For those who dont know what the Lamborghini Reventon is – its the most expensive sports car ever built; each costing 1 million Euros + tax. Only 20 were to be produced. I have the honor of being one of the proud owners – no kidding! Well with a slight difference – its a 1/43 scale model 
of the car that looks more like a fighter jet. No surprises, as the exteriors of the Reventon are inspired by modern fighter aircrafts. Check out this interesting commercial where they raced the Reventon against a Tornado of the Italian Air Force.
Ok, so much in praise of the Reventon and its exclusivity. Its here on my photography blog, so you know what I am coming to – obviously, I photographed the car. The objective of the project was to produce 3-4 images that would be worthy of an ad-campaign. The challenge here was the size of the car. Its really tiny and being a race car, its belly almost touches the ground.
I had a few concepts in mind. I started off with the simplest one – showing the car’s impressive bonnet and the front air inlets with a nice soft light over the bonnet and wind shield with a hard falloff on the front lower elements. This was pretty easy to do. I placed the car over a black base (a cardboard box pasted with a black cardboard sheet). The camera was on a tripod as this had to be a long exposure shot. The lens axis was aligned to just under the car’s windshield. The whole setup was in a room in the evening so with all lights turned off, it was pitch dark. The lighting was unconventional – I used a single small bright led light, straight from the top of the car (perpendicular to camera axis). I used RS80N3 cable to activate the shutter while hand-holding the led light over the car. The glowing lights were added in post processing. The exposure: 4 sec at f11 ISO 200 with EF 85mm f1.8 lens and Canon 7D.
Reventon in spot light
Spend a few hours doing some table top stuff. The first subjects were a crystal vase and a small glass. Both being highly reflective. The important thing was to avoid any of their surfaces from reflecting any objects (including the light source) and giving away the shoot.
I got a large white mounting paper sheet for the ‘white seamless’ background and added another one at the base. The table was of rubber-wood which has a natural yellowish brown texture. Added 2 black sheets on either sides for negative fill (I could have added white sheets as well but after exprement, that wasnt working to my taste).
Canon 7D. EF 85 1.8 at f2.5, 1/125
