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If you’re reading this you’re probably a fan of cars, and you might even own a car that you proudly built. You probably take pictures of your mean machine and show it off to friends on social media. Or maybe you keep photos to yourself and look back at them from time to time when you need something to keep you motivated. If so then this blog entry is for you! I’ll be sharing a few “photography tips” that I learned over the years so your impromptu photo shoots come out looking slightly better. I am in no ways a professional photographer, and no where near a pro. I don’t know about complex topics like “composition” and “balancing light curves”. But I’ll help you take your cellphone photos from being “meh” to being “oh not bad”!
Here are 5 Tips to keep in mind during your next photo session.
Car Photography for Beginners
Tip 1 Rule of 3rds
Have you ever seen a grid displayed on your camera phone’s screen? That grid is there to help you frame where your picture’s subject is. For some reason that I don’t know why (I’m sure someone smarter than me can chime in the comments), but human eyes tend to focus more on the 3rds of each photograph. The lines in your grid are basically at each 3rd of the photograph. So you can use that grid as a guide so you can properly frame the subject in your photo. Note that the lines go both vertical and horizontal. So you can use either just the vertical lines to frame your subject, just the horizontal lines to frame your subject, or both sets of lines to frame your subject.
So if you’re taking a picture of your car in front of a cool background, you want your car to be roughly around one of the thirds instead of up close and in the center of the photo.
This doesn’t mean your car has to be at each 3rd for the picture to look good. It’s just something you can use to spice up your pictures from time to time.
Tip 2 Lights
Proper lighting is important for any photo. Ideally you want the light source (ex. city lights or the sun) behind the photographer and shining onto the subject. If you have the light source behind the subject, it might over power and darken the subject. But some cameras can still focus on the subject without getting overwhelmed by the light. If your camera is overwhelmed by the light, you can sometimes fix it through editing and it might end up looking pretty artistic.
You can also try planning your photoshoots around sunrise and sunset. Those times provide a really nice warm glow that can be used to your advantage when doing photoshoots.
Sunrise and sunset always provides a nice warm hue!
Tip 3 Know your ‘hood
Get to know your neighborhood. Regardless of how boring looking you think your city is, I guarantee you there’s a few spots around your neighborhood or city that would make really cool backgrounds for photos. A cool spot could be a colorful wall, a dead end with a view, or even one lonely street lamp. Explore your city either on foot or on wheels. When you find a cool location write it down. That way when the sun is out, your car is freshly washed, and you feel like going for a drive, you know where to go for an impromptu photo shoot.
Tip 4 Attention to detail
Pay attention to everything in the picture when framing your shot, don’t only pay attention to the subject. Pay attention to the lines in the pavement, the angle between your grid and the lines on the wall. Try to make everything parallel. Also pay attention to things like making sure your shadow isn’t in the picture or making sure your finger isn’t covering the lens.
Oops, someone’s shadow made a guest appearance! It also would be nice if the edge of the building was parallel with the top of the photo.
Tip 5_ Learn how to edit
All of the tips so far have been about things to do during the photoshoot. The last tip is about editing after the photoshoot. Play around with editing and learn what you like and what you don’t like. There is no such thing as a perfect edit, everyone’s style and tastes vary. I recommend starting out playing around with Instagram’s editing tools. They’re really easy to use and will help you learn what each function does and how it affects the photo.
When you’re ready for the next step, try out the editing software Adobe Lightroom. The desktop version is a paid software, but there is a free barebones mobile version that is very handy. The editing functions are leaps and bounds better than Instagram. Lightroom also exports your photos in a very high quality resolution, versus Instagram that slightly compresses your photos. It also seems like a lot of pro photographers like to use Lightroom for their edits. So it’s definitely a software that you can use with lots of room to grow.
Before and after a few minor tweaks in the Lightroom app. This is just the tip of the iceberg, you can do so much with the program!
Conclusion
Those are my 5 tips to you on how to better your car photography game. Like I said, I’m not a pro, but I started to implement these tips into my own photos and it definitely did help. My last bonus tip is to be prepared to suck before you get good. That comes with trying anything new. You might suck at first and you might be far away from the end goal. Just focus on hitting smaller goals, make easy and simple 1% improvements everyday. If you can do that, you’ll improve over 300% in less than a year.
Do you have any photography tips? I’m always open to learning new things and would love to hear them in the comments!