[spiike32]

Does anyone know of a really well lit parking garage around chicago? I'm building a photo rig to take some motion shots and looking for a parking garage location and possibly a long unfrequented tunnel location (but I plan to improvise with the tunnel shot).

[sirdaft1]

Not sure what you mean... If you are doing long exposure on a stable base you can get away with much less light than you might think. What kind of rig setup are you planning to run?

[mkPOTO]

Up North you can go to Old Orchard Mall
-Downtown you can go to the Parking lot on Roosevelt where the best buy and home depot is.
-Downtown parking garage by Millenium park off Michigan Ave
-You can go to the ICON Roosevelt parking garage, there is some spot where you will have a long stretch to do whatever.
-Wacker drive really late at night.

Let me know if I can tag along, would love some rolling shots of my car

[J335i]

^ what he said. Can I come tag along if its in the chicago area??!!

[spiike32]

Well a lot of parking garages I've scouted in the suburbs are super low light conditions, which I can adjust for in photoshop. e.g. the lighting at macy's garage in Oak Brook sucks but the lighting at Rivers Casino is perfect. Only problem with Rivers is there is always people there 24/7. It has a nicer effect from what I've seen with a little more lighting and (to me) is much easier to edit without creating too much noise in the picture.

The rig I'm building is:
20 foot reinforced pole (really wanted a CF pole but they're like $600 so I'll make due with a reinforced EMT pole for now). I want to test a few designs to minimize camera bounce/shake.
2 Avenger F1000 cups
3 Super clamps
magic stand for my canon 60d
ND filter, polarizing filter, warming filter
Also have a gopro hero3 black that I use at the track which might be useful for rig shots.

Thanks for the suggestions MkPoto! I'll check them out sometime this weekend but probably wont actually do the photoshoot until sometime next month since I'm training for the triathalon and travel for work. You guys are welcome to join.

My ultimate goal is to recreate this shot from Lee Howell once I get my rig and skills perfected and an unfrequented tunnel location scouted:

[mkPOTO]

thats badass im down

[sirdaft1]

Would love to connect with you when you do this. I too have the same setup but haven't yet done the shoot. It'd be good to trial and error with someone else on it.

Also, do you know of any professional post processing editors? This is the image that convinced me to get this setup, but as you can see the PP absolutely makes these images (as seen in the video as well).

Original Shot (note the boom in the shot, poor color and lack of sunflare)


Finished/Edited Shot

Originally Posted by spiike32

Well a lot of parking garages I've scouted in the suburbs are super low light conditions, which I can adjust for in photoshop. e.g. the lighting at macy's garage in Oak Brook sucks but the lighting at Rivers Casino is perfect. Only problem with Rivers is there is always people there 24/7. It has a nicer effect from what I've seen with a little more lighting and (to me) is much easier to edit without creating too much noise in the picture.

The rig I'm building is:
20 foot reinforced pole (really wanted a CF pole but they're like $600 so I'll make due with a reinforced EMT pole for now). I want to test a few designs to minimize camera bounce/shake.
2 Avenger F1000 cups
3 Super clamps
magic stand for my canon 60d
ND filter, polarizing filter, warming filter
Also have a gopro hero3 black that I use at the track which might be useful for rig shots.

Thanks for the suggestions MkPoto! I'll check them out sometime this weekend but probably wont actually do the photoshoot until sometime next month since I'm training for the triathalon and travel for work. You guys are welcome to join.

My ultimate goal is to recreate this shot from Lee Howell once I get my rig and skills perfected and an unfrequented tunnel location scouted:

[spiike32]

Originally Posted by sirdaft1

Would love to connect with you when you do this. I too have the same setup but haven't yet done the shoot. It'd be good to trial and error with someone else on it.

Also, do you know of any professional post processing editors? This is the image that convinced me to get this setup, but as you can see the PP absolutely makes these images (as seen in the video as well).

Original Shot (note the boom in the shot, poor color and lack of sunflare)


Finished/Edited Shot

Good example that rig shots are maybe 10% rig, 20% great shot, 70% post processing. I use photoshop cs5 and lightroom. There are a several masks used in the 2nd photo with extensive motion blur, temperature increased on the left to recreate the sun, extensive motion blur and blur on the right side, sharpness/fill light/vibrance/clarity/exensive cloning on the car. branches recreated above the car, reflections on the side of car recreated, etc. Not too hard to recreate that 2nd pic but it is time consuming and you can use different methods.

Also original is not the pic in the 2nd pic. Angle of car is wrong, headlights aren't on, etc. OR they were replaced from a stock photo taken prior to the motion shot. For me the fun is in the post processing, the rig is just to get the shot.


My goal after doing a rig photoshoot is to take maybe 1-2 good shots out of maybe 100 and run post processing to make it awesome.

[sirdaft1]

Well said.

Where are you located in Chicago? I did an impromptu shoot in a Schaumburg parking garage a while back and just parked the cars right at the roof cutoff line in order to get lots of natural light. Example...

Originally Posted by spiike32

Good example that rig shots are maybe 10% rig, 20% great shot, 70% post processing. I use photoshop cs5 and lightroom. There are a several masks used in the 2nd photo with extensive motion blur, temperature increased on the left to recreate the sun, extensive motion blur and blur on the right side, sharpness/fill light/vibrance/clarity/exensive cloning on the car. branches recreated above the car, reflections on the side of car recreated, etc. Not too hard to recreate that 2nd pic but it is time consuming and you can use different methods.

Also original is not the pic in the 2nd pic. Angle of car is wrong, headlights aren't on, etc. OR they were replaced from a stock photo taken prior to the motion shot. For me the fun is in the post processing, the rig is just to get the shot.


My goal after doing a rig photoshoot is to take maybe 1-2 good shots out of maybe 100 and run post processing to make it awesome.

[mkPOTO]

lets do this, i need some rolling footage

[e92_euro]

Im down to get together for some rig shots! I built my own rig once outta thick PVC piping but it didnt hold up too well, need to go galvanized this time.

[sirdaft1]

Originally Posted by e92_euro

Im down to get together for some rig shots! I built my own rig once outta thick PVC piping but it didnt hold up too well, need to go galvanized this time.

So do you still have a rig? And this could be a fun get together to capture some nice rig shots.

[e92_euro]

Originally Posted by sirdaft1

So do you still have a rig? And this could be a fun get together to capture some nice rig shots.

I have the material for the rig just havent put it together yet. Ill let you know once I have it up. I usually do rolling shots from another car and I have a camera stabilization box so I can do shots that come out as good as rig shots from another car. PM me if ur down to do some sometime soon, im always down