Last Updated on 07/16/2017 by Chris Gampat
All images by Felix Hernandez. Used with Creative Commons Permission
We’ve featured Felix Hernandez here a number of times for his awesome photo projects, and this time around he’s giving us an ode to Back to the Future. Felix has been creating small scale model photography for a while now as his own personal tribute to a lot of different movies and cool parts of popular geek culture. A lot of it has to do with cars while other parts have more to do with Star Wars or other movies. But for Back to the Future, he needed to capture all the neons, fire and the overall spirit of the incredibly popular 80s movie.
As is very typical of Felix, he uses a method of very specifically placed lights to make the scene look like it’s being shot in normal daylight. But instead, what many folks may not realize is that this is all being done with a toy car. To make the scene look like daylight he simply needs a large light modifier that is bigger than the car. As is the rule of lighting, the larger and closer the light source is in relation to the subject, the softer it will be. In this case, Felix is using Einstein E640 lights–which are incredibly reliable, powerful and absolutely do the job in most cases.
He combines this with a few small, constant lights placed in just the right spots to give extra texture to the smoke, spark effects, etc.
Then he goes ahead and adds things like smoke, gelled lights, and in this case: fire. Yup, a Back to the Future car shoot just isn’t complete without the fire being left behind by the wheels.
Be sure to check out all of Felix’s Ode to Back to the Future on Behance.