Today’s Post by Joe Farace
The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. —Helmut Schmidt
I once wrote a post called “Here’s Five Tips for Improving Your Photography” that had a focus on car photography. Today I want to offer you five additional ways to refine your photography that include a few little things you can do to improve your photography in general and cars in particular.
Take one step closer to your subject. This is not an original thought but an idea from one of my heroes, Ernst Haas, that he made in one of his books. If you’re not familiar with his work, please pick up one or all of his books at the library or, better yet, buy a copy of his seminal work, The Creation, from Amazon where used hardbound prices start around fifty bucks but the paperback is only sixteen dollars. Prepare to be amazed and inspired.
Your camera has interchangeable lenses; Why not change them from time to time. So many people who buy DSLRs or mirrorless cameras—especially entry-level models—never take off the kit lens that came with it. Lenses of different focal lengths can provide a different perspective and can change the look of an image and it doesn’t matter if it’s a long or short focal length lens. Buying a different lens doesn’t have to break the bank either. Used lenses are a great option; you’re going to use them anyway. KEH has a class of used and highly affordable gear they call “Bargain” that may not have great cosmetics but work just fine.
Change your point-of-view. Stand on a hill, a ladder or a chair (be careful.) Kneel down or lay on the ground—wear your grungies. All of these options can produce a new, different way to see a subject. If you camera has a flippy screen use it to make Hail Mary shots of cars over your head, like I did with a Rat Rod.
Shoot More Verticals. For reasons unknown to modern science, smartphone users shoot everything, including video, as verticals aka portrait mode. DSLR and mirrorless camera shooters tend shoot everything a horizontally—landscape mode—because that’s the shape of the camera. Try some verticals as shown with today’s featured image. You will be surprised what happens and it won’t hurt your wrist.
Avoid Bull-eye Syndrome. Don’t place the subject in the center of the frame. Shooting a horizontal image at eye level with the subject smack in the middle of the frame can work sometime (if you’re lucky) but not if you really what to improve the way your photographs look.
How I made this shot: This 1970 (I think) Plymouth ‘Cuda with an amazing Lemon Twist paint job was photographed at Parker, Colorado’s monthly Cars & Coffee event. It was shot with a Canon EOS M6 Mark II mirrorless camera with an EF-M15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM kit lens at 33mm. The Program mode exposure was 1/500 sec at f/14 and ISO 200. If you want to read some definitive information on the Barracuda, pick up a copy of The Complete Book of Dodge & Plymouth Muscle Cars. You can read my review of the book here.
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