Spyder Trike

[LynnDA]

The owner of our local builders merchants has just bought himself this Spyder Trike and I told him I'd give him a photo of it. This is the best out of the shoot and I've applied a bit of Dave Hill Effect to it. What I want to know, as it's the first time I've done a shot specifically for someone, is do you think it's good enough? Or is there anyway you think I can improve it.



Thanks for looking and hopefully leaving feedback.

[Doug Sundseth]

The trike is lit cleanly and it looks very nice in your image. But I'm afraid that the full image looks a bit like an inexpert Photoshop composite to me.

The lighting on the trike is so different from that in the background that they seem not related. And the rim lighting on the bike looks like a bad cut-and-paste selection.

By itself, the background is nicely lit and interesting, but as a background, it's very busy, and obscures the lines of the subject.

Basically, I like the pieces of the image separately, but I don't think they work together at all as presented. (Sorry to be negative.)

That said, I think you're pretty close:

The trike, lit as you did, would (I think) work really well on a dark background. The rim lighting would separate and define it's shape and the lighting would show off the curves of the sheet metal quite well. Alternatively, if you dialed down the ambient by 2-3 stops I think you could get a really nice photo with some environmental context.

[Killjoy]

Originally Posted by Doug Sundseth

The lighting on the trike is so different from that in the background that they seem not related. And the rim lighting on the bike looks like a bad cut-and-paste selection.

That is the same thing I would say.
Looks like a ctrl+v with a render.
The bike is very sharp though and I personally love the background, but the lighting throws the image off.

[3bayjunkie]

the rim lighting on the trike makes it look fake to me. Not a very appealing shot. LIke mentioned above it looks like a composit.

[Mulski]

Nice idea and like the way the trike is shot, but agree with the previous comments that it looks detached from the background.

Is that your face in the trikes left mirror?

Cheers

[Bruce A]

I like what you have done with the bike. I don't necessarily agree nor disagree that the lighting of the background doesn't match that on the bike as we don't know what other light sources are involved from front and left or even diectly above, but somehow what you have done in processing does make it look to me that the bike was superimposed on the background. I suppose that sounds a little confusing given the first part of my critique and I can't really explain why it looks that way to me. However, the owner may well be very pleased with what you have - depending on whether he has a discerning photgraphic eye

[LynnDA]

Thanks for the feedback folks, my aim was to make the bike pop out so the eye was drawn to the bike as opposed to the busy background. Sounds like I achieved my aim but took it a bit too far. There was no other lighting involved as I only had my camera with me because we'd gone to get some guttering and the shots were very much off the cuff. Below is the original image just in case you were thinking that I had done a very bad job at superimposing and also so you can see the difference.

[Tito87]

I like the original better.