5 Tips to take Pictures of Cars

When you take shots of a car it’s like tak­ing pic­tures of any­thing: if you like cars, you will prob­a­bly do bet­ter. A car lover will see these details and lines, a sim­ple photo tech­ni­cian will just not get a grip on. It’s a bit like focus­ing on Cindy Crawford’s eyes and neglect­ing all the other eye-tearing shapes. Which brings us right to the sub­ject of tonight’s Ycad­emy call.

Maserati 8CTF Indi­anapo­lis 1939

Maserati 1939 Indianapolis

Search for the design ele­ments which make the car unique. In a time when all cars tend to look the same and where the best pic­ture of a new Chevy looks as annoy­ing as a Tata, we need to search for the high­lights in the design. The mass pro­duced Japan­ese, Euro­pean and Amer­i­can cars are frankly no fun and there is not much to take pic­tures of that will knock you off the driver’s seat. The best you can do with them is to use them for fur­ther treat­ment and as a base for inter­est­ing trash graphics.

I have never under­stood why the masses have to drive such ugly cars and why the car com­pa­nies reserve good design to the high end pro­duc­tion, if at all.

So, sneak around your car, bend and stretch and find the best angles to shoot some flat­ter­ing shots, sen­sual shots, aggres­sive shots, shots with a soul and a body: don’t for­get, the car has also a rear, which may be as so often, the bet­ter part of the model.

The excite­ment is where there is beauty, great design, inter­est­ing shapes and details. Sports Cars are still a great play­ground, at least on the higher end, and then of course clas­sic cars. But on most any car you will find some detail of inter­est and be it just the most ugly heck spoiler on a Japan­ese Fer­rari imi­ta­tion from the 80s (remem­ber that Honda, huh?).

Indi Maserati 1939

I like to shoot with pri­or­ity on Aper­ture to work with depth of field in order to cre­ate focus; you can try as well to use macro set­tings for small details, namely on a small model car as fea­tured here. It’s a mat­ter of tak­ing sev­eral shots and then select­ing the best result. But in gen­eral, you should do bet­ter get­ting off the A and P modes on your Dig­i­tal Camera.

The first pic­ture above was zoomed, the two under­neath work with depth of field.

The result is bet­ter but not sat­is­fac­tory: more focus can be added, first by tak­ing bet­ter shots (you have to become a bet­ter pho­tog­ra­pher …) or by cre­at­ing focus when post-editing. There is noth­ing wrong with post-editing, in fact, it enables you to make up for the lack of your camera’s qual­ity (the best excuse) or for your lack of pho­to­graphic knowl­edge (much less flat­ter­ing for you and there­fore not recommended …).

Now that we have estab­lished that the Nikons,Canons, Sonys and Leicas out there are not as bril­liant prod­ucts as mar­ket­ing lead us to believe when the sales rep pulled us over the table, we breathe bet­ter and can now look for Com­pa­nies which make money out of the tech­ni­cal fail­ures of the Cam­era Man­u­fac­tur­ers: Adobe has set indus­try stan­dards in this field and their sur­vival depends largely on the lousy cam­era qual­ity (as I said, it’s the best excuse!).

The prob­lem with Adobe, and Pho­to­shop in par­tic­u­lar is it’s low tech inter­face which requires a com­pass and a world map to find your way through the for­est of set­tings nobody can learn in one life­time (… Hin­duism is a viable option). So finally here are your choices: become a Hindu Guru or learn how to take bet­ter pictures.

We can­not take bet­ter pic­tures, since the cam­era man­u­fac­tur­ers do a lousy job. Hin­duism is a dif­fi­cult option for a Steak Tar­tar freak.

What else is there?

Luck­ily there are many more pho­tog­ra­phy afi­ciona­dos in the same case as you (and I) and they were there before us. These smart spir­its have over­come the prob­lem by cre­at­ing things called Pho­to­shop Actions and Plug-ins, Fil­ters and Pre­sets for Lightroom.

These guys of whom nobody knows the names, deserve high­est respect and esteem, if not a legacy like the unknown sol­dier. These are the heroes who make our lives eas­ier and due to whom our reli­gious integrity is no longer threat­ened by Adobe and indi­rectly by the neg­li­gent Cam­era Manufacturers.

Let’s add some Cre­ative Blur, Zoom or Pane effects to our mas­ter­piece. A dif­fi­cult job with a low end dig­i­tal cam­era but a piece of cake for a good PS Action!

Maserati Detail

Your imag­i­na­tion is the limit and you will have to decide how far you want to push the tweak­ing; how­ever, you should know that in fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy the most out­ra­geous mor­ph­ing is stretch­ing Cindy’s legs and worse on bet­ter parts. So, don’t be ashamed to express your dream world as do the pros (the dream being most of the time the cash in the kitty called the fruit of empa­thy, huh.).

Indi 1939 Marerati

By the way… instead of blur­ring the car you could use spin­ning blur on the wheels while keep­ing the car in focus — the feel of motion.

Namely for details, frame as close as you can to obtain the high­est amount of data pos­si­ble; it will make your post-editing eas­ier. If you take a pic of a car in its nat­ural envi­ron­ment, make sure that the viewer’s eye is not side­tracked by the back­ground or other dis­tract­ing or dom­i­nant items:

Maserati BW

Maserati bb

I hope these 5 tips will help to get bet­ter results. I will share with those present my PS Blur Action at tonight’s Ycad­emy Work­shop at 8 pm Lon­don Time.

Look­ing for­ward to see­ing you there.

• how to take pic­tures of cars
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• how to take good pho­tos of cars
• best cam­era for tak­ing pic­tures of cars
• best cam­era to take pic­tures of cars
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• how to take pic­ture of cars
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• cam­era for tak­ing pic­tures of cars

Related posts:

1. Resiz­ing Pic­tures in Photoshop
2. Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Ycad­emy 9
3. Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Ycad­emy 10
4. Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Ycad­emy 14
5. Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Ycad­emy 2

Tags: 5 Tips Car Photos, Edit Car Photos, Post-edit car Photos, Take Car Photos, Ycademy, Yorgo Nestoridis

This entry was posted on April 30, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Digital Photography, Media, Photo Editing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.