•THE TOOLS•
Canon 5D Mark 2, 24-105mm, 1:4 lens, Polarizing filter
Photoshop CS5 on Mac Pro with Wacom tablet

•THE STORY•
Yes, it’s true that a state trooper clocked him doing 130 M.P.H. on Interstate 44, but speed is not the pedigree of this low-slung rat rod from Crystal City. Quite the opposite, this slithering snake belongs to Jason Cutmeyer, a reformed dizzle addict and self appointed vigilantly on a mission to bust up every meth lab in Southwest Missouri. An extra low gear slowed the rig to a crawl and left perpetrators clueless of the sentence that was about to me imposed. Trailer parks and dilapidated farmhouses were the hunting grounds for the punisher and his four wheels of the apocalypse. Jason could pick up the scent of cooking Devil Dust from a mile away. That smell would trigger a sequence that would sweep any nearby parasites from the planet. A push to the left, a downward thrust, and a pull straight back would engage the rat in a forward crawl toward the ammonia and iodine vapors lingering in the heavy night air. A gallon milk jug filled with ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel strapped to the belly of the trash laden trailer would send the scab faced crankers to the afterlife in a fiery inferno. For any jibbheads who escaped the blast, a tire iron to the skull from a one-time hardball prospect named Cutmeyer meant “game over”.

Heed the warning all you sketch monsters, tweakers, and skitzers. When you hear the sound of gravel crackling under the tires of an approaching vehicle it won’t be Charlene returning from Walmart with a couple bags of Sudafed and peroxide. That bump you heard coming from under the trailer isn’t that old farm dog looking for a place to sleep again. No, what you’re hearing is the sound of four wheels of justice and a driver with a bad attitude that we call Jason and the Night Crawler.

•THE PROCESS•
The truck was shot at a rally under an overcast sky. The truck had a satin finish, which minimizes reflection details. I added a texture to the truck by using a section of dried mud that I shot in Death Valley, California. First I made a clipping mask of the truck, then, I duplicated the mask and used it to clip an area of the dried mud texture that would be the same shape as the truck. I made the mud layer 50% transparent and merged it with the truck shape, which looked a bit washed out. (That is normal in this process) Then I boosted the contrast, which brought back the light and dark detail originally in the truck. Now it appeared that the texture was on the truck. This takes practice and a lot of judgment calls along the way, so you need patience to master this. Finally I copied and merged all layers and moved the hue a bit to get the various greens in the final version.

Flyrod says: Don’t use Photoshop while driving.