Back to the job in hand of driving to where you need to go. Then afterwards you’re suddenly reminded of it. Too late. It’s gone. What was that road? Where were we? It wasn’t that far away, surely? Here’s a great way to develop an entire database and collection of great car photo shoot locations using your phone and two free apps.

How to Develop Your Photo Location Database.

Any car photographer, especially working in editorial, will tell you that the biggest single waste of time on a photo shoot is not having a location sorted out in advance. You then waste time racking your brain trying to think of places that might work, that you haven’t already used over and over and that you know won’t get you into trouble with permissions and trespassing. Not having a good location already set adds a huge amount of pressure and can make or break a shoot.

Having a whole collection of possible photo locations is a vital part of a car photographer’s toolkit. Very often, if you shoot for a living the photo location is something you have no control over. However there are other times when you’ll arrive for a shoot and everyone turns to you and asks, ‘So where are we going, then?”

That’s when your professionalism kicks in. You’re way ahead of them and already have a couple of options in mind. And whether you do this for a living or just for fun, it can save you so much time that it’s a really important thing to start out doing. And all you need is your phone and two apps.

You probably already have Google Maps. Make sure you’re signed in to your Google account. You will also need Evernote. If you don’t have Evernote yet, why not? It’s a superb productivity app, great for recording notes and works across all of your devices. Best of all, the basic version is free.

Seen a great location? Drop a pin. If you don’t know already, it’s easy to drop a pin to mark your location in Google Maps. Each time you open the app, it moves to your current location. So as you pass that location you want to remember, open the app, then push and hold the screen to drop a pin.

Now, here’s the important part. If you see another location a little later and drop another pin, you will lose your first pin. You need to save it. You can, or course, save it in Google Maps by opeing up the pin and hitting save, then adding to a list. And there’s nothing wrong with that. However, I prefer to save it to Evernote as a secondary backup. Go to the top right of your screen and select the ‘share’ options. You’ll see Evernote there along with your other favourite apps.

So why do I do this instead of simply saving to Google Maps? Two reasons. One is simply personal, I love Evernote and live my life in it. So whenever I need something, I go looking in Evernote first, then other resources if I don’t find it there. Secondly, more importantly, the note you just created in Evernote serves as a complete note about the location you just found. You can add more information later about it. Little things like access for a low riding car, whether it’s a good tracking location, whether it is under cover and a host of other things. Indeed, if you need permission to access it and you’re successful, then you can add the contact details here. And you have everything all together in one resource.

And then the next time you’re planning a car photo shoot somewhere and you’re pretty sure nobody has thought through where you’re actually going to do it, you’ll be the one that’s prepared and ready. You can thank me later.

The post How to Never Forget a Great Car Photo Location Ever Again appeared first on Car Photographer.

This may sound like a hard skill to master, yet in fact, it revolves around the simple understanding of exposure and how the combination of aperture, shutter speed and ISO all contribute to affect the final image. Follow this simple guide on car photography camera settings, practice and memorise them and you will find your photography will quickly improve.

So What’s Wrong with Program Mode for Car Photography Settings?

There’s nothing wrong with it and if you lack the confidence to experiment, then ‘Program’ mode is just fine. However, if you’ve been using that setting and are a little disappointed with your results, it’s time to move on. Learning more about car photography and understanding car photography camera settings involves experimentation and a little failure along the way. Moving out of the automatic mode is the first step to understanding more about all aspects of photography, not only car photography.

Understanding Exposure

You need to get a firm understanding of exposure and how it relates to car photography settings. Not just the correct exposure using the camera’s built in meter, but the different effects that changing the shutter speed and aperture have on a photograph. The correct exposure is achieved using a combination of shutter speed and aperture. There’s often no single solution for this and the shutter / aperture combination you choose will have a direct affect on the look of the final shot and this is the thing you really need to become instinctive about when shooting cars.

If you leave the camera in Program mode, then the camera will take an ‘average’ setting. It’s a setting it knows will give you a correctly exposed image, though it will not provide you with some of the best effects you could achieve, especially if you’ve gone to the trouble of buying some quality lenses too.

Tip – want to experiment without having to write down the camera setting to remember later? All modern digital cameras record the settings in a data file called EXIF, so you can use your favourite photo software to recall the settings you used later. Simply open up the EXIF data panel and you will see exactly what settings you were using on your camera at that time.

Shutter vs Aperture

The shutter speed is the duration of time that the sensor is exposed to light. In a DSLR, you will see the shutter behind the mirror which flips up to reveal the camera sensor The aperture is located inside the camera lens and is size of the hole the light comes through. See, easy, isn’t it? Correct exposure is achieved by a differing combination of shutter speed and aperture, but we knew that, right? The faster the shutter speed, the bigger aperture (hole) you need to balance out the exposure. Selecting a large (wider) aperture lets in more light, so you’ll need to speed up the shutter speed so that it’s not open as long, reducing the amount of light to balance it out.

So to recap, at any one time, you’ve got several choices of aperture and shutter speed you can choose that will all give a satisfactory result. The difference between all of those settings for a car photographer will be whether you need to have the shot frozen and pin sharp, or whether you’re looking to create blur for effect. You’ve probably guessed that you control those things with the shutter speed.

Perhaps less obvious is that by using different apertures, you can control which parts of the shot are in focus and which aren’t. Why would you want to do that? It’s called ‘depth of field’ and by controlling depth of field you can give emphasis to the part of the subject you want to. You see this effect every time you watch a movie drama on TV. You will see the cinematographer using a shallow depth of field and then move the focus to help you move your eyes in the scene as the conversation moves back and forth. You see it in still photographs, particularly action shots, all the time.

ISO – What Used to be Film Speed

Finally, the other thing that has an effect on exposure is what used to be film speed, but is now sensor ISO. Modern digital SLR’s have stunning sensors with the ability to deliver lovely shots in incredibly low light at ISO settings that used to be virtually useless just a couple of years ago. Sensor ‘noise’ used to create fuzziness in shadows and created ‘mush’ that make pictures taken in low light pretty much unusable. This means that historically, photographers used to try and keep the ISO at around 100 as often as possible. Today, we see images shot at ISO12500 and ever higher figures that look clean and sharp.

Today, DSLR’s and mirrorless cameras come with superb sensors that allow you to increase sensor ISO and keep on juggling the settings in ways you never could before. In short, you’ve never had it so good. This means that ISO has changed in recent years from being something that was always kept as low a value as possible to becoming an additional tool to help exposure in low light situations

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have good flash technique. That’s a subject for another post.

So that’s the basics of aperture, shutter speed and ISO out of the way, time to figure out what effect you’re looking for and how to use combinations to create effects.

Controlling Aperture

You’ve probably seen the pin sharp, head on shot like this one. The car jumps out of the background due to it being pin sharp but the background is soft and out of focus, drawing the eye to concentrate on the main subject. This is Sandro Munari, driving a Lancia Stratos at Goodwood and was shot on a Canon 1DS with the brilliant 70-200 f2.8 zoom. Wider apertures of course mean faster shutter speeds, making it perfect for head on action shots like this.

This is called shallow ‘depth of field’ which is the term used to describe the distance between the nearest in focus point and the point furthest away. The smaller the aperture number ie f2.8, the more shallow the depth of field. Smaller aperture numbers, f22 for example, will ensure that more of the picture is sharp, with less out of focus areas.

You would use a small aperture for recording a general static scene for example, where you wish the cars and also the background landscape to all be sharp.

This image of a Jaguar XK-RS was shot on a small aperture. The car wasn’t moving so the shutter speed could be slow. By using a small aperture, the shot is sharp from front to back.

Controlling Shutter Speed

Anyone thinking of car photography for the first time automatically assumes that you’re going to need a fast shutter speed, particularly for action. After all, these cars are fast, so you need to stop it, right? True, but the danger you have with going that route is that too fast a shutter speed and the car just looks like it’ s parked. Cars look best when they’re moving and some of the most exciting action shots are often shot at slower shutter speeds to give a greater impression of speed. Getting lost? Flick back to the earlier section on exposure. You know, the bits you skipped past..

