Composition practice (or: painting with light)

To improve my Photoshop skills I gave myself the assignment to make a composition of different photos and make it into one. Normally I only use Photoshop to solve some problems and not to improve or even create a new photo with. Lately I notice many fellow photographers expect that using a computer to create a new image will become more and more important. For me good reason to start playing...

Ingredients:

• DSLR (camera)
• Wide angle lens (e.g. 35mm)
• Tripod
• Cable release (couldn't find it in my big box of small photo-accessories, so: not with me)
• Flash + remote control + extra batteries
• Colored gels to put over the flash
• White shoot-through umbrella
• Model (=car)
• Location (=industrial area in Eindhoven, next to the car-wash)

Instructions

• Wait for the late afternoon (early February in the Netherlands 16.00h is about OK).
• Wipe the snow of your car and throw your gear in the back (your photogear I mean).
• Drive to the car wash and wait your turn.
• Clean your car, thoroughly (I forgot the last part).
• Position your car at the supermarket parking lot and find a nice angle. 
• NOtice that at 16.00h the supermarkte opens (it's a Sunday) and the parking lot fills COMPLETELY.
• Find another spot where no-one is WITHOUT spoiling your clean car with snow and salt. (drive slowly)
• Position your car and find a nice angle to shoot the car from.
• Put the camera on the tripod and DON'T move it anymore until you are finised.
• THINK what you want to accomplish and take shots.
• Merge all shots in Photoshop to a nice picture.

I thought it would be nice to combine all kinds of light angles on the car and the surroundings and then combine it.
These are some of the individual images I took. I made quite a lot of photos to be able to play with them at home. Better one too many than one short...

Then..
Go to Photoshop and put all photos in a different layer. Because the final image is not very large, I used the selection brush (A) to paint what I wanted to keep: the specially lit areas. The rest is erased with Eraser (E). This is done with every photo (about 20 or so). I used the 'lighten' function for the layer behavior adding light to the base layer. Finaly I picked the nicest sky, placed the moon and flattened all layers. Then finalized in Lightroom. (I can't help using Lightroom...)
And yes, the moon was really there. Sure, you're right. It was a little smaller. I used a 200mm to get it to this size.

Here is the final image.