For some people, a car or a motorcycle is nothing more than a method of getting from point A to point B. It is a tool, an instrument, something that serves a purpose and nothing more.
This is my actual car. More than just a means of getting around, it is my office, my bedroom, my power station, and so much more. I call him Sleipnir-bonus points if you can tell me what that means with no Googling.
For others, like me, they are an extension of ourselves. A blank canvas onto which one can paint their personality, a billboard for our innermost selves to reach out to like-minded people and share stories of enthusiasm and frustration, triumph and defeat. They are objects of excitement, nostalgia, curiosity, and so much more.
It’s little wonder, then, that every cars and coffee, night cruise, and weekend meet is absolutely packed with photographers hunting for a unicorn to grace their next computer screensaver, phone background photo, or art print (or, as I was wont to do, to lord over their friends that you had seen a rare car or bike that they hadn’t-still a totally valid use case). The same goes for competitive events — just visit a local autocross race to see a gaggle of photographers scattered around the course vying for the perfect shot.
Living in Southern California, considered by many to be one of the richest, most diverse centers for car culture in the world, I’ve been fortunate enough to make automotive content a huge part of my photo and video career, and I hope that after reading this piece you’ll have a good idea of where to begin yourself.
Photographers, start your engines.
Back to Basics
The most important thing to do when entering any field of photography for the first time is to ask yourself what you personally want to capture. What is it about the automotive world that speaks to you? Are the sleek lines of a Ferrari 250 GTO the Mona Lisa made metal? Are the drivers epic men and women out of a superhero movie, larger than life and deserving of their likeness being carved out of granite like so many presidents of yesteryear? Is the whiny roar of a supercharged Coyote V8 a beautiful cacophony, deafening and glorious at once in the same way as Tchaikovsky’s 49th opus?
Your answer to this question will determine much of your path going forward. For me, I’m fascinated by the engineering and technical side of things, what it takes to squeeze every last horsepower out of an engine and every last tenth out of a lap timer, and the skill required to ride the razor’s edge separating safety and speed. Naturally, then, I gravitated to motorsports. I spend just about every weekend at the racetrack, and plenty of time outside of that at every tangentially related event I can find.
By determining your muse, what gets your motor running, you’ll glean a great deal of information about where to begin and what kind of equipment you’ll need to do so.
Gear Doesn’t Matter, Except When it Does
The common refrain among photographers and artists more broadly is that your gear does not matter — that, for example, you could hand Annie Leibovitz the most basic of equipment, and her photos would, by and large, look fundamentally unchanged.
However, most people miss the nuance of such a statement. I always took it to mean that “gear does not matter” if you don’t know how to realize its potential anyway.
Automotive photography is, for better or for worse, a genre in which gear certainly matters.
While there are too many variables to consider for me to be able to put together a definitive shopping list for you, here are a few things I would recommend using or considering regardless of your niche.
A circular polarizing (CPL) filter. This is the one item that I would argue is absolutely, 100% mandatory for any automotive specialist photographer. If you’ve never used one before, a polarizer is designed to cut down on the amount of light in reflections, and the circular variety can be rotated on the lens to achieve the best effect depending on your position relative to the sun.
In the two above photos, one was taken without a correctly aligned CPL, and the other was. It happened to be overcast on this particular day, which is nearly a worst-case scenario for reflections off windows and body panels, but as you can see, a CPL can take those right out, allowing us to see through windows and getting rid of the majority of the reflections from the body to let the underlying color shine. If it’s a particularly sunny day, even the ground can be affected — you’d be amazed at just how reflective asphalt actually is, going from a washed-out white or gray at worst to a nice, deep black when polarization is applied.
One thing to keep in mind is that a polarizer will necessarily rob you of some light, requiring a bump in exposure to get everything back where it should be. This isn’t much of an issue when your subject is staying still, but can be a major concern when you’re trying to capture motion. Expect anywhere from 1 to 1.5 stops of light loss, depending on the filter itself and how you’re using it.
