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Writer's pictureJürgen Niit

Blue bright eyed VW beast

Automotive pictures & me

Photographing cars has been a big interest since I got my first semi-professional camera. Even before that - I remember printing out photos of cars in my elementary school - that was one thing I liked to do after school hours. Using computer class and browsing photos of beautifully crafted vehicles. It all felt so far from me - for some small island country boy. All those Corvettes, Vipers and Dodge Chargers.

Now I pretty much see them daily and thanks for my skills and experience in photography I can confidently approach them and offer my services. That is A GOOD feeling.


My first planned (kinda) photoshoot of the car

I can tell you the exact date when I did the first photoshoot of the car. 25-th of the August 2013 - that´s right METADATA....but still remembering that evening. Did a little pizza and donut party at my place and one really good friend stayed overnight. Once the guests were gone and we started chatting. And in the corner of the eye, I saw the camera I had purchased a few months earlier and started taking photos of my friend. "Alright, let us go out and take photos of your car." suddenly struck me. We looked up a few photos from online for encouragement and off we went.

f/6.3; ISO-80; exposure 5 sec
f/6.3; ISO-80; exposure 5 sec

In that time I was pretty proud of that - shot on automatic settings, used camera bag as tripod (hence the angle of the camera; pro-term is "Dutch tilt") and I think I didn´t do any editing on that. I keep this shot backed-up so I can remind myself where I started from. I think there is no shame to share it with the public either - own everything about you, even your mistakes.


First automotive shoot of 2020

So started off one of my favorite themes in photography - automotive. Had this small powerful 4 wheel drive MK6 R Golf. 290kW with Stage 2 tuning. Allegedly it took off faster in street race than Lamborghini Gallardo. The video and dyno run graph of his vehicle was impressive. The owner said that the next goal is to have more than 500kW under the hood with Stage 3 tuning. Really wanna see that beast again.


So here are a few notes from the shoot.


Good about this session

  • breaking composition rules

  • White Balance on the point straight out of the camera

  • use of natural light on a bright day





Not so good about this session

  • didn´t consider that all the levels of the parking lot were under a angle

  • some of the reflections were too much and distracting

  • should have moved car more around




For the next session

  • better/wider use of the surrounding environment

  • use more shadows

  • finding good angles for interior shots




In conclusion

Automotive photography is one of those areas where time is no factor to me. I can easily spend two hours with one car and it feels like 20 minutes. I really like the environment where I shot this car, it really helped frame the car in composition wise and gave cool patterns on the background.



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