Zac Fisher Photo Blog

It’s that time of the year again! In case you weren’t around in the late ’80s, this year’s Christmas card is based on the Back to the Future 2 movie poster:

I was hoping the same lighting could be achieved by two hard lights – one in the car shooting out and one for rim on the right – but I ended up needing 4 lights to do the job, largely because Doc Brown is much taller than Marty McFly, where as I am roughly the same height as Nicole, so most of the light coming out of the car was only hitting her. I ended up compensating for this by adding a second rim light high and on the left side, and adding some fill from the front with the LP160. Still didn’t end up quite right though, but we were freezing and didn’t really want to spend the extra time tweaking the setup:

Here’s the base shot:

Cutout zone:

After cutout:

Snow on the ground:

Lightning:

Add some glow to mask the crappy cut lines

Add some falling snow:

Crop it down, add some text, put on the finishing touches and BOOM:

That’s all there is to it!

Why you might ask? We’re keeping the tradition alive!

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Texturing is easy as pie and can often add that little touch you are looking for. The process couldn’t be simpler:

1. Grab a texture and place it on a layer above your photo
2. Experiment with different blending modes for this layer until you find the one that looks best
3. That’s it!

Ok I guess it’s a little more complicated than that – but not really! Let’s go over a couple of different scenarios and the complications that arise.

Here I’ve got my fully processed base photo:

and the texture I’m going to lay over it.

After clicking through the blending modes, Overlay looks best for this one.

It’s hard to see in this photo, but I’m getting a little bit too much texture in some areas where I don’t want it (on the arms and face), so I go to my texture layer and mask it off in these places.

The effect is pretty subtle but looks great when you view it large!

Here’s another scenario:

I’ve got my base photo

but I’m not really pleased with how it looks after normal photoshop processing so I’m thinking in this case that I’m going to use a texture to make the picture instead of just adding a little to it

After experimenting with the blending modes, I’ve determined that I like Hard Light on the background, but that it’s too harsh on the face

where as Soft Light is subtle enough on the face, but doesn’t enhance the background enough

Easy fix – add a couple of layer masks and BOOM, you got both!

Once again, the difference is pretty subtle and hard to see at this size – but you’ll discover all this when you do it on your own. Check out the final super large!

So that’s it for my little texturetorial. Don’t forget to grab your free high-res textures and give it a go!

Texture 1

Texture 2

And while I’m happy to provide you lovely people with my textures, I want to point out that it is incredibly easy and useful to shoot your own! Take a few minutes before your clients arrive and look your location for something that will make a good texture overlay. Both of the textures from this tutorial were shot at the same location as the photos:

When you do photography for money, it’s often easy to fall into a sort of creative “auto pilot mode” and simply try and adopt the customer’s vision for the project and give them what they want in the most timely and efficient manner. While this is a great strategy for keeping clients happy and making a quick buck, after a while it leaves you starved for the feeling of creative satisfaction that got you interested in photography in the first place. Not to mention, if you are just doing the same old thing over and over again you aren’t pushing your limits and advancing your craft. Once again, it’s easy to keep on doin’ what you do best, but it isn’t as satisfying as growing and improving.

So I went looking for inspiration in the same place I usually do: Dave Hill’s portfolio. Now if any of you are actually following along, I can hear you thinking “Wait a minute! All this talk about ‘progress’ and you’re looking at the same old Dave Hill pictures that we all thought were amazing back in 2007?”. Well yeah, I’m looking for inspiration in the same place, but I’m looking at his work in a new way. Flickr user Molesarecoming said it best in a beat-to-death discussion thread regarding the “Dave Hill Look”:

“I’ve been chasing silly post processing methods for about one year now, jumping from one bread crumb to another. It’s only recently that I suspect the “secret” could be simply opening my eyes, and so I stopped doing these over-all-filter-massacres and started working on the elements of the picture as if they were separate entities”

Boom. There is no magic lighting setup or post processing technique that will net you the Dave Hill look. Sure those things help, but they are not the essence of what makes his work awesome. It’s concept and compositing. His images are compositions with careful and extensive art direction.

With all this in mind, I threw together a little composite project this afternoon in the comfy confines of my office.

The end result (at the top of this post) is pretty grotesque, but the experience was worth it! Here are a few things I learned to look out for next time:

1. Light the background photo, or work close to the ambient level. I was shooting strictly at f14 because I didn’t want to have to worry too much about focusing since I was going to be the subject. However this resulted in the contrast ratio of the lit subject being drastically different than that of the background. Oops! I was able to get it close in post, but it’s a bad habit to shoot thinking “oh I’ll fix it in post”.
2. Take note of natural light sources and try to simulate them. Honestly, I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, but it just so happens that I placed the main light (a giant octobox) at the same angle and in the general location of the natural light sources in this photo: the window and the monitor. If it were placed elsewhere it would cause a lot of issues.
3. Similarly, don’t invent (too much) light where it shouldn’t be. One of the glaring problems with my composite is that the rim light on the left hand side is WAY to strong and looks like it’s just coming from no where. This needs to be more subtle. It will still be unrealistic, but in a fantastic cinematic way instead of a grossly overdone way.
4. Take your time, get it right. I’ve got the patience of a jack russel terrier, so this is always an issue for me. I was too excited to see the end result that I didn’t take the time to come up with an interesting concept or make sure all the lighting was correct. However, this was meant to be a quick and dirty learning project so I’m not too mad at myself for not taking my time with it.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but you better believe I’m going to keep at it and kick out some bad ass composites in the near future.

