You all should know by now that I’m not in the business of lying to you. We have other people on staff to do that, and they’re much better at it than me. I’m here to force you to think about taillights or whatever. That’s why when I tell you that that picture up there of a yellow Lambo driving in the rain is you should believe me. Because it’s being sprayed with water.

based in India, and if you’ve been keeping up with the news coming out of a sleepy little place I like to call “the entire world” you’re aware that there’s a global pandemic and being able to go out and photograph cars in their natural, outdoor habitats just isn’t really an option at the moment.

But Kunal, see, Kunal’s not just going to lay around in his underpants and eat corn chips and whine and complain about how miserable it all is. No, not Kunal. Kunal’s going to take a toy Lamborghini and rake the laundry off his treadmill and get a spray bottle full of the same liquid as rain and make a little bit of photographic illuso-magic.

Here’s some details about how he pulled it off:

All elements are captured in camera.

A spray bottle was used for rain.

Two lights along with two B10s, a and a Yongnuo YN360 were used to light the scene.

The car was held in place on the treadmill with the use of a shoelace.

The boundary fence was a ping pong table net.

The ping pong net works remarkably well, I think, though the forward view I think is more convincing than the side, mostly because the toy car’s panel gaps are actually a bit worse than a real Lambo’s.

The treadmill/road effect is pretty fantastic! According to some quotes on water droplets were tricky to deal with, for scale reasons:

“Another challenge was not wanting to spray too much water on the car because that led to large water droplets forming on the surface and it looked completely unrealistic”

Kunal also published some behind-the-scenes videos:

...and another:

I’m hoping some of you photographer/toy car/treadmill owners and enthusiasts may be inspired to try some similar shoots of your own. May I suggest pouring Rice Krispies and Coco Puffs on a moving treadmill with a toy Jeep or something to make some fake off-road videos?