While general and three-quarter compositions are great, too many photographers fall into the trap of neglecting car detail. Designer teams have spent hundreds of hours sculpting these curves, badges and grilles, and some of these little details are precisely what makes the make or model famous.
The trick with detail shots is to use a shallow depth of field to isolate your subject and blur the background to help details stand out even more. Getting up close is a great approach, but this may not always be possible or desirable – macro lenses can be very useful here thanks to their 1:1 magnification ratio that will show subjects at true life size.
While developing a signature style associated with car photography can be a good thing, shooting with the same lens can make images look a bit dated. The best way to add variation to your automotive portfolio is to change your focal length, and varying long and wide angles can add new energy to frames.
Ultra wide lenses will allow you to show more of the scene while making the most of foreground interest in the frame, with the wide angle widening the perspective of areas close to the lens. Meanwhile, a long lens will provide a compressed perspective, which is ideal for tighter framing.
If you have a bag full of glass, you can employ special lenses such as fisheye optics or tilt-shift lenses to correct for converging verticals if you include tall buildings in the background of your shot.
In these days of digital photography, clicking the shutter is of course only half the job and processing your image is just as important as taking it. The first step on this journey is to shoot RAW instead of JPEG. While JPEGs take up less memory card space, RAW files retain more tonal data, allowing photographers to push those pixels even further, rescuing highlights in the frame and also revealing shadows when needed.
To do this, you need RAW conversion software like Lightroom, and you can speed up this processing work by developing your own presets to get the stylized look you want, like a super saturated effect or something more matte and flat.
The journey doesn’t stop here though, because once you’re done with Lightroom you can then open the file in Photoshop to further refine the image and this is where frame elements can be precisely cloned along with dirt removal. . or scratches from the side panels or windshield.
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to car photography is finding the right subjects. Just starting out photographers may have a hard time getting to grips with supercars, but there are things you can do to broaden your exposure to cool vehicles. The first is to contact your local car clubs and show up at a regional meeting.
Talk to people, find out the story behind their car, ask them why they bought or built it, and then offer to take some photos. Another route is to approach local car dealers; offers to provide some images for marketing material in exchange for gaining access to their most exciting car models.
As your portfolio grows, it will be easier to gain access to the racetracks as you will be able to display a website/portfolio or even attend on behalf of local media.
The reality is that many of the skills, techniques, and gear tips we’ve already mentioned are easily transferable to motorcycle and car filming. For those photographers looking to make money from their automotive images, shooting bikes and cars opens additional doors and means there are more events to cover and more magazines to sell these images.
If anything, bikes are more affordable and therefore likely to be more subjects to photograph. Even more important than that, though, is that motorcycles are beautiful machines, packed with design elements that are ripe for photography. ❂
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