How do you keep the motivation going?

[sameerrao]

/Gripe on ...

I am getting quite bored with static car photography.

It seems to be quite formulaic now to me. For instance you take the front/rear 3qtr shot, the ground looking up shot, wheel turned against the camera, etc, highlight the lights, wheel details. The aperture/exposure settings are all known as are the polarizer effects.

I have been there, done that (maybe not to same level of execution as some of you pros). Now when I see a car, I rarely want to go through the whole drill. Maybe if it is a rare car then yes it desrves the Full Monty. But another normal Porsche, Ferrari, Lambo, BMW doesn't seem to deserve it IMO.

So how do you guys manage to keep the enthusiasm going? Especially TT - the man must be nuts.

I have no problems with motion shots - at least there is a challenge in getting the shots with the right amount of blur in it.


... Gripe off/

[alanw89]

I've never done any static car photography so i'm just going on the type of shots i like the look of best.

I dunno if you've been doing this already but you could try thinking about locations more, this would obviously mean you would have to have access to the car you were photographing so you could take it to where you wanted, but then its not like you dont own any interesting cars yourself. Personally i find pictures which make good use of the location to be alot more interesting than the "formulaic" shots your talking about.

I think this shot of martijns does this quite well, I dont even like the TT but this picture just seems right because i think the location suits the car well.


This is another one i think uses the location well.


obviously it takes alot more than finding a good location to get pictures like these, Lighting, post processing and some creativity but they can just be the next thing to move onto once you find your getting bored of finding locations, or you could always go and buy a couple of flashes and get used to lighting shots(although if this was me it would end up being something id just spend loads of money on) then combine that with locations, but by starting to do something different with your photos should keep you motivated as youll always be trying to get better and more creative.

I thought this was a very good tutorial about car photography and even though ive never done any of it myself i find myself thinking about all these different things when looking at pictures on the net.

http://www.mattwatkinson.com/tutorial/

[sameerrao]

Thanks for your input. Great suggestions!

Locations: I have almost never ever taken a car to a specific location for a photoshoot. Virtually all my shots tend to be at car shows or other events. I wish I had thought about this some time back when I was single and had all the free time in the world. Now I have to somehow squeeze time to drive my Ferrari on the weekend. No time for photoshoots. But let's see if an oppportunity presents itself on a future drive.

From a photo focus standpoint, I think I will focus more on detail shots in the future and not so much on the whole car. I think that will keep my interest up as I hunt for the unique features in each car model.

[alanw89]

Detail shots are a good idea. On the couple of opportunities ive had to take pictures of static cars ive tended to just take a few detail shots, that way you dont have to worry about a cluttered background or other distractions. so far ive had a few im happy with but i think i might try out detail shots more often now as im getting a bit bored of my usual shots panning shots, made worse by the fact that theres only one track local enough to me to be worth going to.

You could also post your photos on a photo sharing website. I use Flickr and sometimes can get some good feedback and its nice to see how many times photos have been viewed compared to your other ones. it can also show how youve improved over time when you go back and look at the first pictures you uploaded(I thought so anyway).