Stockland Martel

Lots of photographers use CGI to create scenarios that would otherwise be impossible to execute, but it’s usually because they’re under budget and time constraints or because they want to achieve something fantastical. John Offenbach, on the other hand, has been experimenting with using CGI to achieve an emotional special effect. I’ll let him explain:

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“I have just completed the second in a series of cars where the sensibility is very different from the usual CGI,” he told me via email. “We have jokingly been calling it CGI 2.0. The aim was to move away from traditional images of super-shiny cars in  super-shiny environments. Rather than everything hyper perfect, and hyper real, I wanted them to look very photographic. I hope when you look at these images, the first thing you think is, Wow, what an amazing picture.”

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Photo by John Offenbach.

Photo by John Offenbach.

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“The car on its roof could well have been found upended somewhere near a construction site,” he continued. “The Citroen could well have been abandoned on train tracks. Then you build up the rest of the story like, what happened to the people inside? How did it get on to the train tracks in the first place? What if there’s a train coming? I think it’s slightly more emotional than we are used to seeing in CGI.”

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