In advertising, photographers like me are always being called upon to contrive a result – illustrate a describable concept – which is not really photographable in real life (except in extremely freakish conditions). This image alluding to road safety, is one instance.

We have all experienced it – driving at speed in a storm on the freeway with limited visibility, jazzed into a state of dramatic hyper attention because such conditions are a real driving risk.

Stormy roads are a life experience not to be forgotten, in terms of still photos – this is one of those which is rarely captured (as opposed to alluded to, visually).

The reason is simple if you think about it. In no time at all the driving spray and rain cover the camera lens (or any shield built to protect it). And almost instantly there is nothing for the camera to see, other than blurring raindrop spattered surface. It would require Hollywood budgets to build rigs to compensate for all this. And then you need to wait for the right storm to come along.

This short video sequence – featuring a Lamborghini Murcielago bombing along at speed – summarizes a few novel/interesting production techniques I employed.

Starting by wrangling a series of stormy road pics taken through a car window (at an opportune dry moment) into a more dramatic composition, this image was projected into a CGI environmental ball surrounding a wireframe model of the car and the road. A credible 3d environment was created such that the vehicle we lit (HDR style) from a 2D projection. The vehicle was rendered now to match the background.

A car dash was then comped to define a local viewpoint in a follow car. But the scene would not be credible without drops on its windscreen. Such drops had to refract the entire scene behind them to match. They would have either to be rendered (incredibly intensive in terms of raytracing – and look fake) or done photographically.

I reshot this scene with real water on glass with the comped picture set projected behind. A final comp of the two produced a balance of car/road fidelity and scene clarity to ‘wet window’.

This is a higher fidelity animated HTML5 sequence of the exclusive and collectable Hardly Strictly Bluegrass X11 festival poster improves the compressed MP4 in my gallery.

It is a look back at a complex photo comp I did, working with Claude Shade at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, whose memory is revered by many.

The image, showing a gang of rural musician types, with all their country
accoutrements in tow, arriving in San Francisco via highway 101 at the Golden Gate Bridge.

There was no way that the city would issue a permit to photograph or constrain such a critical road artery as this for static still or movie purposes. As such the actors and animals were comped and even the background scene had to be contrived to make up for basic shooting limitations.

Alas (only in sentimental terms), the Golden Gate toll bridge, a San Francisco
icon, is no longer an intimate shared familiar location, where people slowed to pay. Now replaced by autopay electronics – vehicles race past at speed and some of the contrived historic narrative of the poster has become actual documented history.

This necessarily low resolution animated sequence shows how the final image came together. It involved many separate photos – shot in different lighting conditions – finally blended into a coherent visual scene ready for the next stage of treatments.

We distressed the scene with a range of techniques, to give the whole thing a credible antique print texture at poster size. We had to extend way beyond just overlaying with paper texture.

Revisiting this Mellow Lamborghini  Gallardo image.

Mellow, as in ‘Mellow Yellow’ – Donovan’s 1967 hit song & album. And mellow as in the striking but rarely chosen car color.

The unforgettable lyrics “they call me mellow yellow – -quite rightly” were subject to hot speculation down the years. ‘Firstly’  was it about smoking dried banana skins – the debunked theory that they had psychedelic properties? And then the electrical banana – slang then for a dildo.

End of the day – author just meant ‘mellow yellow’ to be ‘super cool’.

Yellow in many cultures has become associated with ‘men at work’ – warning signs and tools of the job. It is an incredible positive color for a car, but seemingly automakers and buyers find its connotations a bit hot to handle

Big bold image of Luke – just getting a feel of what is possible with our new blog page. Posts don’t need to be mingy and small. Going big and lets see when something breaks

Far be it from me to revel in a bit of html5 tech geekery – but airing enthusiasm for that in a pro public arena, strangely seems uncomfortable – culturally incompatible with being a real creative. Even so – bear with me while I live dangerously for one blog post.

I remember going to a Frankfurt Motor show some years back (now rebranded ‘international’ and held in Munich). It was a massive – a good day’s workout – with endless halls with gleaming ‘Blech’ on rotating stands. I had produced CGI style stock imagery, which was selling very well (those were the days) and I was looking out for my print work in brochures and stands .

‘Blech’ is a rather contemptuous German term referring to automobiles. This is a piece of German-irony reserved for certain occasions, since cars and car manufacture were then, and remain the pride of the nation. Blech is sheet metal – but it is also reference to cans, as in disposable cans, which get chucked in the trash after you have decanted your baked beans.

The furthest thing on my mind while wondering around that days was irony – the audience and staff were like the cars – up to date, well groomed, stylistically well presented and a general feeling of health and wholesomeness prevailed. It was a picture of modernity and the future, as envisaged by artists in the 30’s was manifest. All that was missing was flying cars filling the cityscape around us.

Then, in my thoroughness to check out every display, I made a turn into a gigantic sub ground level floor in one of the major buildings. This was where the technical support stuff was being presented. Tools and garage equipment. Endless rows of auto body repair equipment – jacks, trailers, hand tools, paint and so on.

But most noticeable, were the people down there. These were a different subterranean race of people with twisted expressions, odd shaped skulls and strange Neanderthal bodies in ill fitting clothes. Modernity here was an HG Wells ‘Time Machine‘ and this basement was where the Morlocks lived and died. If felt weird and dreamlike – as if one had been transported to a foreign country. And yet all one had to do was go up the steps to one of the exits to the streets – look out and the normal people and then turn around again and look back into the hall, to reassure oneself that this was not some mind switch perception aberration.

These people did not mind that they did not look attractive. They did not even try control their facial expressions to offset any the potential stigma. They did not mind that the objects of their interests were mechanical ugly too. They were into their equipment which lifted things – tore holes in other things – and such like. And that was simply it.

This was my epiphany – this is what it means to be a member of a tech underclass. One can choose which world one wants to belong to – but even in regimented Germany, never the twain shall meet.

Anyhow – back to HTML5 animation. Now that put this site together and found that I am forced most of the time to use MP4 for my ‘behind the scenes’ animation sequences, I hearken back to animating these things with HTML5. It is not that novel technically but it is still a minority thing. Much less to download – much smoother (frame rates limited only by your graphic card) – much less need for damaging image compression. I am a Morlock for a moment – I don’t even care. Maybe even I liked it. I might talk about the assignment some other time.