MPower, 2021
Digital Art Composite
Original Photo, 2012
Sebring, Florida
12 Hours of Sebring
This image was originally captured during the 2012 ‘12 Hours of Sebring’ race in Sebring, FL. Captured is car #155 for the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team (aka BMW Team RLL) racing in the GT Class of the American Le Mans Series. Car #155 was a BMW M3 E92, with the GT2 chassis and the glorious 4.0L V8. This particular race was the year before the entire American Le Mans Series folded. Fun fact, “Letterman” in Team RLL is the one and only David Letterman.
Since this was an Endurance Race (12 hours), three drivers switched off throughout the race to completion. American driver Bill Auberlen and German drivers Jörg Müller and Uwe Alzen were the team for this particular race. They qualified in P42, with Müller qualifying, and finished 22nd overall (out of 64 total entrants). They finished 4th in the GT Class.
This image was originally captured in March of 2012 with a Nikon D300s using a Nikkor 70-200m f/2.8 lens. The camera was handheld and the image was captured at 1/1250 of a second at f/7.1- panning the car as it flew by on the Ullman Straight just before turn 17. Shooting in shutter-priority, I captured roughly 15 images in a couple seconds.
In December of 2021, I pulled the original NEF raw image from the archives and turned it into a mixed media piece of art. The image was processed in Photoshop over a couple hours to give a look and feel of being sketched by hand (which partially is). There’s several clipping and layer masks to help pull forward the details of the car, while masking non-relevant parts of the image. There’s also various patterns and brushes used to achieve the final piece of art. A Huion graphic drawing tablet was used in the production. The final Photoshop image is 400mb in size and contains 34 layers. Lastly, 4 versions were created with background colors matching the BMW M Power logo and a GIF was created for viewing pleasure.
Enjoy this original digital artwork!