1013MM: Photography By John Zhang Blog

Forgestar Ferrari 458 Italia

admin — Sat, 26 May 2012 00:10:40 +0000

I wanted to put up this set I did for Forgestar a couple weeks ago before I leave for a short vacation. I really like this set personally because it’s a red car is just begging to be shot, it’s a night shoot, and it’s a Ferrari duh… Anyway, everyone will tell you red is such a hard color to shoot, but if you can get the correct balance from editing then you should be fine. Shooting at night makes red that much harder, but I think I managed to work it out after about a week of editing this set. It’s really rare for me to shoot at night so I took the challenge. And how can you even resist shooting a Ferrari? Nowadays, I see way too many “photographers” taking huge opportunities for granted. I personally am disgusted by the amount of “photographers” that get to shoot such a fine piece of machinery and not give it the justice it deserves. But I digress, here’s the set. Let me know what you think! Some of these are going in my portfolio.

Click here for the rest.

Our 2012 BMW 328i F30 Project Build

John — Wed, 23 May 2012 04:01:35 +0000

There are plenty of automotive photographers who not only photograph cars, but he or she will build cars too. I am one of them. It’s the best of both worlds when you get to build a car and then photograph it. Looking back to my automotive photography roots, it’s exactly how it all started. The urge to modify my car, brought on the need to connect with aftermarket companies and shops such as HRE Wheels, Rotora, Slek, LTBMW, United BMW, and many more whom I still work with today. Today, I am introducing to you my next project that my girlfriend and I will be working on. It’s a brand spankin’ new 2012 BMW 328i F30 sedan. It’s actually a complete departure from the older E90 sedan chassis. Everything feels more user-friendly from the interior read outs / buttons to the handling and performance. Don’t let the inline-4 scare you away, it’s turboed and still fun to drive while saving you plenty of mpg. We managed to get around 40mpg on our very first tank. So check out the photos and be sure to stay tuned as I will definitely be taking plenty of photos to document our modifications to it.

The beginning thanks to Paul @ Irvine BMW for quick service and response. He got me this beauty at the lowest price possible and before it even touch American soil. Amazing experience dealing with him.

Click here for the rest.

HRE Mercedes Benz AMG E63 Wagon & AMG CLS63

John — Sat, 19 May 2012 03:11:39 +0000

Introducing my very first Benz shoot thanks to HRE Wheels. That’s right. My VERY first Benz shoot. I’ve shoot BMW’s and Audi’s, but never any Mercs so here it is. And in good old 1013MM fashion, I bring to you not only one Benz, but two. An AMG E63 Wagon and an AMG CLS63. I thought it would be nice to go big on my first shoot with these awesome cars. I’m still a BMW guy at heart, but how can you resist such machines? Both sounded and looked very good. Hope you all enjoy the set! Tell me if I should shoot more Mercedes Benz in the future in the comments section.

Click here to see the rest.

Forgestar Widebody Porsche Boxster Spyder

John — Wed, 09 May 2012 01:52:22 +0000

Here’s I set I did for Forgestar wheels in downtown Los Angeles. It’s a widebody Porsche Boxster Spyder. To be honest I was skeptical at first being that I’ve been so brainwashed by the RWB / RAUH-Welt BEGRIFF builds as of recent, but to my surprise, this Porsche looks and sounds extremely nice in person. The location I chose has been used by me before, but I wanted to go about it a different way this time around. I wanted to give the location a second try to give it some justice. No strobes were used once again, just a lot of creative post processing. If there’s demand, I might do another image build post featuring one of these photos. Let me know what you think. I’m pretty proud of this set.

Click here for full set.

LTBMW BMW E36 M3 in Bimmer Magazine May 2012

John — Tue, 01 May 2012 02:32:49 +0000

I’m very excited to share with you that LTBMW’s BMW E36 M3 that I shot will be in the May 2012 issue of Bimmer Magazine. Support print and get yours today at your local news stand or bookstore!

Also don’t forget to pick up Darren’s BMW 335i to M3 conversion in May 2012 issue of Performance BMW magazine.

Here’s how the magazines look. Don’t miss it!

Formula Drift 2012 Round 1 Streets of Long Beach

John — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:04:28 +0000

Finally Formula Drift is back in full swing. I had the photos edited and ready to go last week, but I had to submit them to my clients before I posted. So here you go. Formula Drift 2012 Round 1 Streets of Long Beach 1013MM style. I love shooting Formula D simply because I can go wild with the editing and color toning. To me, drifting is so violent/gritty up close but at the same time so graceful from afar. Of course I had to go with my video game/cinematic toning and editing for this set. So enjoy! I spent a decent amount of time on each photo.

