When Williams Fourth's Bill Creighton needed a photo to illustrate his new ad for S and C Electric Company, the concept called for showing what the metaphorical "hot seat" might look like. Once we had the layout in hand, it was a relatively simple matter to set up the Herman Miller Aeron chair in the studio with a single spotlight to create the shadow and highlight the chair's texture. A small tungsten bulb suspended over the seat provided the orange reflections which would 'sell' the fire image to be shot later. The chair was shot on 4x5 color transparencies and a second series of photos were done that evening in a darkened garage, shooting fifty digital exposures of blazing kerosene soaked rags on a Weber grill to get just the right color and shape for the flames.
The next morning these digital files were combined with hi-res scans of the chair shot into a single image. Displacement maps built in Photoshop served to create the convection distortion visible above the fire, and a convection 'shadow' was added to the chair shadow to complete the shot.
The final job was delivered as CMYK files ready for reproduction, and the chair, untouched by flames, was returned as well.