Finally dumped that crappy old seat mold and scored this fine piece from the master himself, Steve Carpenter over at www.cb750cafe.com.

I’ve been looking at so many Classified Moto’s lately that I’m obsessed with the bare metal look, so that’s what I’m going to roll with on the tank – at least for now.

No idea at this point though what color I want for the seat and the front fender. Any ideas?

My buddy Tim at Kaos Customs started painting the engine this week. Can’t wait to get this sucker back in the frame and start putting it all back together again!

Here are the “for reals”, non-HDR pics from my shoot with Kaos Customs’ ‘77 Iron Head. Rumor has it that these may end up in a popular motorcycle publication to be released in the next few months … stay tuned!

Switched it up and did a few lit shots as well. Here’s the lighting setup I used: 2B800’s through 7″ reflectors. powered by Vagabond II and trigged with cybersyncs.

aaaaand here’s one that I grunged the hell out of, just for fun.

I’ve really tried to get away from HDR in the last few years. Sometimes it yields cool results, but mostly it makes a mess of a photo – causing irreparable noise and a lot of other weird things to happen to people’s faces.

But with motorcycles, it’s a little different. They’re stationary objects, so if you shoot with a tripod you can achieve true HDR instead of faking it using a single RAW file like I used to. Are the results way better? Meh. At least the noise is under control. I still don’t like the process of tone-mapping though. Moving around the sliders, hoping to achieve some sort of balance amid the high dynamic chaos, is not my idea of a clean process.

Either way, this is my first foray back into HDR photography:

This is achieved by cramming 5 different exposures into one image, and then adjusting the balance of highlights and shadows using a mystical process called “tone-mapping”.

The result is something like this:

BTW, that’s a custom ‘77 Iron Head built by Kaos Customs and given away at the Cyclefest Expo.

… this bike down to the frame to get everything cleaned up and ready for paint. Thought I’d post a couple progress pics.

Lonely frame with no motor

Parts pile (not the most organized approach, I know)

This engine was a giant pain in the ass to get out. I can’t believe I attempted it solo, because that thing is HEAVY. Luckily I was able to get my buddy Tim from Kaos Customs to help me weasel it out – but it took more than a minute.

I scored a set of ‘92 GSX600F Katana carbs on Ebay for $100. I over paid by about $99 though, because these were the filthiest carbs I have ever seen. As soon as I unboxed them I knew I had my work cut out for me. But I got ‘em clean up real nice and I can’t wait to bolt them on. By the way, I used the pine sol soak method to clean my first two sets of carbs – but for these babies I switched to good old fashioned carb dip and WOW! What a difference. That stuff will take more gunk off in 30 minutes than the pine sol will over night.

Here’s a before and after of one of the float bowls

Here’s everything put back together

I wish I would have gotten these bolted on and running before I pulled the engine, but I was just having a hell of a time fashioning the boots out of radiator hose to get them to sync up with the stock spacing on the engine head. I figured it’ll be a lot easy to do on the bench than in the frame.

Side note – I saw a piece on CNN about an incredible bike shop in Richmond, VA with some really inspiring builds and photos. Feast your eyes on www.classifiedmoto.com and the exquisite photography of Adam Ewing .

Spent this weekend putting together a new website for my buddy’s custom chop shop, Kaos Customs.

We’re still waiting on the domain name to transfer, but you can get a sneak peak of the test site at http://www.zacfisherphoto.com/kaos/index.html. Comments and suggestions welcome!

In the mean time, you can spice up your desktop with this sweet Kaos Customs background that I made.

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Here are the pictures from Bobby and Kellie’s wedding at The Royal Oak Country Club in Amelia Ohio on 4/23/2011. read more »

Last week I cleaned the carbs using the Pine Sol method and this amazingly helpful guide.

My first installation after cleaning was pretty discouraging – they still leaked gas and the bike wouldn’t start. I pulled them for a second time and discovered that the choke mechanism wasn’t hooked up correctly and the sync’s were waaaaaaay off. So after tightening everything down and doing a quick bench sync, I popped them in for the second and BOOM, she lives! No leaks either (for now). She won’t run without the choke on though. When she dies out at the beginning of the video it is because I turned the choke off, and she struggles towards the middle of the video when I start to push the choke in a bit. This is probably on account of having the stock air box off. It can’t be good for her to be sucking straight unfiltered air like that, so I didn’t run her for long.

All this work is in vain anyhow because as soon as I can find a nice cheap set of GSXR or Katana carbs, I’m going to put those in! I just wanted to hear her run