{"id":16684,"date":"2018-06-08T14:16:05","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T18:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=16684"},"modified":"2024-03-25T11:25:05","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:25:05","slug":"9-tips-tricks-for-next-level-automotive-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/how-to\/2018\/06\/9-tips-tricks-for-next-level-automotive-photography.html","title":{"rendered":"9 Tips & Tricks for Next Level Automotive Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

We all have the potential to be social media rock stars with a couple of ingredients: A cool car and a keen eye for photography. If you\u2019re a fan of Dodge Garage, chances are you\u2019ve got the first component, a dope ride, on lockdown. The second part, posting attention-grabbing pictures, is just a little bit of education and practice away.<\/p>\n

Photography, as an art form, is difficult to master. There is a technical side to the craft which takes a certain level of knowledge obtained only through the devotion of significant amounts of time, energy and smarts. Then there\u2019s the talent aspect: Do you have the \u201ceye\u201d to frame an image? Even if one becomes a ninja with the Xs and Os, if the picture itself isn\u2019t compelling or entertaining, nobody is going to care about it. Those who chose to become professional photographers and push the boundaries of their craft are most definitely artists.<\/p>\n

Photography, as a hobby, has gotten easier and more attainable for the rest of us to fake it like we know what we\u2019re doing. If you\u2019re more interested in grabbing killer shots of your car for Instagram than bagging the cover photo for TIME<\/i> magazine, camera technology is becoming more user-friendly by the second. The mobile devices we carry 24\/7 have picture-taking hardware inside that’s potential exceeds what the majority of us will ever need. And we\u2019re being groomed for success on a daily basis, as platforms like IG and Facebook revolve around the pictures we take of our lives.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s break it down in 9 simple steps: How to go to the next level with your automotive photography!<\/p>\n

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Get off my lawn<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a few moments in my life where I\u2019ve read or heard a piece of advice that resonated with me and sticks. \u201cDon\u2019t shoot a car in the grass\u201d is one of those, gleaned from an advice piece much like this back when we all used to read these things called \u201cmagazines\u201d. Vehicles should be photographed in their natural habitat; you probably don\u2019t off-road a Challenger, so why would you shoot it on your lawn? It needs to be on asphalt or concrete. Pics of cars in grass just don\u2019t look right.<\/p>\n

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Get your wheels aligned<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a piece of advice I\u2019ve had drilled into my head from photographer friends, yet still forget from time to time if I\u2019m in a hurry: Either keep your front wheels straight, or turn them away from your shooting position. You want to see the wheel, not just tire tread. If you\u2019re taking a shot of the car\u2019s profile, keep the wheels straight. Turning them gives you an odd looking oval shape from the side.<\/p>\n

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Mind your surroundings<\/strong><\/p>\n

Be sure to pay attention to your background. Personally, I don\u2019t want to see trash cans behind the car, or light posts growing out of the hood. Anything brightly colored that could be a distraction should be omitted. Talking beyond just cars, I take a lot of pictures in my shop, whether they\u2019re focusing on a sculpture that\u2019s a work in progress or taking a pic of myself grinding or welding. I\u2019ve always tried to convey a \u201cserious\u201d, dark industrial tone. My bright yellow drill usually gets hidden from view. If you\u2019ve got a Sublime Hellcat and your shot has an orange cone in the corner, that\u2019s not a good look.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s your angle?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like shooting low, sometimes achieved by just setting the camera on the ground and tilting it up towards the subject. This isn\u2019t a hard and fast rule, just something I prefer stylistically. An obvious exception is if the car has a unique feature, like my Scat Pack Shaker did with the scoop poking out of the hood. If I\u2019d shoot from too low of a position, the scoop would be hidden. On the other hand, shooting low can help hide stuff you don\u2019t want sticking up and over the car, like power poles, street signs, trees, and so on and so forth.<\/p>\n

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I was framed!<\/strong><\/p>\n

How you frame\/crop the car is critical, too. Normally, when you cut just a little bit of the car out of the pic without thinking it through, it isn\u2019t pleasing to the eye. Yes, there are some times when you won\u2019t need the whole vehicle in the picture, like detail shots, or other pics where maybe something just looks cool and you exercise your artistic license. But don\u2019t start with the \u201cartsy\u201d shots, keep it basic. Composition is key. If the car is part of a bigger shot, try to find balance between the key components. Don\u2019t let the setting overwhelm the car.<\/p>\n

