I thought it might be fun to share a quick glimpse into a typical day when I teach an advertising class to the commercial photography students.  The morning begins with a two hour lecture period which often includes me introducing new concepts to the students as well as critiques of the previous week’s assignments.  The rest of the day is lab time in the studio where I give a new assignment that has to be completed by the end of that day.

This particular day, I brought a fun but challenging subject.  Shiny things are hard enough to photograph, but black and chrome shiny things are ridiculous.  This old Rolls Royce was the just the thing needed to keep these peeps on their toes.  I split the class into two groups and each was given the task of showcasing the car.  The real challenge was for each group to plan exactly how they would shoot the car, who would do what and who would be the director.

Planning out a big shoot like this is essential and each team spent about an hour discussing how the shoot would go.  It was pretty funny (and expected) to see all of those plans fall apart as soon as the shooting began.  Each team had two hours to move the car in position, light it, refine it and get a final image.  The two teams took a completely different approach to lighting the car.  With one using all studio strobes and the other team using a mix of daylight and strobes.

Below I have posted images of their results and a group shot that I asked each team take at the end of their session.