I'm no photographer. I have no formal training, but I do read a lot - a LOT. And I practice a lot - a LOT. So I learn a lot (yes a LOT.)

Here are some shots I took recently using an LED brake light that's made for trucks. As you know, my employer, Stylin' Trucks, sells truck accessories and this is one of them. It's called a Fire & Ice LED Light Bar.

Basically, it installs in-between the tailgate and bumper of your truck, hiding in that little area under your tailgate. It simply plugs into your flat trailer wire connector, and you can use sheet metal screws or double-sided tape to install it. Really simple. Now, when you step on the brakes, you've got a whole mess of red LEDs that light up as an accessory brake light. Pop the truck in Reverse and the while LEDs light up. Each side also blinks independently for your turn signals. It's really a slick item.

Well, anyways, I got one of the IT guys here, Tim, to wire it so I can plug it into a wall outlet. These pictures are the result. I've got half of the 48" bar lit up and I'm doing some freestyle long-exposure pics. #5 is my favorite.

Most are 15-20 second exposure, F4.5.

(Clicking each photo will take you to the full-size version on my Exposureroom.com site.)

Truck Light Bar #1

Truck Light Bar #2

Truck Light Bar #3

Truck Light Bar #4

Truck Light Bar #5

Truck Light Bar #6

Truck Light Bar #7

Anyways, the show was lovely.  Here is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to my superiors about the show.  I thought, "why keep it internal?  The world should know that this was a good show."

So, here's my take on the show:

They really have their stuff together out there.  Everything was organized beautifully, with sections of the parking lot being designated for certain types of vehicles and employees riding around on these neat little carts, directing traffic, and keeping things neat and orderly.

The parking lot is huge and was nearly overflowing with old-school muscle cars, modern street machines, and beautifully-detailed classic cruisers.  A real site to see.  There were some good trucks and motorcycles there as well.

The facilities and hospitality of the event were second to none.  The actual JCW building was open, so the public had access to well-kept, large restrooms and the employee's own lunch room (complete with Model-T [or A, I don't know the difference] and video arcade games.)  The staff was helpful and always present, directing show goers to parking spots, the showroom and clearance sale, the registration tent and anything else that the attendees required.

The organization of the event was superb, and I think that my hat goes off to Toby, the Showroom Manager for that.  The registration area was very well organized, with multiple computers and employees getting people registered very quickly.  The trophies (and there must have been over 100 of them!) were all lined up neatly underneath the registration tent, and when award time came, were handed out by nice ladies that worked together and took turns presenting them.

The DJ/Sound guy was great, with nice tunes all day and delightful MC work.  He was pointing out cars as they drove by the registration tent (on the way to their parking spot) and talking about special areas of interest regarding the cars.  ("Look here folks, this is a gen-u-wine 1956 Hemi 'cuda.  And I think I hear the whine of a supercharger.look out for this one, people, it's a screamer!)

The staff was great, especially the three people I mostly interacted with, Toby (retail manager), Tom (maintenance manager), and Ryan (IT), who gave me a tour of the warehouse and drove me around the parking lot in a little cart for some moving shots.  He also got myself, the Stylin' Trucks/JCW photographer, Amy, and Amy's boyfriend, Todd, up on the roof for some nice pictures and video.

As you can see, I loved it.  Lots of muscle cars, hot bikes.  It was a really good time!

For some related stuff: I just finished the video for the 2008 JC Whitney Spring Show, and here are one, two, and three blog posts talking about my editing and color correcting problems, solutions, and overall awesomeness.  Again, here is the video.

In my first blog post about color correction I mentioned what a pain in the ass bright sunlight is, a problem with a shooting technique called "Deep Focus" that I was having, and how I don't know anything about color correction.  Oh, and that I didn't like Premier Elements' color fixing abilities.

Then, in my second post about color correction we see that I start to get the hang of it.  It's been about a week and I've read a lot and am learning a lot.  I've got some great JPGs to show you for examples and overall it ends up a pretty good time.  I'm learning color correction and happy.

Now for my third post, and maybe my final one on this subject, I'll show you a few details about the Shadow/Highlight function in Adobe Premier Elements 3.0.  I briefly spoke about it in my last blog post, but am expanding on it here.

No, this isn't how I edit video.  I dragged the Monitor window down a bunch and crunched the timeline so that you could see all of the parameters in the "Properties" window.

So this Shadow/Highlight function in Premier Elements is automatically an automatic corrector.  What I mean is, as soon as you drag it from the Effects pane and drop it onto your video it automatically "corrects" things.  This means that it automatically lightens shadows and darkens highlights, exactly the opposite of what I want it to do.

What I have to do first is unclick the "Auto Amounts" button.  Then, the effect is still working.  Even though I unclicked the Auto Amounts button, the "factory" settings are already set, so I have to zero out the "Shadow Amount" listing.  It says, "Shadow Amount," so you'd think that it controls how much shadow you have.  Nope.  It actually controls how much shadow you want removed.  A high number in this spot (50) would brighten all of the shadows in your clip. So if you are trying to Crush the blacks, please zero out this number and it will leave your shadows alone.  We'll deal with them shortly.

The next listing down is the "Highlight Amount."  This is automatically set to zero and I didn't change it.  Upping the number would darken highlights, not brighten them.

Now there is an expansion arrow that promises the dream of "more options" if you click it.  Go ahead and click it, I dare you.

Ok, here we're getting into the nitty-gritty of the Shadow/Highlight effect.

So below the More Options arrow we see the other options.  The first five listings (Shadow Tonal Width, Shadow Radius, Highlight Tonal Width, Highlight Radius, and Color Correction) all pertain to the above-mentioned Shadow Amount and Highlight Amount parameters.  So when telling Premier Elements to lighten your shadows, Shadow Tonal Width and Shadow Radius are options for how the software interprets what is and isn't a shadow.  The same for the Highlight functions, they set how the software interprets highlights.

Unfortunately, all of this stuff is for brightening shadows and darkening highlights.  I don't want anything to do with that stuff.  And since I have my Shadow Amount and Highlight Amount set to zero (0), these parameters do nothing anyways.  Moving on.

Next is Midtone Contrast.  This is actually a very nice little tool.  It brightens or darkens the midtones of your video, which can be cool.  Though that's not what I'm messing with today.

I am concerned with the next option, Black Clip.  This is the little parameter that will finally darken my Shadows.  And it doesn't take much.  To darken the above image I just used 4.00% for this setting.  The highest value, fifty (50), darkens most of the image, just leaving a few high spots visible.  I chose 4% because I'm just starting with this and don't want to go too far.  I went to 10% but it looked too dark.  I tried 6% but didn't even notice a difference between 4 and 6, so I kept 4.

The White Clip option brightens highlights.  I didn't mess with this and the factory setting of 0.01% really doesn't do much of anything to the image, so I left it.

And that's about it.  For "Crushing the blacks" in Premier elements you need to use the Black Clip option and kill the factory Shadow Amount setting.  Not too hard, but hard to figure out.

The Original Image
Below, we see a sample image taken from my video.  We can obviously see that this is a bright green muscle car.  Standing there in person, it's almost too much to look at.  But looking at the image just breaks my heart.  I didn't capture any of the pop and sizzle of the real car.  I mean, look at the tires for Pete's sake (who's this Pete anyways?).  Those bad boys should be blacker than midnight, blacker than the devil's soul.  I don't know, they should be way black and they're not.

In the comments below my blog post, we see that I discussed duplicating video tracks on top of themselves to get more color out of my image.  This kindof worked, but overall was a step in the wrong direction.  I was experimenting with oversaturating one video with color and pulling brightness out of it, then having the other clip be overly bright and contrasty.  Then I worked the opacity of each for a good mix.  This really didn't work too well for me.  The results were promising early on but I just couldn't dial in the look I wanted.  There were too many parameters that I was messing with and I may never have found the right combination.  Plus, each clip would be different, so the workflow couldn't transfer from clip to clip.

It's like a have a picture of a beautiful cake that I want to bake.  And I have a cupboard full of baking supplies.  Unfortunately, my oven doesn't have a temperature setting, there are no instructions on how to bake said cake, and I have no baking experience whatsoever. So I'm kindof flying blind.  Or baking blind.  Or color correcting blind, which doesn't make sense, but you get the point.

Ok, so I abandoned the duplicated video idea and went searching for color correcting help.  I watched some tutorials on color correcting for various different video editing software (I am using Premier Elements and there really aren't any tutorials for it, at least none that I could find.  Maybe I'll make some when I'm done with this current video.)  I also read and checked out some tutorials on color correcting images and working with shadows and highlights.  Great, so I found a big void in my knowledge and am now filling it with useful info.

Even though the tools in Premier Elements are very...(I want to say, but it's not exactly right) simple, they are actually pretty powerful.  My problem was that I didn't know what the hell I was doing.  Not counting, and not knowing all of the options, there have got to be over 20 different tools in Premier Elements to correct/fix color and many other problems with video.

Messing with Saturation
So after watching many tutorials and reading a lot (including comments on my last blog from helpful members here, including Shiv) I have a better understanding of how R and G and B work together, and how Saturation works, and many other things.  And after some trial and error, I came up with what you see below!

Whoa!  It looks awesome, right?  Well, regardless, I'm really pleased with what I've done.  Look at how the green just pops!  I mean, it's still a little faded-looking, but overall it looks much, much better than the original.  To get this look I only tweaked three parameters; Saturation - I took the level from 100 to 125, Contrast - I went from 100 to 104, and Brightness - from 0 to -5.  This pulled more color out of the colorful areas of the picture, made the highlights a little, tiny bit brighter, and then darkened everything overall.  I'm pretty happy with it, but I'm just starting to learn color correcting and I think I can do better.

Crushing the Blacks
So now I want to take that above image to the next level.  I noticed that my buddy Shiv commented on someone else's video about "crushing the blacks" to make the colors pop more.  I thought that this was an interesting idea because to make my colors pop I have been boosting Saturation and Contrast, then slightly lowering overall Brightness.  If there is another approach to making colors really scream then I want to know about it. 

His post mentioned messing with the "Levels" control for your images and sliding the left fader (the blacks) towards the middle of the slider area.  I am familiar with this tactic from using Photoshop.  Unfortunately, Premier Elements (made by Adobe, the same people who bring you Photoshop) doesn't have such a function.  However, there is an option called "Shadow/Highlight" for working with dark and light areas of an image. 

Let me tell you that this Shadow/Highlight function is a complicated little tool.  Most of the parameters are actually used to brighten shadows, which is the opposite of what I wanted to do.  My understanding was that I want to take shadow/dark areas of the video and really darken them.  So after brightening and lightening shadows for a good 1/2 hour I started to figure out how to use the tool effectively for what I want it to do.  Basically, there are 12-15 different parameters to tweak in the Shadow/Highlight function and there is only one that did what I wanted it to do (darken the blacks.)  So once I zeroed out all of the other things that are automatically set, I could really start "crushing the blacks."  This paramter is called "Black Clip."  So I guess for me it would be clipping the blacks instead of crushing them.  Whatever.

Here is where I'm currently at.  See this bad boy below!

So I took my buddy Shiv's direction and tried crushing the blacks, or "clipping" them as Premier Elements would have you do.  I am really happy with this setup.  But overall my parameters have changed.  Before I messed with Saturation, Contrast, and Brightness.  For this one, I'm working with a few other parameters.

I've got Saturation from 100 to 126, I've got Black Clip set at 4.00%, and I also tweaked the RGB functions by taking Blue from 100 to 106 and taking Green from 100 to 104.  I am really happy with the results.  The difference between the this image and the one above this one are subtle, especially on a down-rez JPG.  But the look of the footage in Premier is stunning.  I'm really excited with the video now and will keep moving forward. 

Some Words on Music
And I've scrapped (for now, at least) the Beach Boys song I was using. Yes, any Beach Boys song is appropriate music for muscle cars and old-school cruisers.  But so is some modern and classic rock music, and...a beautiful classical music version of a heavy metal song.  I don't want to spill the beans on what I'm doing musically with this piece but I'm very excited about it.  Hopefully it works out ok.

Also, I thought that using copyrighted music was a no, no.  But I see videos on here, and other popular destinations, like Vimeo, that are using mainstream songs in their videos.  I know that Moby and other artists are saying that you can use their music for anything artistic, as long as there is no commercial gain, and that Warner Brothers opened up their catalog last year to the booming YouTube crowd.

Can I use any song that I want, by anybody, and use it for my videos?  I mean, the video I'm working on now is two-fold.  I'm doing an "artistic" version for myself, or my portfolio, with the previously mentioned classical/heavy metal song.  I should be ok to use any song, by anbody for this artistic version. Is this correct?

But the actual final video that I deliver to my employer will likely be shown and played (for promotional purposes) on one of our commercial/retail websites.  (StylinTrucks.com or JCW.com)  I certainly can't use a Beach Boys song, or whichever artist I choose, for commercial gain without paying them for it.  How does one go about doing this?  Do I post the video and wait to hear from someone's lawyers?  I don't think so.  What is the appropriate approach?  Do I find someone to knock-off a Beach Boys song?  That sounds silly.

