This is a picture I took a couple years ago. It is a Porches 911 posing at the Pahrump, NV race track, Spring Mountain Motorsport Ranch. I was on set producing my first ever promo video for myself, showing off my connections, talents, and having fun watching the rich race around the track in expensive cars (they didn't know how to drive). It was lots of fun!
The picture is slightly edited. The original was washed in a gray from the camera RAWs, so the first thing I had to do was determine the colors. This is important because many posing pictures will obscure colors for "artistic appeal." For example, gray scaling everything, or over emphasizing certain colors over others. I chose to keep it as original as possible since the balance of the shot was well taken overall. Also, the colors in the background do not conflict with those of the vehicle. In fact, I felt the contrasting sky was a perfect backdrop and no re-coloring was necessary.
I increased the curves and levels slightly to emphasize the shadows and darks. I kept the background a bit grayer then the rest of the image. I then went in and selected just the reds and increased the saturation and emphasized a more brilliant/deep red, pending on the shadows. I took out some reflections by blurring them out selectively to avoid unnecessary conflicting images. I brightened, then darkened the blue sky a bit to emphasize a deeper blue. One thing I don't like about the Southern Nevada area is the lack of a true blue sky. It always seems to be washed out a little. So I fixed that.
Once the levels were set, color was corrected, and the car was in good balance with the rest of the image, I ended up putting up a vignette lighting around the image to imitate some of the more expensive lenses out there. I also did this to bring a more pressured focus on the subject at hand. As a result, I get an image capable of being put in a magazine.
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