Today’s Post by Joe Farace
When it comes to photographing cars, one of the most famous film noir effects used by movie cinematographers is the “wet streets” look that can add all kinds of interesting reflections to a scene.
One way to increase your car photographs drama is to add environmental elements such as water. And the simplest way to add digital water is by using Flaming Pear Software’s Flood ($33) Photoshop-compatible plug-in and you don’t even need a hose.
Flaming Pear Software’s Flood plug-in has lots of controls but before you get to play in the digital water, it’s important to set the level using the plug-in’s Horizon setting. A preview window shows exactly where the water level will start. The simplest way to create water effects with Flood is to click on the “dice” icon that throws random combinations at you as fast as you can click. Just keep clicking until you find one that you like and then use the sliders to tweak the effect to produce a look that you really like. By using any and all of the sliders, you can refine any combination the dice throws at you. Most people will find it works faster that way than using the sliders first but why not try it both ways?
How I Made this shot: I started with a color photograph of my former Jaguar XJ-6 that was shot using a Leica Digilux 2 with an exposure of 1/2000 sec at f/2 and ISO 200. I first applied the Dark Contrast filter from Color Efex to give it the gritty film noir look before applying Flood. The main thing about this process is to have fun with your photography and Flood is one of the ways that I use to “play” with my photographs.
Tip: Sometimes you may want to add water to an image and there’s no room at the bottom of the photograph. In that case, you can add more picture area to the image by using Photoshop’s Canvas Size (Image > Canvas Size) to enlarge the bottom of the photograph. The extra space will be blank but since you’re going to be adding digital water in that space using the Flood plug-in it doesn’t matter!
PS. The water in the photograph of my old XJ-S ( I seem to have a love-hate relationship with Jaguars) in the Photographing Your Own Car blog post was also created using Flood.
Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s out-of-print but new copies are available for $21.50 or used copies for giveaway prices—starting at less than five bucks—from Amazon, as I write this.