My Husband's Idea

We're expecting our second child in March and one thing that is quintessential about the pregnancy process is the announcement of said pregnancy. I took the reins on the announcement of our first baby and my husband wanted his turn at the wheel this go-around. Pun intended.

The inspiration came from the inside joke that if his modified turbocharged standard-shift Chevy Cobalt is still running our daughter will inherit it, or at least learn how to drive it. As long as parts are still available this is a real possibility. So, the pink car on the left represents her while the car on the right represents the new baby, kept as silver because we won't know the gender for a few weeks. The license plate spells it out for clarification because at first it looks like my husband is simply purchasing an identical vehicle after painting his pink.

I want to tell you about the process and why I decided not to photoshop the car pink! Yes, that car was pink in the driveway in front of the camera for a few hours.

This is my husband taping up the parts of the car that do not usually have paint like lights and emblems, windows and reflectors.

The next thing to do was spray the parts of the car that would be seen by the camera with pink Plasti-Dip. You can find it in aerosolized cans but most professionals buy gallon buckets and get a spray gun with an air compressor. They also usually apply several coats in order to provide better protection from the weather, and to make peel-off easier. We didn't have enough cans to apply many coats. There's more on that a little later.

I know that only the back of the car was in view of the camera but it's not entirely true. My camera was situated on my tripod aimed at the middle of our driveway. Because of the rules of perspective I could see all of what you see being sprayed in the image above. I couldn't move my camera because the environment coudn't change as I was copying the car over.

The next image is a lot more satisfying. A nice clean removal of the tape over the break light. The lights were a breeze.

After the car was pretty in pink and the rubberized plastic was removed from areas like badges and emblems, I took my shots. I say shots because I decided to make these images HDR (high dynamic range) so each setup required 5 clicks of the shutter with 2 underexposed images, 1 correct, and 2 overexposed shots. It can be done with more or less shots of the same exact scene unmoving, but the more you add the more range you get. And you can't do it without a tripod. Some cameras have this HDR feature built in, and mine does, but I wanted more control.

The cropping wasn't this tight but you can see how it looked.

When the left side of the image was captured we needed to peel off the plastic as quickly as we could because the sun's position is a concern when you're trying to keep the environment the same. This process took longer than we expected and we enlisted the help of our cousin to help us peel. Had we sprayed more coats on it would have pulled off in sheets, but live, learn, and moisterize those chapped fingertips.

After the car was back to its original silver self it was moved to the rightmost spot in the driveway and I took my 5 shots with the camera still on the tripod across the street. With the help of Photoshop features I blended the exposures, increased saturation and adjusted tones. I cut around the silver car image and placed it into the scene with the pink car, copied the shadows over, made some cosmetic decisions, and added the text.

Why didn't I just paint the car pink in post-editing? Because there is nothing more realistic than setting the scene up before the shutter is even pressed. Most of the work is done that way. The complex nature of highlights and shadows on an object would have to be painted in digitally and frankly that would have taken more time. There are reflections and glares that would be harder to replicate as well. If I had missed a spot on the car it would have been easy to cover it up as long as the pink was already on the majority of the car, but to paint it all on the computer would have been too time consuming. Some metallic finishes on objects can be manipulated to look like other colors due to their makeup, but silver is not one of those finishes.

Thanks for taking the time to read this whole thing, and I hope you found this project as off-the-wall as I did!

It wasn't my idea, lol!

#announcement #baby #car #husband