wswcreative

via:  Nick Koudis Photography Blog

This is number four in my Ironic Death Series – Hit and Run by an Ambulance. I guess it’s self explanatory. Sometimes, I like to draw the viewer into an image and make ‘em work to find the joke, or the story. This one, hopefully is a quick read. (that’s read read) Here’s the finished image. (click image to see bigger)

Special thanks to Brittany Furlan, our dead girl.

It started its life as a sketch. Working from sketches has its advantages, of course, but it actually can prevent you from thinking about other solutions to the problem. For example, as I was shooting and assembling the elements, I noticed that the white line intersecting the woman’s neck added a macabre element. So I left her there on the side of the road.

The whole idea reminded me of Andrew Wyeth’s painting, Christina’s World (1948). So I thought I’d add that level for an extra bit o’ funny.

Downtown LA has a desolate industrial district that would be great to shoot in, if there weren’t so many damn location vehicles are in the way. Desolate, my ass. Seriously, everybody shoots there. Everybody. It’s like the Costco of locations. Anyway, it’s got nice light.
This is a final plate for the image. Notice that the background is in soft focus.  I focused on the foreground which will be her location in the shot. And of course, the Dutch angle helps sell the anxiety of the scene.  We’ll create the ambulance in modo 401. And shoot the unfortunate girl in the studio.

And now comes some serious progress. After four solid days of modo-ing an ambulance, I’ve got this render to show for it. This is a gorgeous render straight out of modo. I’ve attached the background image to the render camera, then resized the render to be pixel for pixel to the background image. The ambulance model is sitting on a “shadow catcher” groundplane. ( Sounds like something you buy in a New Mexico gift shop. I wish I had a shadow-catcher for my real life! ) It’s an almost perfect scenario, but in the end, I’m going to have to render the Ambulance separately, so I can blur it to match the background in P-shop. I’ve got some minor tweaks on the model to do before I’m totally done. That means ANOTHER four days of work.

Have a closer look at the ambulance. Still very rough, of course, but modo renders so beautifully, it looks delicious. It’ll be a shame to blur, but sometimes, that’s what sells an image. (click image to see bigger)