[Sticky] Submit your glamour shots!

Posted by: @marsrock7

Now I am noticing everywhere how a professional looking car photo usually is from a lower point of view, like level with the grill. Will definitely be trying this in the future.

Generally what happens is the lower shot at a normal shooting  distance looks normal. When you angle your shot downwards it will look flat and uninteresting to the viewer but not the photographer. 
 So it begs the question why does it look good to the person taking the photography even if it’s bad technique and it’s very simple that you will look past it because you are emotionally invested  to the photo. It happens to everyone and you have to trick your self out of it by being a little conscious. 

A few more tips.
If you think you are too close you are not close enough. 

You don’t have to show the entire car. The viewer will fill in the blanks, that’s how our brains work and it’s more interesting and mysterious. 

You have to take pictures unconventionally to get normal perspectives. This is what creates immersion for the viewer and draws them in.   

Most of all break the cycle of being trapped into shooting photos that looks like everyone else’s. You don’t have to imitate but you can emulate proven techniques and make it count. 

Sorry, Halo, you do have a point, but while we are on the topic...

Composition is crucial. People dont realize that centering the subject makes a photo terrible more often than not. 80% of the time the 3x3 grid gives great results. Learn that, then start playing with it a little. Now that digital = "free film", it is easy enough to take five shots: one dead-centered, and one at each of the four grid intersections. Then you can compare later to learn, and bonus is that at least one of them will be clearly superior.

Lighting is more difficult, not only from a composition standpoint, but just getting the same quality out of a device as what you see. Good tech helps tremendously here, but it will not fix unwanted harshness. OTOH, very nice light can be captured by a crappy, dirty phone (greasy lens migyt even do you a favor occasionally). Sometimes you actually want the stark light. For example, when I saw the eclipse a couple of years ago, there was a tree that acted like a thousand pinhole projectors and played thousands of little crescents on the ground below. Would have been an incredible picture. I tried, but the light was kind of soft. The image was discernable, but harshness would have helped it 100-fold.

All that said, I consider myself mediocre at best, but have taken some amazing pictures over the years with just those two 101-level concepts in mind. Not mastered, but minded.

Posted by: @nottamiata

For example, when I saw the eclipse a couple of years ago, there was a tree that acted like a thousand pinhole projectors and played thousands of little crescents on the ground below. Would have been an incredible picture. I tried, but the light was kind of soft. The image was discernable, but harshness would have helped it 100-fold.

Forgot to mention this was taken by my daughter-in-law spur of moment in 2017. I converted it to b&w and made a few adjustments, then printed and mounted for them.  After reading your comment I couldn't resist posting. To see it in person is amazing - and we have another total eclipse coming up in a few years, which I hope to see and  thoroughly enjoy.

Nice

I love playing with light and shadows. I'm not a great car photographer but I like to think of myself as a generally talented photographer. My style tends to be very dark though. inb4thatsnotanmr2

Love that last shot!

@haloruler64

Agreed, that last shot is really good. The warm/cool contrast does it wonders.

@dave

Now I feel obligated to post my own terrible "eclipse day" shots...

Thanks guys. Yeah I was pretty proud of that shot, especially since it was used to show off the LED interior bulbs I was testing for XenonDepot.

@marsrock7, looks similar to mine.  Like your hand pin hole shot, inventive.  My posted pic was taken in southern Georgia and I'm in Ohio, but I think the key is being lucky to have a tree with the right light transmission and snapping the pic at the right phase. Contrast, highlight, and shadow adjustments take it the rest of the way.  

Posted by: @dave

@marsrock7, looks similar to mine.  Like your hand pin hole shot, inventive.  My posted pic was taken in southern Georgia and I'm in Ohio, but I think the key is being lucky to have a tree with the right light transmission and snapping the pic at the right phase. Contrast, highlight, and shadow adjustments take it the rest of the way.  

 

What I found to work well is to expose for the highlights. This will leave everything dark but you will not blow it out.  I would then increase the shadows or just brighten the image in post sometimes using an exposure brush. It works better with cameras that are iso invariant which my Canon was not.  It will present a problem with noise but it can be taken care of with noise reduction as long as its not too bad.   These type of shots are quiet difficult to get right.  

At the far end of an áwesome touge road....

and here one I took over a year ago; it is the cortijo where in 1870 José Maria ´El Tempranillo´ was ambushed and killed:

The Lookout, Ortega Highway.  Overlooking Lake Elsinore in California

two daytime shots

i'm sure some of you have already seen these (kinda old pictures)

Evening shot near Huelva. Snapped by gf. My snap has her in it; too distracting 😎