Buffalo CarShare – Editorial Photography

Buffalo CarShare asked me to stop by and photograph them for a feature in ArtVoice.

Car Sharing is a service that offers the piece-of-mind of the automobile without the up-front costs, hassles, or environmental impacts of private vehicle ownership. Members rent vehicles on an hourly basis for errands or irregular trip, while relying on other modes of transportation (such as walking, bicycling, taking transit or carpooling) for their daily commute.

When I arrived on location:

It was a rainy and windy day, so we started setting up by putting everybody in one of their compact cars (for the lulz).  This was actually incredibly difficult to light due to the compact space, inverse square law, and all the gobos created from the frame and structure of the car.

Buffalo CarShare share a Car!

In the final lighting set up:

I put the camera on the dash with a pocket wizard attached (extremely tight fit); a Vivitar HV285 with wizard in a 28″ softbox in front of the windshield around 15 feet from the car, and another pocket wizard and Vivitar HV285 in the center console powered down to try and match the softbox (This was needed to kick up the light in the backseat, I was still having fall-off issues).  I asked the back seat subjects to tilt their heads slightly foward and down to minimize the “monster lighting” effect that occurred as they were lit from below by the strobe in the center column.

My regret on the shot was that I  set my focal depth too shallow (it was set at Macro and probably could have been set at 3 or 4 feet and had everyone in focus) ,  I was firing “blind” and this was the third lighting set up we had tried with the car – so after about 5 frames I called it a wrap(excuses excuses).  It’s  important to keep the energy up and the fun flowing during a group shoot, if you don’t people get bored and your images get crappy in a hurry.   If something isn’t working, just move along.  If you get tunnel visioned on a shot that isn’t working, you lose the opportunity to find the really great image that is waiting for you nearby.

The image is fun and shows the dynamic of the group, so no serious complaints from me. I’ll just take my lessons learned and implement them on my next shoot.

Funny side note: The man in the middle of the back seat is actually in the trunk since there wasn’t enough room for all three of them.