Today’s Tip by Joe Farace
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” —Robert Capa.
Car show season is just around the corner…Don’t let yourself be get frustrated by the lack of space and crowded working conditions that you may found at many car shows, Cars & Coffee events or in automotive museums. You can use these kinds of situations o your advantage by finding small details and capture them in sharp focus.
Tip: Get close to the car but no so close you incur the wrath of the car’s owner. In fact, it’s always a good idea to talk to the owner first and tell them why you want to photograph it. Then begin by working in close and gradually back off (or zoom out) until extraneous non-car details or people start appearing in the frame, then crop them out–in camera, which is what I prefer to do instead of cropping later in Photoshop. For my take on cropping, check out this post here on my car photography blog.
Wide-angle lenses or wide angle zooms let you fill up the frame with part or even the entire car while making sure distractions are eliminated, but make sure your zoom lens allows close focusing. I once purchased a 28-85mm zoom lens specifically for photographing car shows only to discover it didn’t focus close enough to do me any good. An expensive mistake.
How I made this shot: The photograph at right was made at a indoor car show using a Canon EOS 5D Mark I with Zeiss Milvus 85mm f/1.4 ZE lens. Exposure was 1/2000 sec at f/1.4—wide open to minimize depth-of-field— with the camera set at ISO 1600.
To make interesting photographs at a car show, you need to start with the right attitude. A passion for your subject is always a plus and enables you to look beyond the surface of a car to see its essence, its soul.
Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s available from Amazon with used copies starting around five bucks as I write this.