Automotive Photography?

[GrantH]

Hello everyone! I've been a member here for some time now, have learned the basics but am seemingly stuck in my learning curve. I want to do automotive photography as my main subject, but it seems as though a lot of information is kept "secret". I have found a couple good sources, and a friend of mine (albeit a couple states away) is very skilled in this form of photography. A lot of my wonders are of equipment needed for daytime shoots, and also how to create the proper focus needed when shooting different aspects of the car. Surely there is theory for automotive photography similar to how their is for macro or portrait photography.

I don't know that the photographs are necessarily "correct" at times as much as they are "eye-catching".

I follow a guy from Not Stock Photography that is an inspiration, his photos are always very dramatic looking. My buddies are more clean-cut detail oriented, showcases of the car in full. The NSP photos are more story-telling if that makes any sense. I know that both use a fair bit of post-processing, as well.

Aside from somewhere like carphototutorials, are there forums and/or blogs or similar that offer techniques, tips, or anything that may be of use?

 

[12sndsgood]

like you said notstock photography is more a picture allot of times rather then a car shot. he tends to use allot of cool backgrounds and crazy sky in his shots.he definatly has a style to him. nice thing is most people have a car so its pretty easy to just go out and get some shots. finding some good backgrounds to pose the car is something allot of people seem to overlook. shooting cars was what got me into photography. now that i finally have a good started camera i rarely shoot cars lol.

 

[GrantH]

I guess cars is an entry into portrait or similar works as the "model" is stationary, and always willing haha. I've always been into cars/trucks and have always loved looking at (quality) show coverge. I just need to find the equipment necessary to get started. I'm looking into manual flashes and a decent IR trigger system. I can't afford pocket wizards, so i'm going to look into the ebay variety that is talked about on strobist. A guy has a review stating 20/3000 are misfires. I can manage with that at the level I am at currently.

I can only imagine once I get better at photography in full, the equipment is easily substituted to other "genres" of photography.

I am personally looking at the Yongnuo flashes, though I don't know if I want/need the 565EX, simply because it is a ttl version. I can't seem to find a review/statement saying that they are in fact full auto on canon cameras, though all reviews claim the quality to be just fine.

 

[KmH]

What is it you think is different about automotive and portrait photography?

 

[JohnS.]

I personally LOVE LOVE LOVE rolling shots. Everyone has a different style. This 1 guy I know apparently holds his camera out the window near the ground and just randomly fires away until a good picture is taken. I know people that hang out of trunks. I personally just turn in the front passenger seat and take shots that way.

There are a few local photographers that do a lot of automotive photography and one of them uses a lot of artificial lighting. I'm personally not a HUGE fan but I appreciate any good work.

I'm interested to see what kind of work you turn out!

 

[Aloicious]

there isn't a whole lot different when it comes to automotive photography vs any other kind, there are little things that are different, but most of the subjects of focus, depth of field, lighting, angle, and most others are all going to be the same no matter what subject you're shooting.

if you're shooting the whole car, you want to make sure to choose a good DOF to get the entire car in focus, unless you're going for something specific, say like an emblem close up, or the front end, or something that a shallower DOF would work better on...you know, for artistic purposes. also think about the angle you're taking the shot from, everyone can see a car from the standard standing next to it angle...move around and find what looks good, or accentuates the car's design...

Focus is the same as anything else. composition rules are the same....a big thing that people do with car photography is they cut off little portions of it trying to fill the whole frame, take a step back and look, are the bumpers in the picture? if the hood is open, do you're not cutting the corner of it off or something, right? is the image straight?

lighting is a bit harder and sometimes you have alot less control of it. outdoor shows have shadows, etc, inside shows many times have lower than needed lighting. flashes can create harsh reflections....if you don't have full control over the car's positioning and lighting (like at a show or something) you can try bouncing your flash which can help out alot, or using a diffuser/bouce card....but reflections are one of the hardest things with cars since many of them are like mirrors. get a GOOD circular polarizer, it can help you control the reflections and the transparency of the glass.

make sure you're shooting in RAW if at all possible to get the best quality. watch things like your white balance since most car shows use various lighting sources...

shooting a car that you have full control over the environment isn't overly hard, take your time and get it as perfect as you can in the camera, don't try to rely too much on post processing....shooting things like shows and such is ALOT harder to get great pics, but if can be done. take lots of pics, I like to shoot 2-3 images of every shot in rapid succession, sometimes the first one has a little camera shake or something and the subsequent pics don't, it just gives you more options to chose from. and its not like film days when you'd have developing costs related to each image, choose the ones that you like, and get rid of the others. see what you did right on one shot and what you don't like on another, learn from your mistakes.

