How I Improved My Car Photography

I don’t consider myself much of a car photographer, but I like to take a nice picture of a car from time to time.

13 May 2016

I don’t consider myself much of a car photographer, but I like to take a nice picture of a car from time to time. I’m that weird guy who’ll stop in the middle of the street and start experimenting some gymnastics positions and everybody around would ask themselves “what the hell is he doing?!”.

Right, so let’s see how my photos looked like THEN and NOW.

Then

Now

Between THEN and NOW there were some hard way self learned lessons, which were good, self learned lessons are the best, you kinda never forget them and you can share them with others too.

LOW ANGLES ALWAYS LOOK BETTER

If there’s a thing I learned the hard way this would be it, getting to do gymnastics in front of a ton of other people may seem a little bit awkward, but when you just stop caring and focus on the shot everything gets a lot better. Don’t forget you’re actually the one doing stuff they’re just lame walking around you 😉

Please don’t make me explain this one, I don’t have an answer, but for some odd reason this is a super valuable tip.

Smartphone photography is good, but DSLR photography is GOODER 😂

I’m always trying to do everything as cheap as possible and don’t get me wrong smartphone cameras are amazing these days, I’ve got an accessory set of lenses for my iPhone 6 that completely blows it out of the water.

After getting to play with my brother’s DSLR (a Samsung NX30) last summer when I did that whole #MuseumWalk thing I really saw the difference, even if you don’t have a DSLR, a camera completely dedicated to taking pictures is amazing. My latest Gumball 3000 Album was completely shot with my new Sony Alpha A5000 which is great, it basically is a compact camera with a DSLR sensor inside it.

Here's a picture I shot with my phone quite recently.

Try to integrate the car in the scenery

It adds depth to the picture, there are an awful lot of pictures that don’t stand out from the crowd, you have to! 😄 And try not to shoot the car where it always sits, the boring parking lot, but if you do try to make it interesting like I did here.

Don’t fear to get up and personal with the car

Show the car’s curves, vents, bolts, badge or whatever you feel like it’s worth showing 😄

Don’t overdo post-editing

Seriously, nobody likes a photo where you’ve got a filter over a filter. over a filter. I try to keep it as classy as possible, but it depends, you can always do that black and white thing where you let just a colour shine through, it’s a taste thing, it refines in time.

That would be about it, told you I’m not much of a car photographer… what did you expect? 😂

Follow me on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube or Snapchat at alexandrei64

Comments

69th upvote!

This was a really nice read ! I’m trying to get into photography and I really love cars, next time I catch a good one in the wild I’ll show y’all !

Just post it in the Photography & Videography community and tag me in the comments so I get a notification :D I’m quite curious to see your pictures!

Thanks a lot!

Not real life, but it’ll do.

These are just common facts 😂 its informational 👍🏼 but literally you can find these on any “beginners” website

Mate, I told you that I’m not much of a car photographer, what do you want me to say?😂

Improvement is way noticeable. I started with my photography in early 2015. At the beginning I was trying to copy other automotive photographers that I really loved (Larry Chen, Alex Wong and many others) to learn how to use the tools I had. After a while I started to develop my own techniques. I currently own a Canon 600d with a few different lenses and as of recently, a sony a6000 with a 35mm 1.8. You can check my work out at IG @davidskruze or FB facebook.com/davidskruzephotography/

Thanks man! Followed you, awesome pictures! :D

Takes notes

Suggest me the best lens for car photography pls

In my case the ones that come with the camera. Would help you, but I didn’t run into that kind of trouble yet, so I have no idea…

I’ve once read an article about how you can better have a professional lens with a mid-range camera than have a mid- to low-quality lens with a high-end camera. Picking your lenses is always important. I have a Nikon DSLR camera, and prefer Nikon lenses, but my experience with Sigma lenses is quite good aswell.

In a nutshell - wide angle is a matter of taste, I’d avoid it. You don’t need telephoto because you’re close up to the car anyway. Use a prime lens instead of zoom for superior quality. This is really important, you’ll never be a good photographer with a zoom lens, you’ll get lazy and won’t find the right angle. I use 35 - 50 and 90mm on full frame which translates to about 20 - 35 - 58mm on a low-mid range DSLR.

It’s auite a good tutorial, well tips at least. Still, some of the photographs have like a grey haze over them compared to the first ones of the new technique (if that makes sense), so yeah get rid of that haze and it should be good mate. keep it up

The ones with the grey haze are taken all at Gumball where all the cars were extremely dirty, that haze kinda amplified the feel of dirtiness, that’s why I ended up editing the pictures like that :)