So how slow is slow and how fast is fast? That’s what you need to figure out and that takes a little experience, but don’t worry, it will come. To get you started, here’s a few examples of motion blur and the settings used to get them.

This is a classic panning shot of a Porsche 959. The car is sharp, with the background blurred to enhance the suggestion of speed.

This is another panning shot of a Corolla World Rally Car, on a frozen lake in Norway. By using a slower shutter speed and panning the shot, the car remains sharp, but the background is blurred giving a true representation of the speed the car was driving at on the frozen lake.

For tips and a guide on car photography in winter time, read this blog post on the most important things you need to consider when shooting car photography in cold temperatures.

You can see how a fast shutter speed is actually undesirable much of the time for car photography and that can be a difficult concept for someone just starting out to get their head around, especially if you’re used to setting “P” on your control dial. But have the courage to move out of of the auto mode and you’ll be rewarded with more control over what comes out of your camera and better results all round.

A final tip to help you practice your car photography settings. If you lack the confidence or the understanding of exposure to move fully to Manual mode on your camera, then take some baby steps. Read this post on how Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority are actually the secret sauce settings that help you get the effect you want while the camera helps you nail the exposure without worrying too much.

The post Car Photography Settings – Moving Out Of Automatic Mode appeared first on Car Photographer.

UPDATE – This Photodeck review was originally written back in 2013. Since then, I have continued to use Photodeck as my image archive and photography website platform.

Try it free and use the Photodeck discount code YG@UETFDN and get 50% off your first month.

It started with a sense of frustration at my existing host. Photoshelter had been good, they’re a big company and after seeing Digital Railroad fail a few years earlier, they seem to be concentrating on their core business, serving photographers with a platform to sell their work. I’d been with them for a few years, but to be honest, hadn’t really put a big push into marketing my archive.

With stock photography revenues seemingly in steep decline, there seemed little point. So my site just ticked over. I didn’t like the lack of mobile and tablet compatibility, primarily based around using Flash for slideshows. They kept promising it was ‘coming soon’ but as the number of mobile device visitors rose on my Google Analytics, I realized that mobile was important. It wasn’t for the future, it was here and now.

Then I realized that I’d been missing an opportunity with print sales. The popularity of the Stirling Moss and The Blonde image and requests for prints of that shot, plus others, made me realize that I needed to get a proper workflow in place.

At this point, I studied SmugMug, Zenfolio and Photodeck. Photodeck stood out, here’s why.

1. It’s blazing fast and I mean fast. Take a look at my archive at http://www.neillwatson.com and see how quick.

2. It’s totally mobile friendly, resizing on the fly and creating layouts that work on all screens, laptop, tablets and phones. Plus all the features continue to work, regardless of the platform.

3. No commission on your sales. This is a big thing for me. As I found my print sales increasing, so my monthly bill went up too. OK, so you can say that’s a good thing, it means you must be making more sales, right? True. But Photodeck takes no commission. Founder JF comments “We stick to what we’re best at, being a technology provider. In the same way that we don’t come between you and your clients, so we don’t step between you and your business partners.”

4. Enhancements are happening all the time. In the last two months alone, Photodeck have rolled out the print partner program and also added a mechanism to allow you to sell eBooks and other publications on the site too.
5. It integrates with WordPress. If, like me, you have a self hosted WordPress website, then you can take your Photodeck style settings and export them to your blog. This means that you can achieve a consistent look, plus you don’t have to worry about trying to export your WordPress archive to Photodeck.

Criticisms? Only tiny ones, none of which are deal breakers for me. First, Photodeck does include a blog template should you choose to run your entire website at one location. It’s a pretty good platform, but nothing like as powerful as a WordPress install, something I’m pretty sure that JF is working on. If you really really need a full featured blog platform, then continue running WordPress alongside as I have.

