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’.