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General Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: elagache on August 01, 2017, 11:14:26 AM

Title: Hemmings article on car photography - especially black cars.
Post by: elagache on August 01, 2017, 11:14:26 AM
Dear mid-60s Buick owners of photogenic cars,

As anyone who has photographed a car with a shiny paint job has discovered, this is more of a challenge than one would expect.  Photographing cars isn't easy.  Black cars are especially a challenge.  Hemmings has a blog article from Thomas A. DeMauro with some interesting tips and some really nice photographs:

https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2017/07/31/virtues-and-vices-of-photographing-black-cars (https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2017/07/31/virtues-and-vices-of-photographing-black-cars)

He even features a Buick, although one from 1969.  The advice is straightforward and very much consistent with my own experience.  Make an effort to choose a background that will work with your car's paint job and pay attention to where the light is coming from.  Because a shiny car is basically acting like a mirror, you need that mirror not to be reflecting sunlight back into your lens.

As DeMauro points out, with a little careful setup, you can take a picture that will look good without any image post-processing.  Since none of us have enough time for that sort of thing, that's a really a virtue!

Cheers, Edouard  :occasion14: