[BTS Video] Halloween Comes Late: The Ghostbusters Photoshoot

I just realized that our Fstoppers Twitter account has tons of unread direct messages (we prefer you email us). One of them was from Douglas Sonders who had a crazy experience with one of the original Ghostbusters Ecto 1 Cadillacs. These caddies have so many lights on them that I can't make any sense of what is going on but it looks pretty cool. Douglas does a good job explaining how he plans on using a few long exposure shots to burn in the ambient light while using spot grids to pop in just the right amount of flash for specific areas of the photo. Does anyone know if the Roscoe Fog Machine in this video is made by the same company that makes Roscoe Speedlight Gels? Either way, nice touch on bringing the smoke machine to the shoot. Check out more details about this shoot over at Douglas Sonders's Blog.

Patrick Hall's picture

Patrick Hall is a founder of Fstoppers.com and a photographer based out of Charleston, South Carolina.

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7 Comments

I feel like this would have looked so fucking great...

Without the HDR (or just way too much dodging and burning).

I mean, it's a perfect shoot, with the perfect vehicle, and an excellent model,
yet somehow it feels very underwhelming to me when I look at the images themselves.

I just think, if it didn't look so artificial, it could have been wonderful.

Agreed

Ditto!

To each their own.  I really loved the final look.  HDR is just something to enhance our photos or take them to a different level.  I can understand a little of what Mike is talking about.  Too many people just shoot a couple of photos and rely on the software to do the rest and you end up with the cliche overdone HDR look. That kind of ruins it for a lot of people.  Imagine what Ansel Adams would have done with the new HDR method. 

You can tell the in these photos, that the artist behind the shot took his time and brought out what he thought was important.  I'm glad you didn't try and composite ghosts and lasers.  The music took me back a little as well.

That was one of my favorite movie songs. Dope. He didn't over cook the HDR like  most of the stuff you see that burns your eyes and looks horrible. He used hdr well to me. The vibrancy was very appropriate for the theme and his final shot of the guy holding the trap while it was glowing was pro status.  

He did well in my opinion. 

I was hoping for more actual BTS.

From my experience doing backstage work, Rosco has a ton of lighting and visual effects gear that they either produce or brand; so yup, same company. http://www.rosco.com/us/index.cfm