Commercial Car Photography Shoot For Fiat

Photography Tips

Many commercial projects can take a while to complete, such is the case with an ad campaign for the automobile manufacturer, Fiat. Over the course of six months, photographer Dave Hill worked on a project for Fiat to create over 200 images to be used in various magazines, billboards, and dealerships. Take a look at the following behind-the-scenes footage that Hill was nice enough to put together for his fans. The clip is about 30 minutes long, but gives viewers a lot of insight and more great photography than you could shake a stick at:

Before any photos were snapped, Hill spent an entire month planning the shoot. With such a large project to work on, the team set up shop in a large Los Angeles studio. He then spent the following three weeks creating the 215 images that Fiat requested for the campaign, which required a vast multitude of shots to be taken. The studio offered Hill the opportunity for set design and ultimate control of the light, but many of the shots were done on location.

Outside of assuring the lighting, focus, and perspective was spot on, Hill was also tasked with directing a slew of assistants and talent. Keeping everything organized by utilizing storyboards and posting descriptions of each shot helped ensured that the project kept running smoothly.

Many of the finals shots were products of composite multiple frames together. This approach allowed the photographer completely fine tune the lighting for each specific area. He used a large selection of light modifiers including Pocket Wizards to control his flashes.

After all the shots were done, the team entered post production. A task which took the team of five people about five months to complete. Most of the post production work was done in Photoshop. Each person was assigned a specific task such as handling the masking, one person strictly worked on compositing, etc. Again, high organization kept the team running efficiently and resulted in a host of great images.