I have a small automotive site that I run and I cover some shows here and there, I almost never have a vehicle to shoot as I please, I either have to do it as they're going down the track, or on the showroom floor or something. I'm not perfect at it, but I learn something each time I cover an event. and the pics just keep improving...here are some of my recent event pics that I have done, some are better than others:

Here's a Bugatti Veyron that was at a show, of course they aren't going to let people get close to a car this expensive, so telephoto was my friend here, but I'm a bit disappointed with the lighting, it was outside around 11am so the sun was harsh, and they had a large frame structure around it which was casting shadows, not to mention a bunch of equipment obscuring some of the car...it was HARD to get a good shot of this car, these were the best of the ones I got. and although I could do some post processing to clean up some of the things, I shot over 1200 images at this show, so doing so on everything was just unfeasable. this is MOSTLY what I got out of the camera minus the cropping and image size, etc...

here is one that the outdoor lighting turned out a bit better on, however with shows, the background you usually have very limited control over, so there is usually always people, and sometimes things (like the garbage can in this pic) that you can't control much.

cars in motion are hard, you want to know beforehand if you're going to try and freeze the motion with a fast shutter, or see some motion blur with a slightly slower shutter speed. get used to panning with the vehicle while shooting too. these were all while the cars were in motion and panning with the vehicle. its like shooting sports, set the camera at successive shots, and just hold the shutter release down for however many images you would like, try to get images before, durring and after whatever is happening...these first two images are of a powersliding/burnout trial in a confined space, so there were alot of images I took leading up to these ones that I didn't use...its better to get too many and not use some, than not get what you wanted because you were waiting too long to take the shot.

these ones were cars racing on the salt flats through a 200mm lens, again several photos with these being the best

this one I got of the truck driving by me, I just got lucky that I was at a good angle...I didn't expect this one to turn out, but it looks pretty decent IMO for the circumstances it was taken under. don't be afraid to snap at anything you think you might want to shoot. you might end up with something interesting.

These are some decent point of view shots, I had to almost lay on the ground to get these, I also used a wide angle to accentuate the angles of the front end on both these cars:

same thing with this maseratti, but here's 2 pics at the same angle with and without the flash, you can see how the flash brings out the grill and radiator behind it alot..
without flash:

with flash:

another thing you'll run into with shooting shows, is the models...some are good, some aren't you shoot what you can and take what works, be nice to them. sometimes they'll work with you if you ask them to politely, sometimes that isn't possible...and sometimes they've been standing there for a while and are tired of people just taking pics like they're nothing more than part of the show. if you get a chance to talk to them, say thanks, but most of them don't want to hear a cheezy pickup line...in this one I wish I would have framed better to get that pole from obscuring part of the grill, but there were about 15 other people taking pics so I took what angle I could get. this was inside in a hallway of a huge conference center so lighting was poor at best, I had my flash on but as you can tell its still pretty far from perfect...

well, sorry for the long post, I love automotive photography, and I'm not a pro at it, but these are some things I've learned along the way. hope this helps you out some...

 

[MLeeK]

Those aren't what you would consider specialized automotive photography. Those are journalistic or natural light type photos, action photos...
For true automotive photography you are talking a lot of lights and staging just like glamor or specialized portrait photography.
Here's one source: Car Photography Tutorials - A CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW OF ALL OUR TUTORIALS
I think in one of the back issues of ShutterBug there was a great article about automotive photography. Might try searching their website.

 

[photo guy]

I photograph many of the collector cars and trucks that a relative has as a couple of my relatives are on multiple car clubs so I get a vast assortment of other vehicles to photograph too. A few of the tricks that I found that work is to shoot outside and from angles. Example: Angle #1. Photo at angle showing front of the vehicle as well as one side mainly driver side first and rotate around the vehicle. Then get full side photo then do angle #2 left side and rear of vehicle and just continue on. Try not to get your shadow in the photo though. Hope this helps some.

 

[GrantH]

Those aren't what you would consider specialized automotive photography. Those are journalistic or natural light type photos, action photos...
For true automotive photography you are talking a lot of lights and staging just like glamor or specialized portrait photography.

I realize i'm asking the question of how to begin automotive photography, but I (respectfully) disagree with the sentiment that what he posted is not specialized automotive photography. Show coverage and feature shots are a huge part of automotive photography, and one realm I look forward to delving into. I also understand your definition or understanding of automotive photography, and it to, is something I want to learn as much as possible about.

