20 hoursAgreed, I meant 20 hours -- one hour of photography, half-an-hour making a print, 8-16 hours retouching, the rest with management, pre-press.And going by my industrial photography experience, engineers won't ever give you a day for a picture
And also likely only 15 minutes to build the engine these daysOriginally Posted by Frank Petronio
Along with careful lighting to bring up shadows in general, it looks likely that a fairly broad light was used for the principal frontal lighting. The heavy retouch makes that just guess since most highlights are heavily re-worked.
Given the likely vintage of this photograph, it is quite possible that a lot of dulling spray made shiny surfaces a little easier to light and to retouch.
I seem to recall that much of GM's, and possibly others, publicity photos were taken by a studio called Boulevard Photography in Detroit or NYC? Somewhere there is a documentary about the studio and their in the automobile industry. They did a lot of GM's publicity photos, both in studio and outdoors. I remember seeing a camera, at least an 8X10, being used in one photo shoot. Tons of Hollywood type hot studio lights and the lancky 5'13" models. Somewhere in my storage boxes I have 11X14 B&W prints from the mid to late 1950's GM automobiles. They are in different stages of a finished promotional print, some have just the auto, while others have the models and backgrounds added. Some show the auto with different props around them. As Mark Sampson implied, the backgrounds have been masked out. I purchased the prints at a car swapmeet many years ago and the vendor had boxes of this stuff. I was like a kid in a candy/toy store and only one bright shinny nickel to spend. I purchased some prints of the cars I liked, but he had hundreds of photos. Some prints were almost finished , no type set. While others were just the auto with white background and foreground. When I asked the vendor where he got the photos, he was very vague about the source.
Found this on Alibris Books. Published in 1997
"Boulevard Photographic: the Art of Automotive Advertising by Jim Williams
The most striking, stunning, and memorable photos from Boulevard Photographic, the source for automotive advertising photography from the mid-1950s to the '80s, is presented here for the first time in any book. Photographers Jim Northmore and Mickey McGuire launched their Boulevard studio in 1955, and their innovative, imaginative style captured the elegance, power, and lifestyle imagery that auto makers wanted to convey in advertising. Their work was so effective that they worked for all the major US auto makers at the same time and for several European car companies. Whether shooting in studios or on location, the creative Boulevard Photographic staff captured the exact image auto makers wanted to present. Since even the oldest film was properly preserved -- and some of it was shot on enormous 8-1/2x11 -inch transparencies -- the quality of the photo reproductions throughout the book is breathtaking."
I had a copy of that book, but it seems to have disappeared. Fascinating work, big budgets x big ideas equalled spectacular photos. Unfortunately many of the transparencies they reproduced from are badly faded- contrary to the blurb posted above.
But it's probable that the engine photo that started this thread was done by an in-house industrial photo department- studios like Boulevard would only have worked on the glamourous big color ads. There were no documentary/manual type photos in the book.
I used to shoot advertising and catalog stuff of cameras, lenses, and stainless steel sinks and processing equipment. There is a heck of a lot having to do with lighting and processing, however practically everything had photo airbrush retouching. Today that would be some of the computer retouching skills which our school teaches.
Lynn
Heavy retouching was the norm for technical illustration and industrial catalogue work. The results are something halfway between a photograph and an engineering drawing - and much easier to 'read' than either.
www.lathes.co.uk (http://www.lathes.co.uk/rockwellmillers/ if you don't want to browse) has a bazillion examples, plus modern photographs of similar equipment which show how confusing a straight photograph is in comparison.
I grew up with a 1950s Meccano set. Just love the look.
It looks like these were also shot from fairly far away, making the image appear almost like an isometric drawing.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
--A=B by Petkovšek et. al.
I was also thinking "painted light" where the light is moved around the object during a long exposure. Gives a result similar to a soft tent. We learned the technique in Navy photo school, but never really used it much.
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