Taking good photos of your car

Darag, you forgot to mention when taking pix while standing in the middle of railroad tracks, to be certain there are no trains coming from either direction!

 

I've got a truck load of pics I took for a recent review but I'm obviously still learning:


I was lucky that the interesting background made up for the ****ty lighting. I was also limited as far as where I could stand and park, since it was a bit soggy and there is a massive drain behind me.

 

I don't know how I missed this thread. My dad is big on photography, anbd it's rubbing off on me... Mainly auto photography. I'm a big fan of odd angle shots, like down low or up above (however low is easier, don't need a ladder) and also I love night shots. That's one thing NOT discussed here, I love long exposure night shots. Depending on the ambient lighting and the length of the exposure it tints the picture.

This is a very small selection of my work from the last 2 years.

(these 2 are good shots that I love but not bright enough and the second one has a railing growing out of the trunk...)



These clearly show the difference the wheel position makes in a photo.




Here is a shot where the foreground is a little busy, but is kinda feeds right into the car, at least in my opinion.

Also a low angle shot can make a dramatic effect


These tricks even come into play with other things too, like my friends dog. Bosley just happened to be watching me from across the street while I was photographing my wagon and I caught this pic.


These pics show you how misplace shadows can ruin pictures. This was in the Watchung mountains, under MANY trees, and the pics suffer from the car being covered in dark lines.



Good pic of the background of the above pics



And a paned view from the rock cliff (kinda choppy):


Some pics taken by my friend from the back seat of my cutlass while tooling down the GS parkway and Rt9 In the mini bandit run put on by a friend.
I like how he took the shots around curves that got the line of t/a's.


Unfortunately we hit rain on the way

Sometime blurry isn't a bad thing. This is a shot from the driver's seat of my cutlass once we got to the show, waiting out the rain.

 

Here is a couple shots of my friends elco. This shows what I mean about long exposure



These are his and my favs from the shoot. I would have played a little more to get rid of the light blur, but it was cold as h3ll, and we were freezing.




More random Night/Long Exposure shots






I think I've bombarded you all with MORE than enough pics. Some good, some flawed... Trust me, there'd be more flawed if it weren't for the fact most of them get deleted as I load them off the camera.
Out of 100 shots, about 10 are decent, and 3 or 4 are GOOD.

 

I enjoyed all of those photos. The one that caught my eye the most was a shot of all the Ponticac Firebirds cruisin' off the parkway ramp, lookin' so good.... and behind them in the back graound was a line of all the same looking ugly cars of today....as if THEY were going to an "Ugly Cars Only" show.

 

Nice pics. I'm thinking my favorite is the Plymouth one at night. How many miles are on that car? That was your Granddad's, right?

 

How true!

David

 

Gotta say, today's cars (thanks to these new "designers") are UUUUUUUUUGLYYYYYYYY.

 

I really like all those road pics too. My friend took a little advice from me and did one hell of a good job making up the rest... Especially for someone not a photography buff, or even used to using a decent camera.

That car has about 200k on it. That was my grandpa's car too. My wagon replaced it, and my dad is the only reason it didn't get junked.
The only reason I got that pic, was because my dad was working on his fairmont daily in the garage doing bondo work when it started raining... So since he was in the middle of it, he had to let it sit in the rain. I took that as a photographic opportunity.

 

I would like to make a contribution to the group. I'm the editor of the new magazine Chevy Enthusiast and the editorial director of automotivetraveler.com. So if you have a cool Chevy station wagon, especially if it's of the sixties big-block variety, get in touch with me, with some photos, at cheeditor@amosautomotive.com. I'd love to see what you've got.

And if you'd like a primer on what it takes to shoot your car for publication, I would like to point you to a series on automotivetraveler.com, Car Photography for Dummies. As I've shot dozens of auto magazine covers and produce at least six photo features each month, I'd like to think that some of my suggestions will help you take better photos of your own cars and that your best shots will catch the eye of the editor of your favorite auto magazine.

