GTI Shoot

ScubaBrett22 · Sep 24, 2012

Had a Shoot on a GTI did it at night. This was my first car shoot not using my D3100 and finally using my D7000.

.SimO. · Sep 24, 2012

Out of the four images shared, I like the 2nd one the most and would have liked to see a tighter shot preferably without the intrusive fence and body shop sign. Maybe take the extra minute to remove the rear license plate versus blurring it out?

Also, I can see some heavy barrel distortion on the last two images. Did you have the lens zoomed all the way in and all the way out? Nice pictures though. I was a bigger fan of your Mustang shots compared to these. Can't wait to see how they continue to progress.

JohnTrav · Sep 24, 2012

Nice car. Looks clean. Would have liked to see a tighter shot. Being so sat away takes away from the detail of the actual car and draws my attention to the background and surroundings more.

amolitor · Sep 24, 2012

It feels like your trying to find a vision here, which is a good thing.

Simply trying to make photographs like the car pictures in the car magazines is pretty much a lost cause -- it's insanely hard to light cars in that "car advertisement" style, and you typically need a bunch of gear. You can do it with light painting and less gear, but it's still a hell of a technical chore.

The idea of sticking the car in the graffiti covered area was solid, I think. I hate the light you've got here. It's eerie but weird-looking. Again, it feels like you're trying some stuff out, which is awesome, but I think this particular aspect of the experiment doesn't work well.

I would have put the car into the cement stall at an angle, and then climbed all over.

A snooted handheld flash can be pretty effective. Just roll up a newspaper and tape it to the flash, and then use it like a squirt gun to spray light on the car right where you want it. At night, with a long exposure, you can even do some light painting using multiple pops, manually triggered. Anyways, I happen to dig the look a snooted flash gives on cars.

ScubaBrett22 · Sep 24, 2012

amolitor said:
It feels like your trying to find a vision here, which is a good thing.

Simply trying to make photographs like the car pictures in the car magazines is pretty much a lost cause -- it's insanely hard to light cars in that "car advertisement" style, and you typically need a bunch of gear. You can do it with light painting and less gear, but it's still a hell of a technical chore.

The idea of sticking the car in the graffiti covered area was solid, I think. I hate the light you've got here. It's eerie but weird-looking. Again, it feels like you're trying some stuff out, which is awesome, but I think this particular aspect of the experiment doesn't work well.

I would have put the car into the cement stall at an angle, and then climbed all over.

A snooted handheld flash can be pretty effective. Just roll up a newspaper and tape it to the flash, and then use it like a squirt gun to spray light on the car right where you want it. At night, with a long exposure, you can even do some light painting using multiple pops, manually triggered. Anyways, I happen to dig the look a snooted flash gives on cars.

I did do some painting with light with my Flash and my LED Maglight and it came out kinda messy. But I was trying to get a vision but the problem was timing. I was able to get the car for a while but it was raining and by the time I started shooting it was 7:50 and I ended at 9pm. Thanks for the tips!!

ScubaBrett22 · Sep 24, 2012

.SimO. said:
Out of the four images shared, I like the 2nd one the most and would have liked to see a tighter shot preferably without the intrusive fence and body shop sign. Maybe take the extra minute to remove the rear license plate versus blurring it out?

Also, I can see some heavy barrel distortion on the last two images. Did you have the lens zoomed all the way in and all the way out? Nice pictures though. I was a bigger fan of your Mustang shots compared to these. Can't wait to see how they continue to progress.

I usually remove the licence plate before a shoot. By making the image tighter what do you mean like crop it down? Thanks for your opinion!!

Denon · Sep 24, 2012

I would prefer a tighter crop on the first photo.

I like the third one, it got a nice angle and composition. But you should really try lightpainting to make the car stand out from the background, then you could really show off this bright white the GTI have.

Otherwise it's a nice location you got there.