The link you shared is a good one, and one I had previously bookmarked and read through a bit. There is a ton of information, though I thought i'd search for more in the forums here as well. I appreciate the link and help.

 

[GrantH]

What is it you think is different about automotive and portrait photography?

I don't know that anything specifically is different, i'm just looking for information from people who have done this and/or do this on a daily basis that are willing to share personal accounts. I guess my main difference is that i'm not one that can pull off seamless backdrops for a studio look with automotive whereas portraits it is a bit more possible, but obviously that is not the only location for portrait work so I am sure a lot does cross over between the subjects.

 

[Aloicious]

Those aren't what you would consider specialized automotive photography. Those are journalistic or natural light type photos, action photos...
For true automotive photography you are talking a lot of lights and staging just like glamor or specialized portrait photography.

I realize i'm asking the question of how to begin automotive photography, but I (respectfully) disagree with the sentiment that what he posted is not specialized automotive photography. Show coverage and feature shots are a huge part of automotive photography, and one realm I look forward to delving into.

I agree with you grant, the lighting situation doesn't change the subject (when it comes to inanimate objects that is, people are a little different where journalistic people photography is alot different than a portrait), in fact I would bet that a huge (majority?) portion of automotive photography is natural light/journalistic/action shots. studio lighting for automotive shoots are something I don't have the luxury of doing right now, but perhaps in the future. I would imagine that studio lighting a car would be very similar to lighting for product photography but on a larger than average scale, you'll still deal with many of the same issues as was stated earlier like reflexions and mirror-like surfaces which are something that needs to be planned for. MleeK's link is a good one to read up on, in fact I'm going to be reading over it a bit myself as well.

 

[12sndsgood]

main thing is to get out there and start shooting. you have to put more thought into shooting shows. get there the second the show opens. or stay till the show ends. do like i did and build your own car to enter so you have access lol. its definatly an advantage going into some cities convention center 2 hours before the show open and having 500 cars at your disposal to shoot at your leisure. if u dont have that access as i said. go early, and go late. skip middle of the day esp outdoor shots. the sun will be at its worst and the crowds will be too. if your there early you can get shots before the show field has filled up. late during awards the foot traffic has usually died down. for car shows your background is usually the biggest killer so the more things you can rule out (people walking around) the better off you will be. if you really like a car talk to the owner. tell him you do photos. ask him if he'd like to take an hour after the show or after he's judged to go out into the field away from everyone and shoot his car and just offer to send him the pics. most car guys are happy to have some actual decent pics of there car.

most of your studio work tends to be magazine or like advertisement type work. and the lighting seems similar. its just usually on a bigger scale for that type of thing. and really unless you have your own studio that can handle cars and are being paid for it. i wouldn't worry about it. go out. take your car and just practice with it. its what i do.

getting a few flashes are good. look into cactus triggers, its what im using right now. inexpensive and have been doing really well so far. ive just got a single flash. and im planning on picking up a few here soon.


here are a few of my shots.

 

[Aloicious]

I like that 'cuda....

 

[GrantH]

Thanks for all the info everyone. 12sndsgood, I actually own a bodydropped Toyota pickup that I have been building. It's about ready for the road! Wahoo!

The worst part of living where I live is that I don't get a lot of shows close enough to warrant going to shoot without taking my truck. Most are 2 hours + from me, so i'm looking to shoot my daily just to get some practice and gain a little time behind the shutter. I'm using a t1i, and seeing as i'd like to do automotive stuff, is it better to get a cheaper manual flash or do the auto e-ttl flashes have a use in this area?

I was thinking about the YN-460 or similar to begin. Is there anything on the cheap end that will work decent for me to learn with and use with that cactus system?

 

[12sndsgood]

u got the truck, drive it.(when its done) ive gone to shows 5 hours away driven down in the morning, showed, drove home the same night. its nice getting out away from your home town because it allows you to see cars youve never seen before.

i got one good flash that i can use on camera and ttl and for the rest im going to just pick up some cheap units. some i was looking at were the vivitar 285's and sunpack 500 series of flashes. have been told there solid flashes that will work good for off camera. aand not that expensive. think the vivitars are around 85 bucks.

the first shot in the set i showed was just a single flash. u can see how the light falls off at the front of the car. with another flash i could have easily lit the car up properly. it could also be done using the bulb function (long exposure) and then hand holding the flash and flashing it at diffrent points. but for that photos set the sun was just fading and it was a bit too early for such a long exposure. there are allot of options you can get into with the flash. but you can still shoot without it and be fine for day shots. just like u said, get out there and start shooting.