So I’ve had my Mini Cooper for a few months and its an absolute blast to drive. Think of it as a go kart on steroids. Tight handling, zippy acceleration and all in all an extremely comfortable ride.

I’ve been meaning to do a photo shoot of the car for a while and I came up with this concept. Having had a lack of sunshine during this “Summer” in Vancouver, I took the one clear day in a long time to take photos of the Mini. I wanted to create a production style effect that would be fit for commercial use. The theme I had in mind was “The Calm Before the Storm”, which was to imply the unleashing of power and in the case of the Mini Cooper, unleash the exhilaration and fun…

When it comes to photo manipulation the aim of the game is to be as realistic as possible without being over the top. The main rule of thumb is not to defy physics or visuals. So in this case, the final image is a car sitting on asphalt with a storm cloud overhead. The initial photo has reflections of the power lines in the glass and has the source of light almost immediately above the car. So, shadows and highlights needs to be maintained or created in the post production to make it as realistic as possible. Reflections that aren’t meant to be there are removed (in this case the power lines since there isn’t anything around the car in the final photo).

Initial Photography for the Concept

Further to that, in order to maintain the photo realism, reflections of the storm clouds are mirrored into the glass and paintwork. Another rule of thumb is to maintain, scale and vanishing points. If you chop the photo out and are incorporating it into other images make sure your scales are realistic and that you maintain correct vanishing points. When adding the cloud reflections, they were warped and skewed to maintain the curves of the glass and vehicle.

Since the car was stationary, in order to create some motion, the clouds were edited with a motion blur to give the effect that they were moving by fast in the wind. The car was colour corrected and shadows and highlights were added to enhance the storm mood of the final product. The final product is below: Let me know what you think!

Final Post Production Photograph – The Calm Before The Storm