Scooter Shooter

The Final Composite Portrait

I like it when I find extra bonus shots in my library. This fantastically restored original Vespa scooter was wheeled into my studio for a green screen portrait session with actor/artist/filmmaker Andy Murray.

The purpose of the session was to make a retro-cool composite shot of Andy and scooter, relocated via the magic of Photoshop from a barn in Cumbria to Brighton seafront. The shot above was simply an exposure test I took while Andy was getting ready.

The backdrop was masked out in photoshop, the scooter's body panels were airbrushed a little to remove some of the unwanted reflections and the last stage was reducing the whole thing to black and white using an adjustment layer, set to reproduce the effect of a high contrast blue filter.

Original Shot

As a general rule, when shooting against a green screen, you want as much distance as physically possible between the subject and the screen. Get too close to the back drop and everything starts catching the awful reflected green light that spills off the backdrop. I've had problems with a horrible reflected green cast up-lighting subjects on previous green-screen shoots. Fine for a zombie shoot, but not much use for anything else, so I now tend to use white paper directly underneath the subject. It makes for a little more work making a mask for the lower part of the subject, but a whole lot easier than removing a green glow from under someone's chin.