Today’s Tip by Joe Farace
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” —Robert Capa.
Car show season is starting to wane but,depending on where you live, there may be a few left on the calendar and there’s always indoor shows! If you bring your camera along in the hope of making some nice photographs, here’s something to think about: Don’t get frustrated by the lack of space and crowded working conditions that are found at many car shows, Cars & Coffee events or automotive museums. You can take advantage of these kind of situations by finding small details and capturing them in sharp focus.
Here’s a Tip: Get Closer!
Physically moving closer to the car or just part of the car will eliminate any dead space and background distractions in the frame. This kind of composition forces the viewer’s eyes onto to main subject, producing a more powerful composition. Getting close to the car produces images that highlight textures, patterns and details that can get lost when the car is photographed in a overall, wide-angle shot.
Before getting close to the car do a brief walk-around looking at its shape; the highlights on the fenders and chrome trim but don’t get too close so you incur the wrath of its owner. In fact, it’s a good idea to talk to the owner, if they are around, before making any photographs, telling them why you want to photograph their car. There has never been a restoration or project car that didn’t have some great stories associated with them and, hey, you might learn something.
When shooting, work 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 instead of cropping later in Photoshop so you maintain the highest possible image quality. For my take on cropping, check out this post here on my car photography cropping.
Some wide-angle lenses or wide angle zooms will let you fill up the frame with part or even the entire car while making sure any distractions are eliminated, but when lens shopping make sure your 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.
How I made this shot: The photograph at left was made at a indoor car show using a Canon EOS 5D Mark I with Zeiss Milvus 85mm f/1.4 ZE lens. The 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 award-winning photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s available from Amazon with new copies available for $24.50 and used copies starting around twelve bucks as I write this.