Today’s Post by Joe Farace
One of the most common questions that photographers ask me about car show photography is about exposure. Let’s start at the beginning:
Light has four major qualities: color, quality, quantity and direction. As photographers seeking to master the art of exposure, seeing that light is the key to achieving proper exposure. Learning to see light is not difficult but it does take some practice. That practice can take the form of not only constantly making new images but also taking the time to analyze those photographs after you’ve created them. This where I find Adobe Bridge to be handy, although you find that Lightroom does the same for you. Different strokes…
Black & White Tip
One of the first and I think most important tips that I give aspiring car photographers is that they should underexpose black cars to render them as black and overexpose white ones, so they look white. When you think about this concept, it makes perfect sense: The camera’s built-in meter forces the exposure to middle gray tones, so if you use what the meter or automatic exposure mode dictates you may end up with a white car that looks kinda gray or a black car that also looks gray.
How I made this shot of the black and white Dodge Challenger
The Exposure I used for the Challenger at Cars and Coffee was 1/320 sec at f/8 and ISO 400, which is one and one-third stops less that the indicated “correct” exposure.
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Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography with new copies are available from Amazon for $21.50 and used copies starting around five bucks.