Taking Car Pics

AutoSpeed is quickly arriving at our 1000^th article. Given that each article contains between a few and 20 pics, that means that so far we've run around 10,000 photos. By far the majority of those pics were taken just for AutoSpeed, and so were always designed to be seen on the small screen. There's major difference between pictures of cars shot for, say, a print magazine, and those destined to be used on-line. But, by the same token, there are lots of similarities as well. So what sort of criteria should you address if you want to take pics that will be used on AutoSpeed, or for that matter on your own website? While we could give a blow-by-blow description of rules and techniques, better that we look at a whole lotta pics - and tell you what's good and what's bad about each of them.

Note that all of the following discussion is based around 35mm SLR film cameras. This is because, (a) that's what we use, (b) apart from a very few exceptions, digital cameras don't allow for a good selection of lenses, (c) a photo is a photo is a photo - and so quite a lot of advice is universal across all camera types and media.

On the web the picture is almost always viewed at a small size, at least initially. This means that impact, impact, impact is vital. Placing the car as a tiny part of the overall pic (as is sometimes done in mags where text gets printed over 'empty' parts of the photo) doesn't work so well when the picture's probably going to be way less than postcard size on the screen. Subtlety is out and filling the frame is in! In this photo, a long lens (300mm) has been used to tighten the perspective, while a shallow depth of field throws both the foreground and background out of focus. The green of the Pulsar ET also leaps from the homogenous colours around the car. A simple-looking shot, but it works well on the PC screen. Note the location of the car's shadow - the car is facing just to left of the setting sun. And another trick - the front wheels have just a touch of left-hand lock on them, better to show off the spokes.

In the above pic, a long lens was used. It gives a certain compressed perspective with a distant look, while a wide angle lens is more involving of the viewer. With a wide-angle you feel that you're closer to the car, more intimate with it. Going either long or short in focal length will cause distortion, but it's usually more obvious with a wide-angle. Here the right-hand headlight of the Gemini seems almost to be leering at you out of the pic - that's a wide-angle lens for you! The effect has been made stronger by placing the camera at headlight level and then tilting it - you're eyeball to eyeball with the Gemini. In this shot, the traditional very soft light of dawn or dusk has been used (dusk here... I'm seldom up at dawn!). A 24mm lens was used for this picture.

From long lens to wide angle - and now to a medium telephoto. This shot was taken with a 120mm focal length lens - just enough to allow the car to be cropped tightly while still giving a fairly natural perspective. (On 35 mm film, a 50mm lens has the same perspective as the human eye - sort of, anyway.) In this shot, a low perspective has been gained - the camera is at the height of the indicators, and so below headlight height. The grass in the foreground is distracting (and was cropped off when this shot was used) and the concrete would look much better if wet all over. Note the use of the simple white shed background and the soft dusk light. And the flares out of the headlights? Just an artefact of the lens.

This RX7 was taken with a 50mm focal length lens. Note that this is the first shot we've looked at taken with a 'standard' lens - and to compensate for that, it's from a weird angle! Climbing a ladder and looking down on the car works especially well if you have a bad background (I did have) and a car with flowing lines (ditto). Again shot at dusk, the light has started to 'go' a little bit far - it would have been better if I'd used another car's headlights to light the left-hand side of the Mazda (ie closest to the camera). This approach works very well, and the 'warmth' of the car's headlights (ie the different colour temp of the headlights compared with the late afternoon light) would also have lifted the shot.

You gotta be careful when selecting the lens focal length. This shot is taken with a lens about as wide (around 35mm) as you wanna go with this type of car from this angle - any wider and it will all start looking very ugly. Note that I was lying on the ground to get this shot, and it's actually taken facing into the light. To lift the rear of the car I've placed the light from the headlights of another car onto the back of the Laser - you can see the reflection in the right-hand side of the bumper and the number plate is really picking up that extra light. The result is that the brightness of the rear and the side of the car are well-matched. Note also the front-wheels-turned-slightly trick.

While people often head out for the big empty spaces when selecting car photography locations, often it's better to go up against a wall or something else close - so long as it's not distracting. This shopping centre wall is bland and non-intrusive. It's not something that most people would look at and exclaim that it's a wonderful background to a car shot, but it works well at directing attention to the car. And remember, on the web that's pretty well what you always want to do. The soft light of dusk has again been used in this pic, and note again how a lower than normal perspective has again been used.

Here's an example of completely the wrong lighting. The bright white car looks so glaringly white that body details have been blown out - note the lack of detail in the bodywork on the rear guard and below the door handle. The background tree is distracting (even though it's out of focus) and the windscreen sunvisors should've been up. If I had waited about an hour for the sun to be much lower, pretty well the same shot would have looked far better. While you can get away with photographing some cars in the direct sunlight, white (and often silver) cars are not amongst those colours. If you are waiting at a shoot for the light to change, be patient!

On the other hand, a red car can be photographed in direct sunlight with good results. Note how here the paint is really leaping - in softer light it will look much duller. And while the composition is generally fine, the fluid apparently leaking out from under the bonnet onto the concrete isn't so good, and neither is the sign reflecting in the windscreen! While on the topic of leaking fluids, watch for condensation coming from the in-cabin air con evaporator core - often this water will drip out after the air con's been running.