Local, Free Music?
Maybe, as I did for my "Truck Show Video," I need to find local musicians and use their work.  I get the songs for free and they let me use them for anything I want.  It helps me with music, and it helps them get exposure.  There are some great artists in Cleveland and I'm certain I can find a local band with a Summery, Happy-go-lucky sound.  We'll see what I can find.

Please, as always, leave any comments or suggestions.  Feedback.  Anything.  Have at it.

Update:
There is another blog post in this series, so go check out Color Correcting issues #3.

Also, the video is complete. It's called Classical Cruisers, check it out.

     Let your buddy Will talk to you for a moment about the biggest pain in my rear - Color Correcting.  Now, let me just start off by saying that I am using Premier Elements 3.0 and the tools for color correcting are almost non-existant.  Yes, I can mess with some things like Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, and Hue - but I have no idea what the hell I am doing.

The Preset
     For a recent trip to the Cleveland Auto-Rama I used my A1 and Stephen Dempsey's VIVIDRGB preset.  Keep in mind that this is an indoors event.  The colors were rich and vibrant and wonderful.  However, I did notice that the garrish paint jobs on some of the custom rides really gave me some oversaturated colors.  You know what?  That's fine.  These are bright, custom rides and a little color pop never hurt anyone.  Especially when the end result of my video work is basically just a music video. 

     For most shots I actually ended up boosting saturation and contrast, then dropping the brightness a bit.  I was/am happy with the results. Here is a link to my 2008 Cleveland Auto-Rama video

     Ok, fast forward two or three months and I have another car show to video tape.  My employers were so happy with the Auto-Rama video that they decided to send me to Chicago to video our sister company's spring car show.  (I work for Stylin' Trucks, and our sister company is JC Whitney Automotive.)

     So, wanting to expand my horizons and learn a little more about my camera and shooting video overall I switched the camera from VIVIDRGB to the PANALOOK preset.  I was under the impression that the colors were a little more subdued and that the image would have plenty of "play room" in post.

     So now that I'm checking my footage everything looks "washed out."  The colors are bland and don't "pop." You know what it looks like, old-time home movies from the 50's. All of the colors are desaturated and bland.

The Sun
     I am pretty unhappy with the results, though I'm not blaming the preset.  I think that the Sun is at fault.  It was ridiculously sunny out.  All day I had my aperture at the most closed position (going for "deep focus," read on), which if memory serves is 9.5 and I still had to flip on one of the in-cam ND filters.  Otherwise the image was just a blown-out white screen.

     What the hell am I supposed to do?  I've been trying to color-correct the footage but I'm working on Premier Elements 3.0 and the tools are very limited.  I want more color overall so I keep boosting saturation, but it just oversaturates the "opaque maroon" car that should be a "screaming red" hot rod. 

     Ok, I'm thinking that I want things brighter so I up the brightness.  Bad move.  This just takes all of the too-bright, washed-out vehicles and washes them out more, giving me lots of noise in the dark areas of the picture.  And believe me, there were super dark areas.  I never thought that going from bright sunlight to the barely-shaded engine compartment of a car would be such a big problem.  But if I'm directing the camera to point at the car's door, or some other external detail (which is way too bright) and swing over to see under the hood it's like I'm looking into a black, bottomless pit.  I can't see anything under the hood.

     Now I see why people like overcast days.  Not only did the bright sun give me a wicked sun burn, but all of my footage is garbage.  Ok, not all of it.  But a lot. Here's my first sample video from the JC Whitney Spring Show. I don't like it and abandonded the project after 1:20 in search of some color correcting help.

Shooting Style
     Also a factor is my style of shooting this time.  For my last video, I painstakingly (as I should) focused each shot.  However, I've been doing some reading and have read about a technique known as Deep Focus.  They way I understood it was basically, if you have a wide-angle lens (as I do, the WD-H72) and keep the aperture as closed as possible (which I did, it was very, very sunny out) that you would have very deep focus, meaning that objects close to the camera would be in focus and objects further away would also be in focus.  I was trying to add depth to the images so we see a great cruiser close to the camera but we can also see some other lovely auto in the background.

     Well, this "Deep Focus" technique that I was trying is apparently a bit more advanced than me because a lot of my shots have soft focus.  Not entirely out of focus, but soft nonetheless.  And in all actuality anyone outside of "the industry" probably wouldn't notice.  But I notice and it is annoying.  Let's chalk this up to being "over educated."  If I hadn't read about Deep Focus I never would have tried it and my stuff would be in focus.  But you live and you learn.

     I guess that's all for today.  Thoughts?

Update:
  I have a few more posts on this topic.  Here is Color Correcting #2, and Color Correcting #3.