How-to: Take better photos.

[Digitalwave]

One of the most common misconceptions in photography is that you need a good camera to take good photos. While it certainly is easier for a beginner to get his or her desired results with a high-end digital SLR, there are numerous tips and tricks you can use to achieve better photos no matter what camera you are using. The first section of this tutorial will deal with preparation and and the actual photoshoot. The second section will deal with post-photoshoot editing.

Preparing for your photoshoot

There are obvious things most of us do before we head out for a photoshoot. The most obvious being washing your car and making it presentable. The rest of our preparation can be scarce, and it can severely affect how your photoshoot turns out. Here are some things you should keep in mind before you head out to the door to take your pictures.

• Charge your camera's batteries. I like to fully charge my cameras batteries the night before I do a photoshoot. I have a spare battery that also gets a full charge, and comes along on every photoshoot. There is nothing worse than running out of batteries and missing out on a great photo opportunity.
• Make sure you have enough space on your memory card. Bring any spare memory cards that you have. If you need to, drop off all the pictures onto your hard drive and then format your memory card before you head out. Running out of space while out in the field is frustrating, and deleting pictures to gain more space while out on a photoshoot can waste precious time.
• Bring your accessories! Tripods are essential to any photoshoot, whether it be during the daytime or the nighttime (especially nighttime). Tripods lend to sharper, more consistantly composed photos. Any basic tripod is better than nothing, Wal-Mart sells nice tripods for $20! Filters can be invaluable when trying to achieve certain photographic effects. A UV and a polarizing filter are recommended basic filters.
• Check the weather and the sunset (or sunrise) times in advance and plan accordingly. If there is a 60% chance of rain the day you want to shoot, you might want to consider rescheduling. Also, you want to give yourself plenty of time to setup your car and your equipment before you start shooting, and the sun rises/sets very fast. Get there early and give yourself time to prepare.
• Scope out interesting locations for photoshoots. Pictures of your car in your driveway or in front of your house are not interesting. Scope out cool scenic areas, industrial areas, lake fronts, beach fronts... anything interesting. Try and avoid areas that are overly distracting, such as parking lots where there are other cars that will be in your photos.
• Plan to do your photoshoot during the 'golden hour'. The golden hour is the hour after the sunrise, or the hour preceeding the sunset. Lighting is much more dramatic and even during these times, and color saturation is much greater. There are also less harsh shadows to deal with.

It's time to start taking pictures

The first thing you should do when you arrive at your desired photo location is position your car in your desired pose. If you followed my last piece of advice, you will have plenty of time to get out of the car and scope out the best spot to park your car. Once the car is positioned, walk the full 360 degrees around the car, squat down, walk closer and farther from the car, and basically just scope out any killer angles and compositions that you can find. Keep these in mind for when you start shooting. Don't just stand in one spot and snap off a couple of similar-looking pictures!

• Before you start taking your pictures, make sure the settings on your camera are ready to go. I am not going to go in depth into camera settings. A couple things you want to do are as follows: Shoot at your camera's maximum resolution! Picture quality will be much better in the final product. Also, make sure that the picture quality is set to the highest setting. You should also set your camera's white balance every time you take photos. Use a white card, or find something white around where you are shooting, and use your cameras Auto White Balance feature to set the white balance.
• Snap away. Don't be afraid to take too many pictures. You can delete the bad ones when you are done. When I find an interesting composition, I usually take 2-5 pictures with different settings for the exposure, and to make sure that at least one of them is in perfect focus. It sucks having the best composition of the photoshoot ruined because the photo is over or underexposed and/or blurry.
• When in doubt, underexpose your photos. Underexposures can be salvaged in Photoshop, because their is still detail that can be pulled out of dark areas. Overexposured areas, on the other hand, are pure white and will have no detail that can be recovered.
• Try all sorts of angles/perspectives when taking your photo. Try not to simple center your car in the middle of each photo. Use the rule of thirds. If you are not familiar with the rule of thirds in image composition, please read this writeup: http://www.silverlight.co.uk/tutoria...se/thirds.html
• Move your car around a couple times during the photoshoot. Pose the front wheels in different manners. Park the car is varying areas around your photoshoot location. Mix it up so all the photos don't look the same.
• Keep the horizon level! Nobody likes cracking their neck just so they can see your car level. It's understandable for the car to be angled if its parked on a slope or on a hill. But a huge rule of photography is that the horizon of the photo needs to be level. You can use Photoshop to correct tilted horizon in post-editing.
• Trick your camera. If you are having a hard time focusing on the car when trying to frame the car in a composition using the rule of thirds, trick your camera. If using center-weighted focus, aim your camera directly at the car, and set the focus by holding the trigger button half way down. Keep the trigger down, while you re-compose the photo the way you want it. You will have the composition you want, while maintaining the perfect focus on the car.
• You can also use the above method for exposures. During sunsets, you might want to weigh the exposure for the sky for a silhouette photo, or for the car to maintain the detail. Simple aim your camera at either object, and let the camera compensate for that exposure, and then reposition your composition while holding the trigger to get your desired result.
• When shooting at night, make sure to put your camera on night mode, or if shooting in manual mode, adjust your shutter speed, f/stop, and ISO ratings accordingly. If not, your photos will come out underexposed and extremely grainy. It's really not worth shooting night photos without a tripod, so you might want to save yourself the time and frustration if you don't have one. Make sure the flash is off when shooting at night! The flash will cause uneven lighting and unwanted reflections. A polarizing filter can be extra-helpful in reducing wierd reflections from spotchy lighting.

