We recently were able to ask Los Angeles-based photographer Scott Dukes a series of questions about his work. An L.A. native, Dukes is still in his hometown and shooting the automotive photography he has become known for.

When did you first get involved with photography, and at what age?
My involvement with photography started in high school, around the age of sixteen or so. Prior to, I had played baseball from a young age through my freshman year. That summer I had relocated schools and continued playing ball, but eventually ended up not making the final cut for the team. That ended up being the turning point for me, when I closed the door on baseball and looked for Plan B. I got into drawing for a minute, which eventually lead to photography. Shortly after, I ended up getting a job at a local camera store, which helped jump start things immensely.

Did you study formally with anyone?
Besides taking a couple of classes in high school and community college, I’ve never had any formal training.

Did you assist anyone?
The assisting I’ve done through the years has been with a couple of photographers who are good friends. Whether it’s been them bringing me in for the learning experience, or me giving them a helping hand, it’s definitely been at a more personal level.

Do you have any mentors or other shooters you very much admire?
On a mentor level, the two mentioned above—Brian Konoske and Steve Demmitt. Both are great automotive shooters, and I’m thankful to have learned a bunch from them over the years.

As far as shooters I admire, there are a bunch from all ends of photography. One other car shooter I’ve always been a big fan of is Jeff Ludes. Sticking with the heavily produced look, Tim Tadder is a big fave for his sports images. Oddly enough, though, two of my long personal favorites are Estevan Oriol and Jonathan Mannion. Maybe it’s their subject matter, or possibly a personal backlash to the heavily produced look, but I love the perceived simplicity of it all.

When did you become a pro?
2007 was my first year shooting full time.

What draws you to automotive photography?
Looking back, I think it was simply a matter of timing. As I was getting more and more into photography, I was also getting into cars. I had bought my first car, and started down that black hole of modifying it. I started shooting it for fun, then started shooting friends’ cars. It was a snowball effect from there, and I can only be appreciative of everything that’s come of it. It was definitely a meeting of two passions.

How has technology changed your own shooting over the years?
For the most part, the advance of technology has made things a whole lot easier. From the basic idea of viewing photos while shooting, to being able to send clients files via FTP from the home office. Relatively speaking, everything’s a good bit more streamlined. On the flip side, things can be a lot more fast-paced and the demands can be greater at times. If you’re out in the middle of nowhere, as long as you can send emails from your phone, some clients like to approve images remotely right then and there. I’m all for it though. I believe everything’s relative, but I think we’re living in such an amazing technological age right now and not embracing it only seems counterproductive in a lot of ways.

Did you previously shoot film? If so, any thoughts on your transition to digital?
I did shoot film for a bit. I took a few black and white classes in school, as well as a color negative class. My first handful of editorial jobs, prior to shooting full time, were shot on 35mm color transparency and black and white negative film. Relatively speaking, new technology is most always based off what it’s replacing. Most digital cameras have derived from their analog counterparts, and Photoshop is literally a digital darkroom. I’m super thankful for my analog foundation, as little as it was, as it made the transition much smoother for me in many regards.

On that note, given what he was capable of doing in the darkroom, I’d like to think Ansel Adams would be on some next level shit if he lived to see the digital age. A lot of people don’t seem to realize how much “retouching” went into his prints.

What kind of cameras are you shooting these days?
I’m a Canon guy myself. For the bulk of work, their DSLRs are sufficient. I love shooting with my iPhone as well. I really enjoy capturing random things throughout the day that I’d probably never bother with using any other camera.

What kind of lights are you using?
I personally own an Alien Bees lighting kit. They’re definitely like a Hyundai equivalent of strobe lighting, but they’ve been through a lot and are still chugging along!

Do you use a tripod? If so, what type?
I do, as it’s a vital piece of gear for shooting composites. I have an older Bogen / Manfrotto tripod of some sort, with a ball head.

Do you use a light meter? If so, what type?
I haven’t used a light meter in ages, but still have one from the film days. It’s a super basic Sekonic meter, the L-308. It was a great tool for learning the technicalities of strobe lighting.

How are things different when shooting, say, automotive shots as opposed to cycling? What do you do differently?
With automotive photography, I’d say one of the biggest differences is the subject is inanimate. It doesn’t move around or talk back to you! All jokes aside, it’s definitely easier in that sense, but shooting a car can be tough. Think oversized product photography on location. You have a large hunk of painted metal and glass on wheels, it can be tough at times to control the light and reflections.

With cycling, you have a much smaller subject to light, but it moves—a lot. As with shooting people in general, the slightest of differences in expressions, posture, etc., can make or break an image. Despite those differences, though, for me they’re pretty similar. From the initial concepts, to the locations, lighting, and treatments in post production, the idea has been to keep that same overall style and feel to my images.

Can you get into details about your use of PocketWizard gear?
With my style being heavily dependent on strobe lighting, the bottom line is I need a consistently reliable wireless triggering system. PocketWizard have been the industry standard for some time, and for good reason. I’m using a mix of Plus transmitter / receivers, and Plus II transceivers.

