Never work with children, animals or cars
The retrieval of my ageing DSLR from the cupboard has served to remind me how jerky cars can be.
I am a simple man, let it be known. I like my shiny things, and I like them with the lustre of a polished jewel. I get drawn to these things like a magpie scrummaging through the soil in search of a new trinket to line my nest - so to speak.
It's only in the brightest of sunshine do such shiny things, such as cars, stand out. They glimmer and reflect the rays from our nearest yellow dwarf in such a way as to be just like a jewel. However, it is also during this time that cars become the biggest of jerks to work with.
Not that there's anything wrong with those who choose to work with cars. Some of my best mates are those who work with cars. These are also, totally coincidentally, some of the people who have taught me the best order in which to deliver swear words - usually as they're working on cars, and usually after a small bolt has fallen into the void that lies at the bottom of an engine bay.
Cloud cover at this precise moment made for a more palatable photograph.
The images I've plastered about this specific post date back to 2013, when my SLR camera was slightly more modern, smartphones were actually interesting, and Holden were a thing that existed. Writing this in early 2020, it has been seven years - almost to the day - that I have taken up the charge of being a hobbyist photographer. A recent trip out to the countryside re-introduced me to the cursing and frustration that is car photography.
Sure, I could've checked DriveTribe's very own photography tribe for general tips, but that would have required forethought and logic - neither of which I personally possess these days. Or have ever.
Woefully ill-prepared for the day's photoshoot - of which you may see the fruits later - I had convinced myself that I knew what I was doing. I'd done this kind of thing before, and I had some results that, while not super professional, could be considered passable for general consumption. Sure, they weren't the super-constrasty and artsy uber filtered work you'd see on the likes of Unsplash, but I waved that concern away by believing that I "wasn't that pretentious."
I wanna say this is a Moseler. Maybe? I can't tell.
The subject matter drove up and down the road, and I snapped away with my camera. Upon a couple passes, I reviewed my work, and grew horrified that the results were super-contrasty but not in an artsy uber-filtered way. Shadows across the bodywork were exceptionally dark, while the parts of the car lit by sun were so bright that you'd swear the car had a two-tone paint job.
Then there was insufficient blur to make the action shots look particularly dramatic. It was the kind of irritating and ugly blur you'd get whenever a child waved their hands at the last second, or a cat would shake its head to create a terrifying drillcat.
Back and forth the car went, with me signalling with some embarrassment to the driver that I wanted them to go around again. After much experimentation with f-stops and shutter speeds, I finally managed to get some results - but with a massive vow to oneself to get more practice before offering to help with this kinda stuff again.
So, the takeaway from this post is that while cars can be fickle things, they can be really, really rewarding and can give you real reason to improve yourself. All is required is some perseverance, resilience, and a slight scattering of discreet curse words that very few can hear.
Much like animals or children.
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Comments (6)
Are these picks from the 2012 Clipsal 500
Some from 2012. Others 2013.
Did you go last week?