Automatic fill-in flash is a great tool for a car photographer, but like most things it can be stuffed up. Here, the change in the shade of green easily shows that the flash is putting most of the light into the foreground, while the background is being lit by ambient light. If the bonnet uses a silver internal heatshield, in this sort of situation the flash can be bounced off the shiny surface, much more evenly adding its light to that which is already present. However, while this pic is the exception, generally straight fill-in flash works very well on engine bay shots.

In this pic the technique discussed above was used. A 17mm (ultra wide-angle) lens was fitted, and the fill-in flash bounced off the ET's silver bonnet heat shield. The result is a very even and soft light that lifts the natural light, while the ultra wide-angle was used very close to the engine to give a distorted, in-your-face appearance. Generally, lenses such as a seventeen are rarely used, simply because the resulting distortion is often unacceptable when photographing as well-known a shape as a car.

Both interiors and engine bays should be shot in soft light, such as open shade. This rushed-job interior shot was taken in the direct sun, and even though fill-in flash has been used to help light the interior, the strong steering wheel shadow on the seat still intrudes. If your camera doesn't have the ability to perform good quality fill-in flash, better to just use a long shutter speed (needed with the small aperture that in turn is needed for good depth of field) and cloudy-bright gentle light.

I talked about backgrounds a bit earlier. Well, here's one that simply doesn't work. Much too fussy for this shot - and the desperate tilting of the camera to provide some last-minute interest does little to improve it...

In comparison, the red-car-on-green-background works very well. Note the use of the short telephoto lens, the very low perspective (the camera was sitting on the ground) and the turned front wheels. Industrial estates are excellent hunting grounds for after-hours photo locations.

As dusk falls, you can use the car's own lights to provide a little more interest in the pic. Here the parking lights and hazard flashers are turned on; you can also use the headlights but be careful because these twin bright spots of light can cause some camera metering problems. Here a bad location was being used, so a long telephoto lens and very tight cropping was used to minimise it.

Movement is everything. If you look through car magazines of the last 20 years you'll see that movement is the biggest fashion change in car photography over that time. A pan (the camera is swivelled, following the car as it drives past) carried out with a slow shutter speed (1/60^th - 1/20^th, depending on the lens, car speed, and how much blur is needed) will give good results. But you still need to pick a location where there won't be too many visual distractions. This carpark has white lines painted on the bitumen - they'll be hard to crop out, even if the seagull's head in the foreground is easily chopped!

In many long shutter speed blur shots, the use of additional flash will help get you out of trouble. Here the very fast burst of flash has provided the light to freeze the car, while the long shutter speed (picking up natural light) gives the blurred background and allows the recording of the glowing front brake discs. Flash alone would have resulted in a yellow-car-on-black background, while just the long shutter speed would have resulted in, probably, too much blur. When doing pans, always stand up, keep you feet planted, and swivel from the hips.

This flash-and-a-long-shutter-speed shot shows a good example of the technique. Despite the fact that the 200SX was probably travelling at only 20 km/h, the technique gives a feel of speed and power. However, picking the right shutter speed (1/30^th versus 1/15^th will give a quite different affect) and seeing how the flashgun highlights different parts of the car, is very much trial and error. Here's one advantage if you have a digital camera - you can view the results straightaway. If you are shooting film, just take a heap - and write down your camera settings for each shot, so you can see what approach worked the best for you and your gear.

The use of flash with a relatively long shutter sped also works very well on dragstrip burnouts, as here. The flash lifts the car and the tyre smoke, while the ambient light provides enough of the background to keep the context. However, as it gets darker, the flash will do more and more of the work, until the pics end up looking completely unnatural. A standard or wide angle lens lets you both get close (so the flash has less work to do) and also gives a feeling of viewer involvement.

With the basic whole car, interior and engine bay shots done, you can try some partial car shots. Here the architecture of a rural town hall has been contrasted with the shape of an STi WRX. Note that the 35mm print has been trimmed down both edges, giving a longer, narrower shot. The majority of pictures reproduced in AutoSpeed are cropped in some way - never be afraid to do some trimming! Here a telephoto lens has been used to tighten the distance between the car and the building, better integrating them into the one shot.

Other examples of detail shots include badges (note here how the light has been allowed to fall across the rear panel, lifting interest a little)...

...and semi-abstract compositions using portions of the car (pity about the reflection of the two people in the rear screen!).

Conclusion

There are five major biggies to think about when shooting a car:

• Location (eg background)
• Lens focal length (eg wide angle, standard or telephoto)
• Lighting (soft/harsh, position)
• Camera angle (high, normal, low)
• Movement (long shutter sped, flash)

If you want to improve your own car photography, the best way is to have a long, hard look at pictures in car magazines and on AutoSpeed. Look at a picture that you like, analysing it using the above criteria. As with anything, when you pull apart what others are successfully doing, it makes it a lot easier to then do it yourself.

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