Richard Truesdell
Editor, Chevy Enthusiast
Editorial Director, automotivetraveler.com
Contributing Editor Musclecar Enthusiast, Cars & Parts
1969 Jeep Super Wagoneer
1969 Mercury Colony Park station wagon
1969 AMC Rambler American 440 station wagon
1988 AMC Eagle station wagon

 

I like photography too.

Next are some of my photographs, all unedited except some license plate blurring.

Some 'tricks' and techniques I used:

* Find dramatic angles of your car and avoid pictures that have a normal human view (I love frog eye view - low profile stances).

* watch what your camera tells you about lighting, aperture and shutter time.
I copy the lighting from another angle a lot. This is what I mean: I make a composition of what I want in my photograph but see that the lighting balance will not be good with the light in the picture. I then aim my lens to a lighter or darker object, then copy that lighting (with a dSLR this is easy) and go back to my composition and snap the picture. This makes some dramatic contrasts possible.

* avoid too many straight lines unless you want to emphasize them (like my dark side contour photo made of the side of the car)

* avoid lines ending inside the picture; a picture might end very boring and dull if everything ends in the frame; it makes the "world" in your photo very small. The eye loves things that go beyond the frame, it suggests that there is more that is not visible in the picture. This makes the viewer/eye curious.

* the rule of thirds had already been mentioned but that is a good rule; keep the dimensions organic, not static. The rule of thirds mimics the way nature (re)solves things.

* Use colors and contrasts. Color and contrast are basically the only things you as a photographer are painting with. Those are the building blocks of a photo. Contrast is created by good lighting, shadows, lighter or darker backgrounds etc. Colors contrast as well, but on a different level. Colors add emotion and when they are contrasted - or only using one color - they create an atmosphere and a context of whatever is happening or whatever is on the picture.


Following are some of my pictures - beneath them I will add some info about what I did in the picture:


In this picture I was on my normal height but chose a 'dramatic' angle of the car; the left front falls out of the frame a bit and lead the eyes to the lines of the car backwards. The sun was a very low late summer / early fall sun.


In this picture I used the shadow of the low sun to emphasize the contour of the car. The sun was actually behind the car in this picture. I chose the lowest place possible (frogs eye) to make the car look like a colossal statue.
Notice how the tree is not fully in the picture to make the world look bigger. If I changed the angle too much to the right the lack of the tree would make the picture look dull.


In this picture I used the long shadow to emphasize the size of the car. The lights of the car were on to give extra contrast and to keep the contours of the car visible. Notice how the lines of the shadow do not end in the frame. One critical thing to notice to myself is that the contrast is too much out of balance; I should have planted some bigger trees on the right too the trees on the right should have been on the border of the picture more.


This is a very straight and boring picture. What those straight line do, however, is bringing the emphasize on the big ass this car have and the stickers on the back window.


This picture shows the beautiful color effect of the original paint on the car (alas also the minor points with the ugly anti-corrosion stuff on the scratches). The wheel is almost parallel to the lens and the low view (front light height) plus the angle in which the car is standing make for the dramatic lines (the striping looks horizontal and the rest of the car disappears to the horizon in all different kinds of points).

This picture is almost the same as the previous but then in an even more dramatic angle, only by standing more to the front of the car. Again this is on front light height.


The last one:


This picture was the first one I made when I retrieved the car from a garage where it stood for about a year. This was no photo shoot, just a simple shot but I like it nonetheless. What makes it stand out? The low sun, the angle of the car, the way the wheel is turned in and the colors and contrast. This picture was made with a simple point and shoot-camera, which goes to show one does not need an expensive camera.

I hope this helps a little.

Cheers!

 

Sure does! You take a mean picture Wilf. The car looks awesome! Thanks.

 

Love the car Wilf. Super color too.

 

I had a project where I drove around with a cheap disposable camera in the glove box and everytime I saw a duplicate of my 1991 Mercury Colony Park (or similar year), I would take a picture with both of them. Ended up with about 8 occurrences in a 2 month period (It got too hot to keep the camera in there for longer). They are becoming much rarer as time goes on.

 

Great shots! The one with the Smart car was priceless...cracked me up!