The other thing is you’ll need to invest time in it. Photodeck is immensely powerful, highly customizable. You can take one of the many pre-built themes, then customize that to your desired look. In addition, the pricing profiles are infinitely adjustable. The Plus Packs pricing calculator can be adjusted up and down to achieve the pricing level you desire, plus you can add multiple print sales options and differing pricing for postage. But it does take time, so be prepared to invest in it beyond the free trial period.

I spent a long time looking at the options and while others are perfectly OK, Photodeck’s combination of features as I’ve outlined above made it the choice for me. If you want to try it, you can use the referral code of YG@UETFDN when you sign up to get yourself a 50% discount off your first month. If you do, that helps us too, as we get a credit towards our own Photodeck account.

So sign up, use the code and try it out. After several years of using Photodeck and even trying out alternatives from time to time, it remains the best photographer’s website platform out there in my view.

>h2>UPDATE

2018. The Photodeck guys don’t sit still, just last month they released some new features for the service, something I asked about a while ago. Print fulfilment using One Vision Imaging in the UK is now integrated into Photodeck together with other great print shops in the USA too. This means that you can now ‘drop ship’ prints, canvas wraps and other products from your website straight to the print shop without having to deal with any shipping at all.

New themes an improvements are constantly being added and the platform remains blazing fast.

The post Photodeck Review – Why We Recommend it and How to Get 50% off Your First Month appeared first on Car Photographer.

“The response is quite overwhelming. Sure, we were hoping for a success, but we didn’t expect it to be this big or come this fast. After all, ‘The Epic Split’ is a truck commercial,” says Per Nilsson, PR Director for the Volvo Trucks brand.

It’s the perfect combination of a star just at that right moment in their career combined with one of those “Did he, didn’t he?” and ‘Surely it’s CGI” discussions. Scroll down to find out how.

Some statistics and approximation from Be On, AOL Networks’ branded video syndication business who distributed the campaign

‘The Epic Split’ and the story about it has now :

• been shared over 6 million times on social networks.

• over 10 million impressions on Google.com.

• received extensive media coverage from all over the world: the commercial has been the subject of approximately 20,000 editorial pieces online so far.

• an estimated earned media value of £59 million.

How was it done? Well, no it wasn’t CGI. Yes, Jean Claud Van Damme really did do it. Shot at down in Spain on a closed airfield runway, Van Damme had safety measures attached and two plates on the mirrors for him to stand on. But that split that he made is own trademark all those years ago really was performed for real, standing on top of two Volvo truck mirrors, reversing down a runway….

The post Volvo and Van Damme – The Epic Split appeared first on Car Photographer.

Sadly, like so many car magazines, Triple C is no more.

This article was was my all time favourite, “Ayrton Senna – Rally Driver”, written by Senna’s friend, the late Russell Bulgin. Believe it or not, I was so taken with it, I still own my issue today, stashed away with my other favourite motoring covers, never to be sold on eBay.

Bulgin was a superb writer and inspired me in many ways, resulting in my current profession as a writer. From a car photography viewpoint, the cover shot of Senna at the wheel, perfectly lit by fill in flash, must have been a tricky one to pull off with film, but if ever there was a cover shot that sold issues, that must have been the one. Senna was at the top of his game when it was shot, with John Player Special cigarette branded overalls showing how early it was in his career.

He had an intense day in the forests of Wales driving a whole range of what were at the time modern rally cars, combining front wheel drive, rear wheel drive and four wheel drive Metro 4R4. The word was that by the end of the day, his stage times were quicker than the car’s regular driver.

The Triple C masthead was seen on the newsstands under a different name, but then sadly publication ceased once again.

Instead, here’s a Behind The Scenes video of the day, with Ayrton posing for the photo shoot.

The post Ayrton Senna – Rally Driver appeared first on Car Photographer.

For the first time, the photographer described the shot and how it was done. The shutter / aperture settings, type of film stock (remember Fujichrome?) and any filters used. Full of inspiration, I began shooting anything car related, from cars, quad bikes, rallying, jet skis and waterskiing. In fact, all the stuff I was into doing at that time.

