How to light a fire engine....?

[Destin]

My chief asked me to take some photos of a few of our trucks to hang around the hall and use on our website. My thing is that I want these photos to REALLY look good. Sure I could take a quick snapshot of the trucks and call it a day, and still have better results than what we have now (the current photos were taken with a cell phone :er: )

But I want to really make these photos look nice. I was thinking like a night shot of our best engine in front of the hall, using OCF to give the photo some depth.

I've got OCF figured out pretty well for portraits and small objects, but how the heck do I go about lighting a fire engine? Is it even possible with the equipment I have?

lighting equipment I'll have:
-1 Nikon SB-800
-2 SB-600's
-4 Yongnuo yn-460's (they have built in optical triggers, so I can trigger the Nikon's with CLS using my D80, and then just optical trigger the yongnuos)
-four 12 foot light stands
-two 30 inch umbrellas
-two 42 inch umbrellas

I can purchase more gear if needed, but I don't want to spend too much.

The biggest problem I see with the whole thing is the crazy amount of chrome on a firetruck is going to create a ton of hotspots. How do I work around this?

 

[mikehaugen]

The color would probably suck, but you can rent one of those light tower generator things for pretty cheap. I am pretty sure you can aim the heads on them, they usually have 4.

 

[KmH]

The biggest problem I see with the whole thing is the crazy amount of chrome on a firetruck is going to create a ton of hotspots. How do I work around this?

By understanding the "family of angles" that will reflect your light sources.

Light Science and Magic, An Introduction to Photographic Lighting - Fourth Edition
Your umbrellas are to small. A couple of 60" would be useful.

Back light the truck (rim light), and light the underside, and cab too. That will take 3 lights leaving you 4 to put on the light stands.

I would use the SB-800 for the rim/back light (zoomed to wide angle), the 2 SB-600's for the underside (also wide angle and a home-made wide angle snoot) and cab light (low power wide angle, on the floor pointing mostly up), and the 4 YN-460's into 60" umbrellas to light the truck (one for the front, one for the drivers side front corner (partly on the front, but mostly on the long side of the truck), and the last 2 on the long side of the truck.