Night Photography Tutorial: Make a car bonnet appear transparent

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to recreate the effect of making a car appear to have a transparent bonnet, even though it hasn’t.

What you will need to make your own transparent bonnet shot

This tecnique is simple, yet effective. There are a few things you need to make sure you have sorted out before you attempt this, otherwise you will waste a lot of time.

Find somewhere dark
This is very important. In order to get this shot right, you will need to ensure there is little ambient light in the area you are working. Stay away from any street lights or other strong light sources. I shot the photo above near street lights and under a full moon, but I got away with that due to the darker color of the car.

Find some good light sources
This is very important. You will need an LED or traditional tungsten torch, also you will need a more dispersed light source. For this I used an “LED Halo” which is a circular ring of LEDs that cast a wide and very even spread of light. This is what caused the light trail reflections on the car’s bodywork.

A tripod and camera with long exposure support
Lots of modern cameras support long exposure, but many restrict you to 30 seconds or less without the option to open the shutter for as long as you want (Often referred to as BULB mode). It is recommended that you use a camera that supports BULB mode. As well as this, you will need a tripod.

If you are new to long exposure Night Photography check out my Night Photography tutorial.

A car
A vital component in this tutorial is a car.

How It’s done

Once all the above is sorted, you can head out to your dark place and get started. One of the first things you must do is position your car where you want it. Once the car is in place, open the bonnet up.

You now need to position the camera and tripod and compose your shot. You must focus the camera at this point, before setting your tripod’s position and angle. It’s always a good idea to get a friend to hold a torch shining at a focal point on the car and focusing on that. Night time focusing has been convered in the tutorial I linked above. Don’t worry too much about the exposure settings at the moment, but get your camera set to Manual mode ready for later.

Once you have composed your shot looking through the viewfinder, ensure the tripod is locked off and steady. When looking through the viewfinder, if the bonnet when open is appearing above the horizon, or is obscuring any form of light you will need to recompose. By any form of light, I mean it. Even the light pollution in the sky from nearby street lights is enough to cause ghosting of the bonnet in the sky which is not what we want!

So now, you should have a shot composed and ready to go. The next thing that needs to be looked at is the exposure settings. Assuming you have found a relatively dark place and have full control over your exposure settings, you should use the following settings as a starting point:

Exposure length: 5 minutes (BULB Mode)
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 100

Of course, these settings are just a rough guide, but they worked for me as you can see from the photo above.

Now you are all setup, you can start the exposure. The bonnet should still be open at this point, but be ready to close it quickly during the exposure. It will not need to be up for long, and will be closed for a large part of the exposure.

Once you have started the camera exposing, grab your torch. Be careful not to get your self in the shot at this point, you can do this by making sure you are not blocking the camera’s view of the engine and by not standing still for too long.

You must now, quickly but effectively light a small portion of the car’s engine. I recommend you light just the middle part by moving the torch around the components slowly and evenly, ensuring that any parts you want lit have been hit by the torch light at some point. Once you are happy the engine has been lit properly, ensure you have turned the torch off, while at no point shining it in the direction of the camera – quickly close the bonnet. Exit the area swiftly and change over to the other light source, in my case an LED Halo.

Position the Halo or other light source in front of you, close to your chest. Walk around any parts of the car that are visible to the camera, lighting them carefully and slowly. This should be done with your back to the camera at all times, to avoid any unwanted light trails fromt he light source. You should not do this for too long, as you will overexpose the car. But it is impossible for me to tell you how long and how much you should light the car due to the amount of variables related to different light sources. I suggest you experiment and master that bit your self.

Once you have done lighting the car, leave the frame and wait behind the camera for the 5 minutes to up. This should leave you with something cool to look at.

If you try this technique, please post your results below via flickr or any other photo sharing website out there.