Trying Shots Of My Car

[TheNevadanStig]

Any input/critiques/suggestions/comments welcomed! First time trying to photograph my car.

[/URL] Car-2 by TheNevadanStig, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/URL] car-3 by TheNevadanStig, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/URL] Car-1 by TheNevadanStig, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[vipgraphx]

Honestly start over with a better back ground. The background kills these from the start.

A shot like your first one, get a lower angle. like lay on your stomach and take a picture.

 

[TheNevadanStig]

Thanks for the suggestions!
As for backgrounds, not much I can do about that unless I take a road trip really. It's pretty much desert, desert, more desert. Oh look sand!

 

[mmaria]

desert and road would be actually a good background. that building, parking lot and else isn't a good background

 

[Braineack]

you dont need to keep putting the tags about your flickr code.


There's nothing special about these to me.

 

[Designer]

Some areas of the car have good reflection control (you watching the reflections) and other areas are showing those distracting reflections. Also, there are some areas in shade that could use some more light. Like a flash for fill.

Now the building and light poles are not plumb, so you need to straighten #3 at least, and maybe #1 some.

 

[KmH]

Get a good polarizing filter, and learn how to use it and understand its limitations.

Be mindful of what will be reflected in the car body.
As mentioned the building, and poles distract attention away from your car.

If you look closely, in a lot of the best car photos pavement a car is setting on has been wet. Wetting the pavement hides cracks, other flaws, and make the pavement darker.

Even in direct sunlight, the best car photos are usually made using supplemental lighting.

Hill tops or slight rises make good outside car shoot locations because they minimize background distractions.
Controlling depth-of-field (DoF) to accomplish selective focus (shallow DoF) is also helpful to visually separate your car from the background.

 

[Scoody]

The cluttered background draws the eye all over the place except to the car. I almost felt like I was at a tennis match.

 

[Gavjenks]

Thanks for the suggestions!
As for backgrounds, not much I can do about that unless I take a road trip really. It's pretty much desert, desert, more desert. Oh look sand!

A desert is pretty much an IDEAL car photography background.

Your images do not have a desert background... They have a background of horrible evil ugly forests of gross parking lot lamp posts and random way-too-sharp buildings and slanty lines and bright unrelated distracting grass and blah blah. Which completely murders any decent composition or image you might have here otherwise.

I just went through the whole set and realized I don't even remember what color your car is 5 seconds after. That's how distracted I was by the background.

1) Desert and NOTHING but desert.
2) Much wider apertures, make the background blurry here. It's not the focus (although still need to do #1)
3) You need to use off-camera lighting to contour the car and make reflections do what you want. Natural light probably isn't gonna cut it for car photos that look great. I can't tell you how, I don't shoot cars. But I know that's what it needs.