Most of us like taking pictures of our Porsches, whether it’s just to share with friends, post online or even for the Club, and the advent of smartphones with highly capable cameras has meant you don’t need to be a photography enthusiast with a high-end camera to achieve remarkable results.
Nevertheless, just because you have all the gear doesn’t always translate to having the right idea and it can be frustrating to look at the work of others and wonder where it’s all going so badly wrong. Obviously, the art of photography is something that can be studied formally and developed through practice over many years, but a grasp of some basic knowledge can also take you a long way. Composition, and an understanding of light, can make a big difference.
One man that knows all about such things is Gus Gregory, who has been a professional automotive photographer for 40 years and is widely credited with helping to establish the groundbreaking style of evo magazine in the late 1990s. He’s also the co-presenter of Flipping Bangers, so you may have seen him on the telly too. There’s no one better qualified to give you useful advice on photography.
The first thing to stress is the importance of location. Gus and I meet at Porsche GB HQ in Reading, pick up a Cayman GTS 4.0 manual from the press fleet, and head west. We don’t travel too far, because we know there’s a particular, well-known sequence of roads and corners that will allow us to complete a photoshoot with all the required elements – static shots, cornering, panning and, if we had a second car and driver, tracking shots. This may be far beyond the nice snaps you’re looking to achieve, but the fundamental ethos is the same: location really, really matters. As an example, there are probably only four or five corners in the whole of England that are routinely used for professional stills photography in the magazine trade because the combination of corner radius, visibility, background, traffic etc is highly unusual to find. Having said that, almost any location can be used for static shots, if you use your imagination…
“You have to try and make something ordinary look extraordinary,” says Gus, his eyes already intently flicking from the road, undergrowth and skyline, weighing up the opportunities. “The way you do that is by framing the car within its surroundings”. We’ve stopped at a simple pull-in on the edge of a farmer’s field, in the lowest point of a broad valley; it’s not much, but it’s about to give us a great deal more than could be expected. “If we park the car at this angle and stand over here, the lightest part of the sky is hitting it on its rear quarter. The light is hitting it at a 45˚ angle, which gives you the black line down the side of the car.” Yellow isn’t the easiest colour of car on which to see such a phenomenon but, sure enough, there’s a ‘halo’ around the edge of the car and a descriptive shadow line appeared on its flank. Even though it's a cloudy morning, the light still varies. “The line you’re seeing is the reflection of the hills. You won’t see it if we walk around the other side”.
Sure enough, Gus is right. Basically, for the purposes of illustrating this article, I ask Gus to shoot two photos. The first, which we’ll call (1), is the right way to do it. The second, (2), is the same location but with as many mistakes as he can cram into one shot. Much of it speaks for itself. Notice how the car looks flat and bland in (2), with the fore- and background a distraction from the car. In (1), Gus has used the greenery to frame the car and give the scene depth, focusing the viewer’s attention on the Cayman.
The height you shoot the car at matters a great deal as well. “I always look for the most dramatic angle,” Gus explains. “These cars are designed to be looked at from this [low] angle and that’s where they look best, isn’t it? If you start going up, you sort of lose it. You can see the ground underneath them and you want the car with no interruptions; interruptions of texture, maybe, but not massive colour changes or light changes at the back of the car. You can make an interesting photograph almost anywhere”. The fact that Gus is crouched down, in a field that’s at a lower level, is no accident.
We haven’t moved the car for (2) – only Gus has moved position. Also note the angle of the wheels. A classic no-no is to photograph a car with the top of the tread showing: wheels should either be straight or with the steering wheel turned away from the camera so that the faces of the wheels point at the camera. No exceptions. For (2), Gus also deliberately fails to remove rubbish from the floor in front of the car and doesn’t take notice of objects that might distract the viewer behind the car. At that point, he starts talking about depth of field and things get a bit more complicated, but backgrounds don’t have to be bland, nor should telegraph poles mysteriously emerge from the roof of the car…
Gus makes the point that capturing highlights is very important. Whether you’re using an iPhone or a camera, you shouldn’t overexpose the image – it shouldn’t be too light. Your phone or post-production software like Photoshop can lighten an image but, if (in my uneducated words) it’s too light, there’s nothing that can be done. “Watch the wide-angle distortion on phones,” Gus adds. “Move further away and zoom in slightly to get a truer image of the car”, or, if your phone has it, switch to the appropriate lens.
