I’m going to be preparing a book on the pride of owning a Saab. It’ll be based on the Saab pride of ownership competition I ran here at TS late last year, but I’m also accepting new entries so I need you to clean up your cars, get out there and get snapping.
Autumn in the north (or spring in the south) is a great time for taking photos. The light is clean and soft and the colors can be fantastic. Here’s a few tips, references and inspirational ideas to get you started.
1. Don’t be afraid to put yourself in the photo.
Cars are good, but people are good, too. It makes the car story much more personal. Getting the face is best, but it can even be something subtle:
2. Check the references
Check out the entries in the Saab Pride of Ownership Competition
Check out previous tips on car photography
Check out previous features on great photos, like this one.
3. Strobe
It’s tricky, but photographing stuff at night can work out really well if done correctly.
4. Either fill the frame, or go wide
An old teacher called it “dancing the three step”. Before you take your shot, take three steps back and have a look again. Go to your original spot then take three steps forward. Try different focal lengths.
Filling the frame excludes some of the extra scenery, but it focuses on the details of the car and accentuate certain elements.
Going wide allows you to get the car and the breathtaking bit of scenery in the background.
5. Don’t be afraid to play a little
This is that some photo, cropped and tweaked a little. It’s a little less grey, a little colder. What you want to convey is really up to you as the photographer (and forgive me Wulf for tweaking yours, but it was a great base shot for this tip)
We live in the digital age, and whilst I think the photo should always remain believable, there’s no harm in pushing a few buttons in photoshop or iPhoto in order to finish it off.
6. Get sophisticated
For the advanced photoshopper, there’s the new world of HDR. It’s not for the inexperienced, but the results and the level of detail can be absolutely stunning
7. Get simple
The beauty of black and white – also easily recreated in this digital age. Black and white tends to work better on higher contrast cars. It’s going to work better for a dark or light car, more so than a silver car.
Here’s one that’s HDR and black and white and does both of them pretty well.
8. Get creative
It’s mentioned in one of those references linked above, but try some different angles. Get up high or down low.
While Stu was taking this shot:
I was taking this shot:
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So get out there and start clicking.
It’s the digital age so a bad shot doesn’t cost you anything. Try things out and send your best in for the Saab Pride book!
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My car photography experience is very limited, but I suspect a polarizer filter should allow greater control over the reflections in our shiny cars. HDR seems useful, but so far many of the HDR images seem exagerrated (I think it was eggs’n'grits who made that observation in a recent news item here). I realise black and dark cars pose a challenge, but no need to go overboard…
Anyway, I have some ideas… Perhaps time to put my money where my mouth is..?
(must first wash my 9-3, and then see if I have the guts to go offline from my potentially new girlfriend for an hour or two..)
One of my ideas would be to have my SAAB in a parking garage, between other cars, then hit the “glow” button on the key (you OG900 owners don’t know what you are missing). In post-processing, turn the picture b/w, except for my car (and the lights). Caption “mine is the one that glows in the dark”. Or has that been done already?
Funny/deranged youtube.com comment last year: “I agree that Saabs are very safe, but you sure are paranoid or supporting General Motors more than necessary, 405s are very safe cars for their age. ” (http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=v5CybGEWlcM) Yeeees… 405s are “very safe”… Good grief… Now I understand why so many people do not buy SAABs, they have absolutely no clue! While I am off-topic: Does anybody know if it is possible to rent SAABs in Tbilisi, Georgia? I can probably get my own AK-47 at the airport, so it doesn’t have to come with the car.
Any kind of timeframe for the new submissions, Swade?
Rogan, it’ll be around a month from now. I’ll decide a clear date and post it prominently in the linked entry (and announce it in its own post, too).
Rune:
I don’t know why this made me chuckle, but it did. The internet age, eh?
I started with a few shots today… It was fun.
I don’t have a Saab to photograph
Life sucks.
That series with Stu bring me back to when I discovered TS for the first time in 01/06 !!! Very, very fond memories indeed !!!
A few more tips that work well for me, some are already mentioned by Swade.
- Take a lot of pictures of the same setting but from different angles and view points. With digital camera, it doesn’t cost anything extra and it is often difficult to view the results on a small LCD screen. It is much easier to browse through 20 images of the same subject and keep the one you like best.
- You don’t need an expensive camera to get good results or interesting pictures. A good photographer with an average camera will get better results than a beginner with the most expensive equipment. Check out this website for some great tips: Link
- Keep your camera in the car. I missed many great photo opportunities because I didn’t have my camera with me.
- Backgrounds is what makes a picture interesting for me. It takes a while to get an idea of “picturing” your car in a certain setting. Making interesting pictures takes time and there have been many times where I climbed up a hill to take a picture from the car from above. And as Swade did, I also used the step ladder method.
- iPhoto is great for adjusting color, exposure and cropping. Pictures that initially turned out a bit boring can be brought to life with just a few enhancements (as Swade mentioned).
- You sometimes need just the right light, angle, setting and luck for that one great picture. Practice and make lots of pictures.