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Light \u2019em up<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lighting can make or break a photo. Partially cloudy days are my favorite. If the sky is too dark, you\u2019ll lose some detail in the shadows. If it\u2019s too bright, the paint will be blown out or throwing off massive glare. While I\u2019m driving around, I\u2019ll pay attention to which way the shade is being cast off of street signs, trees and buildings. Shooting into the shadows is not normally your best bet, I like the sun at my back. This, however, is an idea you should play with. I\u2019ve gotten some pretty cool shots while playing with angles to get the sun behind trees, or a patch of clouds, or even a mountain. But I watch out for long shadows from, say, a side mirror that disrupts the surface of the car. Also, don\u2019t mess with the built-in flash on your phone or camera. It\u2019s not gonna be powerful enough to brighten your car; and even if it was, the light is unnatural, it just won\u2019t look good. Keep the flash off.<\/p>\n

Stay steady<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got pretty shaky hands, and any bit of movement while taking a shot will lower the clarity of the pic. Then, if the light is less than optimal, forget about it. It\u2019ll be a blurry mess. This is where a tripod comes in handy. Just a 2-second delay while the camera is sitting still will increase the pic\u2019s quality to another plateau. In place of a tripod, I\u2019ve used the ground, boxes and bricks…whatever I can find handy that gives me a steady base. Sans tripod, I\u2019ll tilt up the camera with a money clip or pocket knife to get the angle I need. Anything to keep my wobbly hands off the thing while it\u2019s taking the shot.<\/p>\n

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Polish it up<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a bunch of photo-editing apps out there, and I\u2019m sure many of them work great, but most of my pics are edited with a program called \u201cSnapseed\u201d. Earlier, I mentioned the orange cone ruining a shot. If you can\u2019t move the cone, or just forgot it was in the shot, one option is to \u201cdesaturate\u201d, or dull, the cone\u2019s color. Muting the appearance of certain things in the periphery can help accentuate the subject of the pic. There\u2019s also an Adobe Photoshop app I\u2019ll use once in a while when I need to dive a little deeper into fixing the background. The temptation is to edit too much, to brighten the colors or sharpen the edges or add more contrast than needed. The pitfall is that both the quality and clarity suffer if you mess with the photo too much. It\u2019s best to start with an image that\u2019s as close to what you want the final version to look like as possible, then to tweak it a little bit here and there.<\/p>\n

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Beyond the iPhone<\/strong><\/p>\n

Panning shots (shooting a car in motion while you\u2019re not), rolling shots (shooting a car in motion while you\u2019re pacing it from another car) and shots with motion blur (like shooting the street or landscape from a car with the body\/hood in focus and the center lines blurred) look sick, but those require more of that technical expertise I alluded to earlier. Light painting and night shots, or settings with otherwise tricky lighting, fall into this group as well. Having a camera with a few more bells and whistles and learning how to adjust shutter speed, aperture, F-stop and ISO is the ticket here. There are a few user-friendly cameras that kind of fill the gap between phones and more expense and complicated DSLRs, and I\u2019ve had a couple of them. The Canon Powershot G7X Mark II was great, but the lens was fixed and it had an automatic cap. If any spec of dirt got on the glass and the cap closed it would scratch the surface. My current camera is a Panasonic GX85, and it\u2019s a body that accepts various lenses. You can change the type of lens, or if it gets scratched, you can replace a lens without needing an entirely new camera. It also has a manual cap that snaps on. The thing I like about both of them is you can kind of shoot up or down to your skill level. The automatic \u201cpoint and shoot\u201d option is still there, but they go all the way to manual mode, where you control all aspects of the photo. It\u2019s nice to have a fallback when you\u2019re still a novice. Also, they each have built in WiFi. I really dig this for my travels. I can take a pic that requires using something a bit more advanced that my phone. I\u2019m then able to immediately transfer it to my iPhone for editing and posting to social media. Camera phones are usually good enough for the compressed, lower-res uploads that Facebook and Instagram give you, especially considering most folks will be looking at the picture on their own mobile device rather than a laptop. Shooting with my GX85, however, gives me the ability to shoot rolling cars, get motion blur, or even just give a static shot a bit more clarity to stand above the crowd of those who shoot strictly with their phone.<\/p>\n

Now there\u2019s really no excuse for low-quality, boring photos. Let\u2019s see what you’ve got! Send us your photos and you could be on Dodge Garage!!!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all have the potential to be social media rock stars with a couple of ingredients: A cool car and a keen eye for photography. If you\u2019re a fan of Dodge Garage, chances are you\u2019ve got the first component, a dope ride, on lockdown. The second part, posting attention-grabbing pictures, is just a little bit of education and practice away. Photography, as an art form, is difficult to master. There is a technical side to the craft which takes a certain level of knowledge obtained only through the devotion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":16765,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[639],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-to"],"acf":[],"custom_fields":{"post_thumbnail_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/thumbnail-4.jpg","icon_selection":"article","external_link":"","featured_article":[],"upload_background_image":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16684"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16684"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43934,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16684\/revisions\/43934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}