composition given the constraints knowing that I would ultimately remove the car from its real surroundings. The following is the digital editing process I went through in making the final image you see above which I feel shows the essence of the Audi R8.
I initially thought I could keep the existing cement floor background only making the upper half of the image a digital white background. However, I was not happy with the lack of consistency in how the floor looked from left to right as well as having no good natural cut off point for it. I never actually removed the floor from the background. Through several editing steps it became lightened and smoothed out. The silhouette filter in Silver Efex Pro essentially made it disappear, but critically leaving the natural shadows under the R8. Although much of the body of the R8 was also lost in appying this filter, I liked that. The remaining view of the car, basically all the black trim including the unique "blade" air intake and the black wheels, still showed enough for a knowledgeable viewer to know it was an Audi R8.
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