A selection of lenses. While your choice of lens will be dictated by your intended use, your chosen camera, and, of course, your wallet, you’re really going to want multiple options, or else something like a 150-600mm that can cover a huge range. It’s all well and good to love your 35mm prime or your 70-200mm f/2.8 workhorse by themselves, but there will be situations in which a certain lens becomes impractical to use or is otherwise not the one for the job.
In my kit bag, I always bring at least 3 lenses — a 24-70mm f/2.8, a 70-200mm f/2.8, and a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6, along with a short prime or two if they might be useful. This ensures that I have the right focal length for any situation I’m likely to find myself in, without having to play musical chairs swapping to a different lens every 30 seconds.
As you can also probably tell, I’m much more a proponent of a kit of a few zooms rather than a huge selection of primes. This is mainly because the ability to quickly change framing and positioning is absolutely critical for me. Whether I’m at a parking lot car meet or trackside, I’m never operating in a perfectly controlled, repeatable environment where every frame can be planned and auditioned and given a few minutes to be altered if something isn’t right, and you can’t always “zoom with your feet”.
For racing and motorsports, I would recommend having something that can get to 300mm at minimum, simply because it’s generally unsafe to be much closer than that unless you have some kind of barrier between yourself and your subject. The one exception to this would be shooting something like motocross or observed trials, where the speeds and potential risks are much lower. In these situations, I almost always stick with my 70-200mm.
A camera that can keep up. This is less of an issue when you aren’t shooting motorsports, but for those of us who do, your camera body will absolutely make a difference. Autofocus speed, accuracy, and consistency are a very large component of why I work with the equipment that I do, because from my perspective, I don’t drive all the way out to the desert or get up at too-early-o’clock to go shoot a car meet to come away with photos that are anything less than exactly what I want.
Obviously, I’m very fortunate to have access to such gear, but that doesn’t mean the shiny and new stuff is the only way to get your feet wet. You can easily buy an excellent platform like a Nikon D500 or D4 for less than an entry-level mirrorless body, and even something like a Canon 1DX Mkii can be had on the used market for less than a mid-range mirrorless kit. In the end, though, you can make pretty much anything work with some additional effort and learning to play to its strengths.
Safety First
When you’re working around 2-ton metal boxes with other people inside them, safety should be your absolute top priority. Even at a local car meet, it’s up to you to keep your head on a swivel at all times to know where other people and cars are, because the last thing you want is to have an expensive camera and tripod knocked over by someone or something you didn’t realize was there.
It’s also imperative to notice any kind of unsafe behavior and steer yourself well clear. You only have to look on social media to find dozens of videos of street “takeovers” where people get clipped by cars doing donuts or acting like they’re in an episode of Initial D and getting it wrong. Drivers love to show off and make noise by revving their engines hard for prolonged periods of time, which can result in engine fires or even explosions as components are pushed past their breaking point. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want after a night of pizza and beer at the car meet is to get hit in the head by bits of exploding turbocharger (I’ve seen this happen).
Even in a controlled environment like a track, cars and their drivers can be unpredictable, and accidents do happen. At the very event where I took the above photo, a drift event at a local karting track, I had been shooting the inside of that corner over and over again, and almost crossed the track to get to the outside to switch it up. However, I realized that I would be placing myself in exactly the spot an out-of-control car would go if it missed the corner, so I decided against it. Not 5 minutes later, one of the drivers locked up his front brakes, skidded off the track, and totaled the car against that light pole on the left, exactly where I would have been standing. That’s to say nothing of the numerous times where a time attack car has missed a corner and gone off track right in front of me, or a motocross rider has pulled a “whiskey throttle” and overshot a berm.
