I was always a big car buff and for many years, car photography was my key area of interest. I was the president of a car club, ran the club’s website for many years and advertised club events across many online forums of the time. My car photography actually had a significant online following and I could be considered a social influencer before that really became a thing. I did collaboration work with a marketing company used by Dodge SRT with some of my work even being used on their corporate social media sites and published in a couple of magazines. But at the time, it wasn’t something I could make a living at, earning a few bucks here and there and often getting paid in barter like press credentials to auto shows and track days. As my IT career started to really take off, I started to have less and less time to shoot cars. Even my own cars were being left home more and more, some having not been driven in years. Plus, I was sort of getting a little bored with some of the subject matter. I could go to a local car show and know I already had photos of 3/4 of the cars on the show field before I started. My photography started to drift towards other subjects but I never really developed the niche following like I had started with the cars.

Recently, despite all of the Covid craziness going on, I decided to go back to a big annual car event in Carlisle PA that I haven’t attended in years. I took all the appropriate safety measures, wore a mask, avoided physical contact, hand sanitizer, stayed socially distant, quarantined myself when I returned, etc. and while the overall attendance at this event was down significantly, I was still surprised at how many people were in attendance with about 3000 cars and trucks spread over a 100 acre fairground. There were a few crowded spots I avoided like the swap meet and concession stands but I was able to shoot about 1600 shots over a few days.

I quickly remembered, car shows are hard to shoot because you really don’t have control of a lot of variables like objects and people in the background, reflections in the side of the car, even the sun can become a challenge at times with hot spots on the body and glare on glass (hint: a polarizer helps limit some of that in camera. bonus hint: in post processing, mask out the glass and desaturate the Aqua color on the glass layer)

Had to spend a little extra time in photoshop removing a few trash barrels, power lines and the occasional person in the background. Didn’t really spend too much time on reflections or trying to make the grass greener. But I was happy with what I got, having a decent number of “keepers”.

I posted a handful of the better ones online and my Instagram and twitter feeds quickly jumped by a about a 100 followers each. A few car owners reached out asking how to get prints.  This and the response it seems to have gotten has renewed my interest in automotive photography.  I’m already looking online for local events to shoot.

What are your favorite things to shoot?