shooting cars and trucks

[metoo]

I'm not sure I'm posting this in the right spot so feel free to move me mods.

I would like to take some photo's of firetrucks, worktrucks, cars ,ect. For my sons room. I would love and advice or tips any one would have. Things like the best time of day, cloudy vs sunny day. Getting a nice backround. DO I need a tripod ( I hate my tripod)? Basically anything you can think of or articles I could read. Ideally I will be blowing up one picture to an 11x13 or possibly a large long print. the rest will be 8x10 or smaller. Thanks .

[ALSto]

The best way I like to photograph cars is with wide angle lens looking at the bumper up or standing low down in front of the hood... I find it gives length and negates a lot of the background noise associated with taking pictures of vehicles because you tend to fill the frame. Look at some car magazines for ideas.

Late afternoon light (or early morning if so inclined) will provide the best temperature range (warm light) & depending on the time of year nice shadows. Full sun shots are not so good as you get little reflection & lots of glare. Shady trees are always nice if you can move the vehicle.

For the fire trucks, go down to the local fire station and ask them when "truck wash day" is show up and snap when they are nice & clean. Sun can be used effectively here to produce flare or "gleem" from chrome. Saturday & Sunday local antique car meets & swaps are a good place to get pictures and meet owners that are more then willing to let you photograph their cars. Get their email contact and offering to send them copies is a good way to compensate for their time (or move the vehicle to a better place for a photo shoot).

Hope that helps and gives you some ideas.

Allen...

Edit: Just as I posted. KathrynWilson just posted an example of what I was speaking about. She obtained this from a local car show.
Corvette

[jdepould]

An overcast day will give you very even lighting and the shadows won't be too harsh. You may want to consider a polarizer, to cut down on reflections in the paint and chrome. Consider your angles and placement, because sometimes it's kind of weird to see the photographer reflected in the subject.

Tripods aren't absolutely essential, but they can be nice. If you're shooting during the day it shouldn't be too much of an issue though.

As far as backgrounds, just make sure you don't have any trees or telephone poles growing out of the trucks. If you can get up higher, the ground makes for a nice clean background. Conversely, the sky makes a clean background as well, so don't be afraid to get in close and low.

[txmom2jami]

I took some nice shots of motorcycles at a bike rally back in September. It was slightly overcast, and I tried something new that I'd observed in another photographer's work that I admired -- I zoomed in on interesting parts of each machine I was photographing. Here are some examples:

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Maybe these will give you some ideas!

[jdepould]

TXMom, you actually don't need the image tags when you copy/paste the html directly from flickr.

Good shots, especially the speedo, very nice composition on that one. It's definitely a technique to keep in mind. Pushed to an extreme, you can get some really interesting abstracts as well, and it can work with any subject.

[txmom2jami]

Oops ... sorry about those tags ... Flickr has that little "you must include the link" thing "so use Option 1" and I guess I copied too much? Anyway, thanks for the compliment. I entered these three, plus two others as a Photo Display in our county fair and brought home a blue ribbon. This isn't my usual choice of subject matter, so I was pretty tickled by the recognition.

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by txmom2jami

Oops ... sorry about those tags ... Flickr has that little "you must include the link" thing "so use Option 1" and I guess I copied too much? Anyway, thanks for the compliment. I entered these three, plus two others as a Photo Display in our county fair and brought home a blue ribbon. This isn't my usual choice of subject matter, so I was pretty tickled by the recognition.

Hm, those tags aren't part of the option 1 code (which is the correct choice). I think they're actually BBCode, which is specific to VBulletin.

P.S. congrats on the prize.

[txmom2jami]

That is soooo weird. I went back to Flickr to see if I could figure out what happened. There are no image tags in the window I copied. I clicked the "Insert Image" button here and pasted in that window. Should I have clicked "Insert Link" instead? Maybe that's why it did it. But if I clicked "Insert Link" I don't think my photos would have shown up. I don't know.

[jdepould]

That's what did it. No need to click anything, just paste

[sideeffects]

Some good info. I have noticed night shots under bright lights like a parking structure would have gives very pleasant highlights to the shape of a car. Other than that shooting in bright sunlight does not seem to work too well. Late afternoon or a cloudy day would be your best bet.

Here is an example of a shot I took at sunset. Tell me what you think?