Car Show Photography Tips Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

We're Chelsea and Tony Northrup and
we're going to photograph a car show
So we're at the Ocean Beach car show and
as I had expected
it's very busy. There are people in front
of all the cars.
So one thing I like to do is just focus
on the details that make a car beautiful
and take close up shots. So I see a grill
on this truck that I like
So I'll zoom in on that and get a close-up
picture.
Another thing to consider when you're
taking shots is that the cars are all really
reflective, so you want to probably wear dark clothing
so that you're not so visible in your own
pictures. The reflections seen in cars
can often be a huge distraction, but with a
bit of creativity
you can make them a focal point. Ahh, this
car has a beautiful grill, this would make a good
close-up picture.
If there are a lot of people around I suggest just waiting for people clear out,
they usually move and then you can get
your shot.
This car actually has a pretty clean
background, so if I'm patient and I wait for
people to clear out
I might be able to get it nice enough
so that I can go in later into Photoshop and
clone out any distractions.
Just about any camera can work for car shows including even your
smartphone.
But for me, I like to grab a camera that has a tilty screen
This lets me get down low or hold it up high, I can
lean out over into a car engine bay and
point it down for interesting angles.
That's my next tip, get down nice and low
get close to your subject and use forced perspective.
You can use this to make the wheels seem nice and fat. Gorgeous car.
It can also let you lean out a little bit without
touching their car.
For lots of types of photography, you don't want hard light, you want soft light
For a car show I like the SUN to be out, no
clouds, I even like it to be high in the sky because I
like to work those reflections.
I like the find the glare in the cars.
One thing
I don't like is to use a polarizing filter.
Polarizing filters cut glare but I want
that reflection and that glare.
If the sun is lower in the sky, long
shadows could ruin your shots.
They might also make your shot. We cover composition in chapter two of Stunning Digital Photography
but a quick tip,
use symmetry. Symmetry makes car seem more
powerful
so I'll get down low and put myself
right in the middle of the car.
Center myself perfectly on it. I usually just use the standard kit lens but
a fish-eye lens can be really fun too and
they're not that expensive.
Fisheye lenses turns straight lines into
curved lines and let you get super close
and just fill the frame with the subject. So
for this engine bay, I'll just turn on my fish-eye here
and get nice and tight inside.
If you do use a fish-eye, you have to get
really close to your subject or everything
seems real far away.
Think about what your subject to the
photo is
because your subject isn't just a car.
Your subject is a part of the car, some aspect of the car
that you really like. That can be a crease
in the car, or a line, it can be the big
fat tires on a race car. But, in a car
show it's almost never the entire car
cause there would be too many distractions. So if you see a car that catches your eye, think about
what about that car caught your eye. It helps to study car design a little bit so that you can
really appreciate the
parts of a car that make it beautiful.
If you're shooting in bright sunlight you're going to deal with high contrast. You might have really bright
reflections, but then the engine bay will be
completely dark.This is the perfect time
to
bracket and use HDR techniques.
Your camera or smartphone might have an HDR
mode, you can use that
or check chapter eleven in Stunning Digital Photography
for
bracketing techniques. This just let you
show both the shadows and the highlights
I also like to include the sun in my photos, it makes a really cool focal point
and can pull the eye away from all the
people and distractions in the background.
I love when cars are moving, but cars in car shows are still.
But you can had some visual movement to it by putting a dutch tilt on the picture
just tilting the picture a little bit. So
here's just a straight picture of a car
and here it is with just a little dutch tilt.
That deliberate tilt just makes the
picture a little more interesting and
adds a little movement to it.
What a beautiful car.
435 were made.
If you shoot a 'vette you gotta get the exhaust and you know I gotta get those tail lights.
How you doin, John?
This car is cool. I wanted to show the
similarity of the dice on the door lock
and the mirror
But when I focus on the door the mirror
was out of focus because of shallow depth
of field.
To solve that I switch the camera to
aperture priority mode,
chose a higher f/stop of f/11 and
focused between the two dice.
The most striking feature of this
modified Thunderbird was the long back end.
To find the best way to capture it, I started
low and with my camera higher.
I also zoomed in tight.
If you want to learn more about
photography
we have a whole book on that called
stunning digital photography
You can get it on Amazon. Don't forget to
subscribe to our channel, we're always making more
videos. And you can check me out on
Twitter @ChelseaNorthru
Because the Northrup was taken.