Any plans for your future in photography?
The basic plan is to just keep the ball rolling. To be able to do this for a living is a blessing. In addition to the automotive work, though, I want to keep working on more people / sports images. I love sports, and it’d be great to come full circle again and put two of my passions together as I initially did with cars.

I’d love to do something with more of my “personal” images as well. Haven’t quite figured out what that is yet, but I really enjoy shooting at its most basic level—just me and a camera. I want show that body of work in a proper manner, but on a more personal level, without coming off as a “one stop shop” photographer.

In efforts to keep the blog updated more often, more so with image build ups, I wanted to switch things up a little and show some non-automotive work. This was personal work, shot last year here in Los Angeles, of Trek sponsored rider Alex Boone. I wanted to keep the style similar to my automotive work, so I was focused more on the overall beauty of the image versus what the rider was doing. With that said, though, this single track was actually pretty steep and rutty. Not exactly the friendliest stretch of trail to have to ride over and over for the camera. Lit with Alien Bee strobes, powered by Vagabond II packs and triggered by Pocket Wizards.

Here’s a look at the build up of an image created this past December for a Lexus advertorial that recently ran in Automobile and Motor Trend magazines. We shot on location at Las Vegas Motor Speedway over the course of two days during the Lexus GS Challenge. Given the scope of the event, in addition to the short winter days, we had pretty limited time with the vehicles. This being the hero photo, we naturally found ourselves in the biggest time cramp to make things happen! I’ll spare you the details, because at the end of the day it’s all part of the job. With that said, you’ll see below that this image was shot with one assistant, one strobe, and a plan of attack in post production. I’m a firm believer that it’s best to get things done properly in camera, but when in a bind, the process is a moot point as long as you deliver.

The photo printed as a 3 page spread fold out in Automobile and a standard 2 page spread in Motor Trend, so that was to be kept in mind while composing the image.

RIDES Magazine dropped their newest issue this week at SEMA in Las Vegas. This is typically their biggest issue of the year, and it was a great opportunity to be able to shoot the cover for a second time. Below are images from a few other interior features.

Here’s a quick look at some recent work for Toyota of the 2012 Yaris. Details were shot in studio and the exteriors were shot on location around Los Angeles. Check out Toyota’s Pressroom for the rest of the images.

Back in May I had the good opportunity to work with some buddies at Monster World Rally Team to photograph Ken Block for the new issue of Dub Magazine. Should be hitting the news stands in a week or so, do check out the feature if you run into it!

When RIDES Magazine made a shift into covering the custom motorcycle culture, I had the opportunity to shoot an editorial on Rare Breed, a well respected motorcycle club with sectors here in Los Angeles and Atlanta. Since then, RIDES has teamed up with Harley Davidson to produce a video on the motorcycle club for Iron Elite, which “honors the camaraderie and influence of African American riders within our family,” and I had the honor of H-D running my portrait of the the club alongside the video on their website.

Check out the video on Harley Davidson’s site if you have a minute!

Been meaning to do an image build up on this for a while, pretty happy to finally get around to it. Just about a year ago we shot a cover for Project Car Magazine that got canned, and last minute they decided they wanted to replace it with their project AE86 doing some “urban drifting.” On a whim, I did some quick location scouting outside of Downtown LA and excitedly found this spot, which worked nicely. In retrospect, there are a couple things I may have done differently. All said and done, though, I knew things didn’t have to be 100% perfect or believable as the image would be cropped and plastered with a magazine title and a bunch of text. In no particular order, here’s a breakdown and build up of the shot:

This is the base plate for the image, straight out of the camera. All elements were shot on tripod, except for the motion plate for the ground and foreground. We’ll touch base on that in a minute.

Added some adjustment layers to get the color palette where I wanted, and added some slight basic motion blur to the background to help smooth the transition from the foreground motion.

As you can see above, the dark, flat color of the paint needed a separate exposure. I opened up the exposure a stop or so, and threw some light on the front end.

The last thing captured was the motion plate. After taking the camera off the tripod, I stayed in roughly the same position and did some pan blurs to capture natural motion. This method is by no means anywhere close to technically proper, but it worked close enough for the image. The wheels were spun with the car jacked up, but I opted to use a radial blurred front wheel from photoshop, as it was a better middle ground between static and motion.

Lastly, some smoke was painted in. This is typically the hardest thing to make decently realistic. I forget exactly what I did here, but I’m going to guess it was a mix of painting and compositing real smoke from other random images. For the hell of it, I added some gravel kick up with the help of some random brushes buried deep in the brush palette.

Final adjustments were made to all layers. Some vignetting, color balancing, etc.

Final cover layout that went to print.

Feel free to leave any questions you may have by commenting below!

Finally getting caught up on my RSS feeds from the day and ran into an iPhone snap of mine featured on today’s LA Times Southern California Moments blog! I really enjoy the daily post, as well as the Flickr group, so it’s pretty humbling take day 105/365 for the year.

For those interested – Photoshop Express was used to crop and adjust the exposure, and Camera Bag was used to apply a couple filters.

Check out the rest of the gallery if you have a minute.

In honor of Japan, its people, and anyone affected by the crisis, I want to offer up this desktop wallpaper. Download the hi-res HERE.