Car Photography Cumbria

July 3rd, 2024

Car Photography Cumbria

car photography cumbria

This was an interesting one, and rather unexpected, to be honest. I’d had a call from a long term client the previous week, wanting to arrange a property shoot in Whitehaven. This was to be an addition to his property management portfolio. And yes, the above image doesn’t look anything like any property you’ve ever seen, right?

The first thing I need to point out is the fact this particular client had become a good friend over time, and we have a particularly good working relationship, which is pretty relaxed. So, getting back to this property shoot. We both arrive at the property within minutes, and we are taken aback a little when we see that the gardens aren’t tidy and there’s some obvious work currently going on.

Long story short? The house just wasn’t ready for photography, and not by a long shot. We’d both driven close on an hour to find it just wasn’t going to go ahead. A little frustrating to say the least, and as we headed back to our cars, Josh lamented he could have had his car valeted instead, as he was intending to advertise it for sale. And so it went from property to automotive.

We drove down to the sea wall on the front, which was literally two minutes from the property, and with the rugged backdrop, it would make a nice example of car photography Cumbria. I don’t take my lights to property shoots, but on this occasion, I had photographed a wedding the day before, and not yet taken the lights out of the car. Fancy that!

Alright, you now have the back story, so lets get back to the Car Photography Cumbria details.

After setting the car in place, I set the camera on a tripod and framed the shot. I then placed an ELB 500 frame right, straight on to the side of the car at a height of around seven feet. It was firing through an Elinchrom 26cm reflector (often referred to as a high intensity reflector, due to the fact it intensifies the output of the light). Output was set to 5.0 (Equivalent to 200Ws).

A second ELB 500 was placed frame left, almost straight on to the car. Looking at the shadows, you can see it was off centre to the front of the car, and nearer me. Look at the highlights on the front badge to give you an idea as to positioning. The ELB 500 was at a similar height of around seven feet and angled down towards the car. It was again firing through another 26cm reflector at an output of 5.0.

The initial light test gave me an exposure of 1/125th sec at f14 and an ISO of 200. I chose to increase the shutter speed to 1/200th sec to just lower the ambient by 2/3rds of a stop, causing the car to pop a little against the slightly darker background. This gave me my key image before creating the bracketed sequence. I then took images at ISO 64, 100, 400 & 800 which gave me a five image bracketed sequence.

The mages are blended manually, because I’m a masochist.

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The car was turned around for the rear quarter shot. The lights and camera settings were unchanged, and the same bracketing technique was used.

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And the head on shot.

Here, the lights placed frame right and left, pretty much 45° to the car itself. Height, modifier and output were unchanged, as confirmed by the shadow under the car and the highlights on the badge. The bracketing technique was again employed here, with the same camera settings.

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And the side. Same lights, same settings, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Whilst the property shoot turned out to be a duffer, it was nice to do something to help Josh.
And I know I’ll get asked, so here it is:
The camera used was the Olympus E-M1 mkII and the m.Zuiko 12-40mm f2.8 which tends to be my go to kit for pretty much everything.

For more examples of Car Photography Cumbria, My automotive work can be found here.