Telling a story with a single image

Images that tell a story are the ones that can be the most compelling. Sometimes you are lucky enough to capture the image in camera and it may only need some minor tweaks, in other cases it is about compositing an image together to tell a story.

For me this image is about finding a couple of old hot rods in a barn. They used to be the owners pride and joy but after years of sitting in a dusty, leaky old shed it has taken its toll on the vehicles and they are finally selling them.

I love old American muscle cars. There is just something about the lines, the sound and the feeling you get from seeing them. Unfortunately the only ones that I own currently are 1/24th scale models but no reason to let that stop me from feeling like I'd just found a jewel in the rough. Below is the final image that I put together, called "Barn find" and you can also find the image in the gallery if you want to see it full size.

The image of the vehicles was taken inside and light painted with a torch and then the different images were taken into photoshop and layered over one another to give the final effect. Not every part of each exposure was used, often it was only a small part, with the main image giving the main lighting and setup of the image.

I wanted the overall tone to be dark, to emulate evening just as the sun had gone down below the horizon but there was still light in the sky and perhaps a streetlight not far away as well.

The rust textures were all added digitally and some other parts were painted to remove some extra shine or to add dirty marks to areas of the vehicles. Overall it was a fairly quick composite (just over an hour) and I decided to keep the shot in colour and with no grain or texture applied to the image (unlike the motorbike composite I did previously). Grunging up the whole thing and making it more of a sepia tone could also work, especially for the subject matter but I felt like keeping this one in colour.

Here you can see an animation of the different layers, showing you a brief overview of some of the steps that go into making images like this.