Pat yourself on the back because you just completed your best photoshoot yet. 8)

[Digitalwave]

Part two of the tutorial.

Now that you have finished the most important part of the photoshoot (the part where you take the actual photos :) ), it's time to make the shots even better. Photo editing software can't make a bad photo great, but it can make a bad photo better. It can make a good photo great.

There are 5 main areas that I want to focus on. Granted, these are basic photo techniques, but anything else will be beyond the scope of this tutorial. I am focusing these techniques based on Adobe Photoshop, but similiar results can be achieved with any other photo editing software.

A forenote before you get started on your editing. Save all your photos onto your hard drive in their own folder. How you name/organize your folders is up to you. But make sure you keep your originals! When you do your editing, save the edited photos in their own folder. I like to keep my edited photos in the main folder, and make a sub-folder with the originals. You never know when you will want the high res/unedited version of a photo.

Make sure you start your editing with the full resolution photos. Don't resize until the very end!

Step 1: Cropping
Cropping is a good way to improve your compositions. You can also use it as a cheater's way to zoom in on your photos some when working with high resolution photos (you aren't actually zooming, rather you are bringing the edges in closer to the car so it takes up more of the frame). Crop out any distracting elements of the photo, but be sure to maintain the rule of thirds! Using the crop tool, you can compensate for unlevel horizons, all you have to do is rotate the box (the dotted lines) after you have made your selection. Make sure you leave room on either side of your tilted box so it doesn't create a new part of the image that wasn't there before.

Step 2: Level corrections
Depending on the lighting you had available during the photoshoot, your photos might have come out muddy, with a narrow range of lumanince. To correct this, you can adjust the levels using Auto Levels, the Levels tool, or Brightness/Contrast for the lazy people. The idea here is to make the darks darker, and the lights lighter. A good histogram will have some pure blacks and some pure whites in each photo. You might also need to adjust the mid-tones to achieve the desired contrast. Always adjust your levels BEFORE you adjust your colors.

Step 3: Color correction
This might be the most important part of your photo editing. There are a plethora of ways to adjust color in Photoshop, and I will leave it to you to find the way that suites you best. You can use the Color Balance feature to easily adjust for white balances that are incorrect. You want to achieve the most natural lighting possible, without any red or blueish tints showing. It's also a good idea to adjust the hue/saturation to bring out the vibrance in the colors.

Here is an example of what adjusting your levels and your colors can achieve:



Step 4: Erasing distracting elements
Use the clone stamp to get rid of distracting elements of your photos. Telephone lines, signs, passing by cars; all sorts of things can be distracting in your photos. Using the above photo as an example, you can see I used the clone stamp to remove the van that was traveling in the background ground (the white streak). On close up shots, you can also remove distracting reflections, bugs on the paint, rock chips, etc.

Step 5: Resizing/sharpening
Hopefully you followed my advice above and you shot your pictures at the maximum resolution. If so, you are going to need to resize your pictures. Coming down from a large resolution, to a web ready resolution, you will lose a little sharpness. But you will also lose a bit of the grain and noise from the picture. Never use the Sharpen tool! Use Unsharp Mask, and experiment with the levels to get back to achieve the ideal sharpness. Don't overdo it though, or halos will show up along the edges of the car and any details. What size you choose to resize to is up to you. Make sure you experiment with JPEG compression as well. Find a happy medium between file size and picture quality... leaning more towards picture quality. People would rather wait a second longer to see a better picture.

[c0rnfl4k3]

There's a lot of great stuff in there, thanks for the info!!

[BMW BMXER]

Good read TJ thanks.

[DEV0 E30]

Indeed and didn't have any BS.
Teach photog TJ, there should be less boring teachers.
Hell I used to hate it but just experimenting can help ya.

Helps to have a car with good contrast too though like the Sterling. :D

[E30Driv3R]

There's a lot of great stuff in there, thanks for the info!!

I Have to agree there, great info

[MR 325]

Amazing info

[hamann318is]

Thanks a million. I tried your P/S techniques with some of my photos, and they turned out GREAT!

[Ducati]

Common sense.

[Werksmini]

I dont think that I have the concentration to read all that but can I just say... buy a fuckin tri-pod. That will extend the ability of ANY camera a ton. Just get one.

[Thomas Olivaux]

Thanks a lot :)

I've always wanted to tell you that your photos are beautifull ;)

++

[BMW BMXER]

Common sense.

Hardly. Most people just point and shoot.

[CobraKai]

you're teh ghey~

i cant wait untill i get my d70 :mrgreen:

[Miso Beno]

you're teh ghey~

i cant wait untill i get my d70 :mrgreen:

D70?

[CobraKai]

i hate you.