The best advice I would give on this subject is to try to think of the most catastrophic eventuality you can, and prepare accordingly. When I’m shooting around vehicles, I wear an ANSI-compliant high-vis photo vest I had custom-made so that there can be no doubt I’m seen, along with never wearing headphones to listen to music that could drown out tire squeal or someone trying to get my attention to warn me about something. I also never leave my back turned to a car moving towards me, and take a great deal of time thinking about where the speed would carry a vehicle that had totally lost control.
In this kind of environment, it only takes one mistake, one lapse of judgment to get yourself seriously hurt. Don’t gamble with your safety.
Etiquette
Let’s face it, at some point in our lives, we’ve all been that guy or that girl. Flubs, fumbles, and faux pas are a part of being human, and nobody should beat themselves up over an innocent mistake or a momentary lapse in judgment.
However, in the interest of everyone’s sanity, let’s address a few points that are likely to alleviate much ado no matter what the situation might be.
No touchy. Do not, under any circumstances, touch another person’s car or bike without their explicit permission. For many people, their vehicle is the most expensive thing they own, and, in the communities we’re talking about, the thing they care most about. Just like any of us would take issue with others touching our multi-thousand-dollar cameras, the same goes for a car or bike, no matter how unremarkable it may look to you or how much you want to tweak a mirror to get your artsy reflection shot. Ask the owner.
Square it away! Related to the above, make sure you don’t have any gear swinging around on straps or sticking out from under your arm that could ding a door panel or a grille. You are responsible for yourself and your gear, including the damage it might cause if you aren’t careful.
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. If you bear witness to some kind of mishap, whether a crash, a mechanical failure, or a kid’s whoopsie-daisy resulting in a broken window, refrain from jumping all over it and posting it to social media. Even if nobody was hurt, nobody likes being embarrassed when everyone around them derives entertainment or amusement from their misfortune. It may be acceptable to do this in certain circumstances if you know the people involved or are explicitly asked to do it-I once captured a spectacular UTV rollover while chasing it with my FPV drone, and the driver was absolutely stoked to see the video afterwards — but if you’re unsure, best not to.
Nobody likes a know-it-all. Even if you know everything there is to know about a particular car or bike or some related thing, there’s no need to flex your knowledge to try to impress, especially if it’s unsolicited. Some people couldn’t care less that the serial number on the door sill indicates it wasn’t as early in the production year as might be desirable, or that their custom interior upholstery isn’t period correct. Give them the option to discuss that kind of thing if they want to.
Start Small and Socialize
Whether your ambition is to be a professional and travel around with race teams or just a keen hobbyist doing it for the love of the genre, if you take nothing else away from reading this article, start small. Chances are that there are car meetups hosted near you multiple times a week, and in my experience, attendees will actively look for an excuse to get their car’s picture taken and connect with the photographer on social media.
If your interest is in the sports side of things, aim for grassroots events. Autocross, rallycross, time attack, track days, observed trials, enduro, hare scrambles, the list goes on, and all of these are likely to be much more open to having media personnel in the thick of things and give you access not afforded to normal spectators. You’ll also have many more opportunities to meet competitors directly, and again, everyone likes having their picture taken doing something they enjoy.
The final component of this section is to socialize, socialize, and socialize some more. Always go out of your way to greet other photographers and videographers — you never know what might come of it. I once spoke to another photographer at a mountain bike race I was shooting, who then got me a media pass with a friend’s race team at MotoAmerica Laguna Seca that resulted in both the above photo, which is still a contender for my favorite photo I’ve ever taken, and my work making its way onto several teams’ social accounts, including that of the Zero Motorcycles factory race team.
Closing Thoughts
If you’re a gearhead like me who grew up on a media diet of Top Gear, Jay Leno’s Garage, and, more recently, Donut Media and The Grand Tour, nothing makes you happier than taking some great photos of machines that go fast or can go up, over, around, or through just about anything.
While there are countless ways to express our love for this hobby and lifestyle, few are as rewarding as being able to creatively capture the feats of human engineering as most of us drive around every day without a second thought, and the only thing I love more than doing that is being inspired by the ways in which others do.
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