Also wanted to note that this year Long Beach claimed way more cars than last year and there was less smoke from the tires. I had way more tire and smoke in my face last year and way less life ending attempts on me this year. No clue why. Still love it though!

Click here for the rest.

Kevin’s BMW 535i Part 2

John — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 02:46:34 +0000

I’ve shot Kevin’s BMW 535i a few times here and here before and every time I’ve shot it, it’s looked different. This time Kevin wanted a “water” location so I found an open dock to shoot his car near the coast. It was a perfect location for his car and to top it off I added in the cooler tones to flow overall with the whole set. These photos were almost all shot against the sun like my Ferrari California shoot. I also did not use strobes for this one. Challenge accepted.

Click here for the rest.

Darren’s BMW 335i for Performance BMW Magazine May 2012

John — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 03:39:13 +0000

I’ve shot Darren’s BMW 335i M3 conversion numerous times now and by now you should realize that he changes his car modifications way more than his pants. These photos were shot around the beginning of this year from 3am to 6am in the morning right next to the coast. My assistant, Jason, Darren and myself got to get a little intimate with each other since we were three men huddled close together on a pacific coast cliff watching the sunrise. Quite the moment I would say.

Anyway, back to the subject. This set was the most extensive set I’ve ever worked and it took me 2 weeks plus to finish. I spent a all-nighter the night before I had to leave socal for norcal to go to Wekfest 4 San Francisco. I took off right after I sent in the photos. A quick shout out to Darren, Jason, Ben from PBMW magazine, and the LTBMW family. Let me know what you all think!

Don’t forget to support print and pick up the latest copy of Performance BMW magazine at your local bookstores!

Click here for the rest.

Image Build Audi R8

John — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 03:07:47 +0000

I receive an average of 30 emails daily about my post-processing, so I’m going to show everyone just how I process an image from beginning to end. This Audi R8 will be taken from a fairly recent set I did for iForged Wheels which you can find here. Take a look at the image below, that’s the final result. So follow along to see what I do behind every photo I open up in Photoshop. This is the world premiere of an image build by 1013MM. Enjoy!

Below is the image unedited straight from my camera which was a Nikon D700. This photo was shot with a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VRII lens at around 10am. The image was imported as a raw to Lightroom 3 to help me categorize into dated folders and export into JPGs and that’s all I usually use it for. I know there are plenty of ways to import and export images, but this has worked for me since the beginning and I’m sticking to it. Is it the most efficient? No.

As you can already tell, no strobes were used since I am lazy and hate lugging lighting equipment around when I shoot solo. I could have gotten the same end result with lighting equipment. It’s just personal preference, I’m not saying not to use lighting or over process. What I am saying use what best suits your shooting style and workflow.

You may have noticed that right off the bat there are a lot of things to clone out and so I duplicated a layer and began my cloning. Remember, always used new layers never flatten an image you’re working on or only work on one layer, that’s destructive workflow. Always keep in mind that you should be able to hide all the layers in your final .PSD file and you should be able to see the original raw file.

After the cloning, I added the moving train in. This was a little idea that popped into my head during the shoot when the train passed and I knew right then and there that it had to be in the final edit. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but it’s pretty obvious what I did. Sometimes ideas like this just pop into your head, so always be open minded when it comes to Photoshop. Think of a photo as an open canvas for you to “paint” and have fun with it. The bright yellow train really help to bring out the white car from the white/grey wall behind it which made the car blend in too much.

Next I added in the “lights” and brought out the front and wheels of the car. There are plenty of methods to do this and it is especially easier with a white or silver colored car.

Then I added in the color toning. I felt that a reddish hue would compliment the yellow, white and blue tones already in the photo itself. It helped to take out some of the greenish cyan tones which didn’t really bring out the background buildings. After all, I wanted to show off the LA landscape a little too just to dramatize the overall image.

To finish off the image, I took out the power lines which were very distracting. Contrast and sharpening were also added to help make the final edit “pop”.

There’s more to it that just moving sliders, a lot of creativity and thinking is involved behind the scenes and I feel that some people just don’t understand that. This particular image (not the full set) took 8 hours from beginning to end non-stop.

I hope this helps bring to light just some of the photoshop techniques I utilize when I edit photos. If you are interested in the full set click here.

My BMW 135i

John — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 04:46:44 +0000

I rarely have time to shoot my own personal projects, but when I do, I cherish them. Last weekend I was waiting for a client so I decided to detour a bit and shoot my own car. I happened to chance on a very nice deserted road and thought the location was perfect. The car itself is almost done so I wanted to photos as remembrance. Let me know what you think!