When it comes to what’s known as ‘detail’ shots of your car – wheels or badges – a simple shot can actually take a lot of work. “Don’t set your expectations too high in terms of matching what the professionals achieve because, in all likelihood, they have been lit,” Gus notes. “If you’re not lighting them, you’re not going to get them to pop out.” Things going ‘pop’ seems to be something photographers are obsessed with but, in terms of details, these will usually be flash-lit or, at the very least, lit by a handheld reflective sheet that channels sunlight onto the subject. If you haven’t got either of those, try to get as much natural light on the subject as possible.
If you’re taking a detail shot of the wheel and want to have the braking set-up in focus too, you’ll need to get the depth of field right. “The aperture on the camera is basically the hole the light’s coming through and, the smaller the hole, the further the depth of field and the more things that will be in focus. That’s all fine but, to have a smaller aperture, you need to have a longer exposure and, the longer your exposure, the more susceptible you are to moving the camera in any way, shape or form, whether it’s a digital camera or a phone. A cheap tripod would be great because it just keeps everything still and enables you to have the shutter open long enough to gain the exposure you need to get to have that depth of field.”
Another thing to watch for is your own reflection in detail shots. To avoid this, experiment by moving position or standing back and zooming in.
Car interiors? They’re not as easy as they might seem. Once again, the pros will often flash these shots but, if you aren’t, then you want lots of light outside the car but no harsh sunlight inside the car creating lines or dark areas. To avoid this, experiment with where you park the car. For those taking it a bit more seriously, Gus says: “It’s worth noting that you want to have the F Stop as high as possible, because you want it all in focus. You might be focusing on, say, the Porsche badge on the steering wheel but, if you want it all in focus, including the full door card, then if you can have it on F 22, then you’re pretty much guaranteed to get all that in focus. To do that, sometimes you have to go down to 30th of a second shutter speed, maybe 25th of a second, so brace your camera against the window rubber. You can wind the ISO up, but the downside is you can get a grainy image unless you’ve got a very good camera.”
[Photo 3]
Talk of F Stops always makes my head spin, but there are some basics we can all get right. When shooting interiors, always make sure the steering wheel is straight and level, the seats are not in weird positions and there’s no clutter around the cabin. A little thought goes an awfully long way.
Shooting an interior on the move? That can be even harder and the pros will spend a long time setting these shots up just right. However, if you’re going to give it a go, even with a phone, a cheap clamp can make a big difference because your biggest enemy will be camera shake. Remember Gus’ words about composition: photo (3) is how not to do it, photo (4) is a lovely image. You’ll have to get the balance of light correct so that you see both inside the car and the road beyond, and extreme lighting conditions can make this harder. It can be a fun shot to experiment with, and here’s a hint: the speed you see in these shots is usually generated by the settings on the camera, not by the actual speed of the car…
When it comes to what’s termed ‘action’ in the trade, or moving shots of a car, it’s obviously a more complicated discipline. There are many photographers who can capture beautiful static shots of cars and, of course, it does require skill, but capturing a moving car in exactly the right way so that it even describes how that car is handling is an art form that blends skills and experience to a very special degree. Few truly excel at it, but Gus is one of those people and shots like (5) are of the type you’d expect to see in Top Gear, evo or Octane Magazine. Photo (6), taken from the same spot on the same corner, is how not to approach the task. Notice, though, that so many of the rules we’ve been discussing apply – the art of composition, of shooting the car at the correct height and the right angle and so on – before we even get into camera settings that make my eyes glaze over.
Action shots tend to fall into certain categories. Tracking shots (shooting a car from another moving vehicle) are very much pro level, so we’ll avoid talking about them here. Cornering shots are exactly what they say on the tin, while a panning shot (7) is the art of capturing a car in profile as you move your camera or phone with the car as it moves. Both of these two shots are a bit advanced for the iPhone-only brigade, but not impossible. A pan, for example, requires a wide, flat space in front of you so you can stand back and still see the car, but a clean background so as not to distract from the image. You’ll need to work the settings on your camera so that the car is sharp but the background is blurred for speed.
Most of all, like all things connected to your Porsche, taking photos of it should be fun. Gus’ parting sentiment is to experiment. Try standing in a different place or at an unusual angle. Try different settings on your phone or digital camera and see what effect they have on your image. Just giving a shot a moment’s extra thought can make a very big difference.