I’ve still got my copy and leafing back through it now, it’s striking how as some things change, others remain the same.

The Crispy Clean Digital Look is Missing

It struck me how clean and crisp modern car photography looks in comparison. Film grain is non-existent today, unless artificially added in post production.

All the shots exhibit some grain, depending upon the film stock used. Comments about Ektachrome, Kodachrome 64 and Ilford B&W and how they affect the final look are all gone now. It’s also striking how sharp digital is in comparison, particularly in areas of continuous tone such as skies. Yet film grain wasn’t always bad, as a stunning early morning shot of a Miura SV reproduced double page has added emotion due to the graininess.

Other things that are different compared to today’s car photography:

Flash Lighting. Very little off camera flash and what there was, is used in a more subtle way. Today, flash is used heavily to light cars, in fact, when no attractive location can be found, it’s sometimes the dominant characteristic.

Rig Shots. Virtually no rig shots at all and those that are there could probably have been done by shooting through the sunroof etc. Probably one of the biggest advances in digital car photography is the development of the car rig shot and the instant review given by digital.

It’s a great read and brought back lots of happy memories, with adverts for the Astra GTE, Peugeot 206GTi and Ford Granada Scorpio…Oh yes. And quite a few cigarette adverts too.

Everyone who enjoys car photography will have something that inspired them to either become a professional photographer or simply become more involved in learning more about the art of photography.

Let us know in the comments below what it was that inspired you to become more passionate

The post What Inspired You To Love Car Photography? appeared first on Car Photographer.

1. Protection for you, as well as your gear. If you are cold yourself, you’ll have no enthusiasm for taking pictures. Your mind won’t function properly and your creativity will be a big zero. Thermal underwear won’t win many admirers, but who cares, if it works. Get some. A good hat, some gloves and a good strong pair of boots are vital too. Notice I said boots? That’s because you’re probably going to be standing thigh deep in snowy banks beside the road, so you REALLY don’t want normal sub-ankle hiking shoes on as the snow slips into your socks and melts…. For my hands, I’ve used a simply superb pair of North Face gloves for the past four years. I can’t remember the name, but they are thermal, soft and with grippy palms and fingertips that allow you to find all the buttons on your camera with ease in a way that no glove I’ve ever used can. Before these, I was forever taking gloves off, dropping them, losing them etc etc. but no longer. Probably the cheapest thing I ever bought for helping me in low temparatures and great for aerial photography too. Get some.

2. Protection for your gear. Contrary to popular belief, your camera should not fail in the cold, just as long as you do a couple of simple things. Keep your spare batteries warm (you do have spare batteries, don’t you…?) In an inside pocket or somewhere close to your body heat is perfect, then if you find the cold has killed one, swap over and let the dead one revive itself. The battery that you thought was flat will come back to life as it heats back up. You may need to keep swapping batteries back and forth of the temperature is really Arctic. Repeat with your Double AA’s for any small strobes you’re using as they die REALLY quick. I find Canon’s EOS 1D series cameras with their big batteries are quite happy right down to -35c without any special treatment and I’m sure Nikon’s pro-spec will be the same. Lesser camera models will need a little help.

3. Shooting. For static setups, remember, everything takes longer in the cold, due to clothing, moving cars around and setting up lights. Bear in mind the shorter daylight hours, particularly if you’re lucky enough to have travelled to somewhere like Sweden. While the shorter day means you have less time, sometimes the light is truly beautiful, but literally changes by the minute. So if you see some great light coming, get moving, even if the setup isn’t quite what you need, go with it and capture the moment before you lose the light.

4. Action shooting. For action photography, please please make sure your driver knows his stuff. Anyone with a driving licence and a degree of enthusiasm gets awfully carried away when it snows and it’s pretty easy to end up photographing an accident! Remember, you won’t be able to move as fast, so allow plenty of sprinting room and also bear in mind that the car isn’t going to stop as easily. On the plus side, with a talented driver, you can get some great angles that you’d never normally see.

5. Video. Shooting video in very low temperatures brings more things to consider. If the location is truly arctic, the actual stillness makes the slightest sound ring out. The crunch of snow under foot can have great emphasis and engine notes in snowy locations ring out and echo. It’s worth paying particular attention to recording engine noises, as they do have a more spectacular tone.
If you’re using a fluid head video tripod, most of them become difficult to use below -10c. The fluid in the head loses it’s viscosity and becomes still. Not matter how much you back off the preload, getting a decent panning shot can become almost impossible.

6. Rigging on car cameras. If you’re using suction mounts to mount cameras on cars, take care to wipe away frost from the mounting surface. We use Woods Pwer Grip, read the review here. We’ve had Canon cameras mounted in cars at 80 mph at -28c with no problems. However, don’t forget to keep your gloves on when touching the mount after the car has been running. I forgot that at -28c, plus the 80mph wind chill, the metal of the Manfrotto Super Clamp was bitterly cold and I almost lost the skin from my fingers. I let go just in the nick of time….

7. Return to base. The biggie about taking care of your gear is not just how you treat it outside, but what you do when you’re done. DO NOT bring all your gear back indoors with you when you get back to base. It’ll fog up with condensation both on the lenses and more importantly, inside. I’ve seen perfectly good cameras die because of internal damp after being taken inside when the metal and glass was still icy cold. Instead, put your gear in the boot (trunk) of the car and then let it come up to temparature gradually in a hallway or other intermediate area.

I’m sure there are other things you’ve found yourself if shooting in the snow, feel free to add your comments below. These are the seven things I’ve observed others getting into difficulties with, plus a few I’ve fallen for myself in the past! Above all, don’t sit there looking at the snow, get out there and shoot something.

These images were all shot in Scandinavia working with Ice Driver.

The post Seven Winter Photography Tips To Use When Shooting Cars appeared first on Car Photographer.

The Mazda 787 rotary engine is turbocharged and unlike conventional piston engines, the rotors revolve around a single shaft, meaning that it spins far higher and makes a rear scream.

Here’s how the team took a Mazda 787 Sports Prototype and recorded that ear splitting engine sound. Turn up the volume for the full effect….

The post Mazda 787 Racer – Recording The Sound for Forza Motorsport appeared first on Car Photographer.

UK based car photographers will be quite happy today as the UK Government scraps the requirement for displaying the Vehicle Excise Duty tax disc on our windscreens. For those outside of the UK, it’s a small paper disc the size of a beer mat or coaster that shows that you’ve paid the government to drive on our roads. We still have to pay for it of course, it was only the car tax disc scrapped, not the fee. It’s just that number plate recognition technology on roadside cameras, linked to a database mean we don’t need to show it on the car windshield.

So what’s the big deal for photographers? It’s not a huge issue, but when setting up the car for a photo shoot, it was always one of the things to remember. Like winding up the side windows, lifting up sun visors, setting the front seat adjustment to parallel and so forth, UK car photographers had to remember to take out the tax disc whenever possible, because printed on it is the date of expiry in bold lettering. Something that will instantly date a photograph in the future.

Of course with our friend Photoshop, it’s not such a big deal to remove it, but if you’ve got a photo shoot with several hundred frames of different views for an editorial feature, that’s a lot of tax discs to remove.

We’re going to be writing about some of the other common things that often get missed when setting up for a photo shoot, so if you found this post interesting, you might like to sign up for our newsletter.

The post Death of The Tax Disc – Good News for British UK Car Photographers appeared first on Car Photographer.

There’s probably more GoPros here than you can shake a stick at, but the DJi is the star for me. As for who won, take a look, the result, in my view, was the right one…

DJI Global are creating some superb filming gear for both pros and enthusiasts alike, at prices that we could only dream about a few years ago. We’ll be covering them a lot more in a short while, so sign up for our newsletter to keep in touch.

The post Worlds Greatest Drag Race and the DJi Global appeared first on Car Photographer.