Rangefinder Magazine
December 2005

Click Here for printable version of this article.

Rf Cookbook by David Wendt
Light Painting the McLaren F1

I was lucky enough to take this McLaren F1 into the mountains of Colorado to shoot for my “Fast Expensive Cars” calendar. The owner of the car wasn’t able to spend any time with me while I was there, so he cut me loose with the car, and as fun as this may seem, it came with its own set of problems.

It’s a tight car, so I had to cut my equipment way down to fit. Plus I had no assistant with me. I figured if I can’t fit it in the car I’m going to shoot, I don’t need it. As I drove off into the mountains, I had no idea where I would go with the car. The other thing I didn’t count on was the number of people who would stop to see this very rare car. I was distracted by some very nice and extremely curious people who just happened upon the scene.

This was a big problem since the sun goes down quickly and people kept showing up until it was almost dark. Finding a place to park and set up a shot with the right background was almost lost to the darkness and indecision. On top of the 12,095-foot summit of Independence Pass, just east of Aspen, Colorado, it seemed I’d lost the opportunity to get anything of value. The car was parked just off the road. It looked nice, but it wasn’t working very well. It was now so dark, I couldn’t see any of the exposure settings on my trusty old Hasselblad.

I had all the basic equipment, including several Lumedyne battery- powered flash heads. While I was getting out a flash and a modeling lamp so I could see to get all the equipment put away, it hit me—light painting. I could shoot a long exposure and just walk along the car with the modeling light on and see what happens. There was no time for Polaroids or even any real light-metering. The exposure was set on bulb at f/8. I did two exposures before it was nearly total darkness. The first was between six and 10 minutes and the second was longer than that.

I used the lamp to look around and pack up, having no idea what the shot would look like. Upon my return home, I ran the film at the lab and was astounded to see the results of the first exposure. It looked pretty much like what you see here, but the moon was a blur in the sky, which I fixed in Photoshop. I tweaked a few of the lines on the car to help them show up a little bit better, and there you go, the McLaren F1 at 12,000 feet!