Car show, 4 shots. What to work on?

[RealityCheck]

Played around with gradients, contrast, sharpness, exposure effects, etc. Is anything overdone? Need more improvement but what to work on? I don't necessarily like shooting at shows, main reason is there are a lot of obstacles/cars around. The engine bay shot is so far my favorite, because you see that there wasn't much distraction around the car.

 

[SpikeyJohnson]

I really like the first photo,it looks like it was taken years ago. The other photos however, I don't like the vignette. I think it is a bit too distracting.

 

[ronlane]

^^^ agreed, everything else on these looks fine to me.

 

[CaptainNapalm]

They look good. On two and three I'd clone out the tiny bits of the neighboring car and I'd lose the vignette.

 

[Braineack]

nothing holding my interesting; that's the trouble with car show shots.

 

[lambertpix]

I'm not sure if this floats your boat or not, but I sometimes find that car shows are a great place to shoot detail shots -- some of these cars have some great customizations that can be very distinctive & interesting, and they're a little easier to isolate when the car is in a crowded location.

 

[RealityCheck]

I didn't put the vignette effect in the corners on purpose. It was my lens hood. For an odd reason, it's the correct type of hood but interfered in the shot. Why is this? It's a round rubber hood, not a petal shaped one (which is worse).

I'm not sure if this floats your boat or not, but I sometimes find that car shows are a great place to shoot detail shots -- some of these cars have some great customizations that can be very distinctive & interesting, and they're a little easier to isolate when the car is in a crowded location.​

I was thinking about taking a close up detail shot of an engine but wasn't sure how to go about taking it. Never done that type of perspective before.

 

[ronlane]

I didn't put the vignette effect in the corners on purpose. It was my lens hood. For an odd reason, it's the correct type of hood but interfered in the shot. Why is this? It's a round rubber hood, not a petal shaped one (which is worse).

Then I would try to clone it out of the corners and then crop if it didn't work.

 

[RealityCheck]

I could've cropped it but was afraid to crop the image too small. I often like to resize my images to 1920 height to make it near background size, depending on the shot.

 

[lambertpix]

I didn't put the vignette effect in the corners on purpose. It was my lens hood. For an odd reason, it's the correct type of hood but interfered in the shot. Why is this? It's a round rubber hood, not a petal shaped one (which is worse).

You're going to want to get hood that's better-suited to that lens. You might have a hood that fits your bayonet mount, but it's made for a lens that isn't as wide as yours is.

I'm not sure if this floats your boat or not, but I sometimes find that car shows are a great place to shoot detail shots -- some of these cars have some great customizations that can be very distinctive & interesting, and they're a little easier to isolate when the car is in a crowded location.
​

I was thinking about taking a close up detail shot of an engine but wasn't sure how to go about taking it. Never done that type of perspective before.

Just find something interesting and give it a whirl. If the owner is around, don't be afraid to strike up a conversation. I'd never have noticed this hood hinge unless the owner would have pointed it out:

IMG_5672.jpg by lambertpix, on Flickr

A flash can be handy for lighting up engine bays, too -- IIRC, I was holding the camera w/ one hand and holding the flash off to the side w/ my other hand for this one:

IMG_5698.jpg by lambertpix, on Flickr

Another alternative for those dark corners is HDR -- it can help show off some of those details as well.

 

[CourtSC]

I went to a car show this weekend also and ran into the same problems. I tried really hard to focus on some other things versus the whole cars! I'm sure these are far from perfect, but I really liked the perspectives! And the quality is probably not great with these because I had to save them from Facebook before I uploaded to Photobucket (don't have my originals at work).

1.

2.

3.

 

[Msteelio91]

1 is cool and has a nice "feel" to it.
2 has too much vig and I think the color isolation actually hurts it here.
3 is nice but again too much vig IMO and I would have tried to get the right side of the car just slightly more into the angle. I also would skip the fancy coloring on this one and cut out the car on the right side. ]
4 loses me, i find the angle unappealing and the processing that was done takes away from the pop of the red paint.

 

[RealityCheck]

I do like the Porsch and Corvette shots. IMO that truck angle seems to close for my taste, plus there isn't much light there anyhow. I think #3 I felt like the color play was a little too much but put me between I like and I don't like. You're right about 4. I should've kept that strong hue in the picture without overduing it. I wanted a nice offset on this for whatever reason.

 

[RealityCheck]

You're going to want to get hood that's better-suited to that lens. You might have a hood that fits your bayonet mount, but it's made for a lens that isn't as wide as yours is.

What would you recommend then?

 

[lambertpix]

You're going to want to get hood that's better-suited to that lens. You might have a hood that fits your bayonet mount, but it's made for a lens that isn't as wide as yours is.

What would you recommend then?

What's the lens?