How-To Take Good Pictures of your Car

How-To Take Good Pictures of your Car

July 15, 2009, 4:23 pm
Filed under: How-To & DIY

Light

Lets start with making sure we know what we are doing, Webster can help us with this:

Main Entry: pho·tog·ra·phy
Pronunciation:\fə-ˈtä-grə-fē\
Function: noun
Date: 1839:the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface (as film or a CCD chip)

As the definition states, we are interested in capturing light. You’ve been given your center of interest, the key to a good picture, capturing light. Taking pictures is about light, not darkness, shadows or shade.

There are two kinds of light we will be worried with for automotive photography, vertical and horizontal light, in reference to the source. By vertical light, we are talking about light from higher angles, or light from above your car, for example, the noon sun. When we say horizontal light we are talking about light that is at the level of your subject, like the rising or setting sun and light from your camera’s flash. Vertical is bad, horizontal is good.

Bottom line: You want lots of soft, even and smooth lighting covering all of your subject, not harsh or glaring light that creates shadows.

Camera

Before we even get started, Rule #1: Always set your camera to the highest quality settings. Once that is done, we may continue.

When talking about a camera it is good to start by understanding what it sees. The camera needs significantly more light than your eyes, that is true for all cameras. The purpose of the article is not make myself seem like a pro, but to help you, so I won’t go off on some useless technical discussion. You just have to practice with your camera, take lots and lots of pictures, and when you are done taking lots, take lots more. I couldn’t possibly account for all situations, and cameras, so you’ll have to discover what works best with your set-up on your own.

Here are some settings you should manipulate. Always control the aperature yourself, don’t leave it on automatic. Become familiar with the term aperature, and what it does. Secondly, you should generally use your camera’s flash unit, even in daylight. The need for fill flash is increased by the amount of vertical light you have.

It is important to note that when you use your flash unit in daylight photography you are not adding any light to the picture, you are redistributing it. Taking away glares, and shadows.

Positioning Your Subject

More to come soon…

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