Gadgetory

a beautiful location great morning light and a dove gray Porsche 356 outlaw pretty good toolkit for Michael Alan Ross to use as we do a photo shoot today I'm here to look over his shoulder for you to find out what technology he uses and more importantly what tips and tricks we can use and the snap shots of cars we take the back end of this car is so unique with the louvers on it yeah and I just love the way those little red so it's a little simple red lights look right now so what I'll do now is I'll do some full shots of the rear of the car do it in two different angles and then what I'll do is they'll put the long lens on and I'll actually go in and compress all these little images around from the headlights to the tail lamps - those are your details on my little detail stuff get that out of the way interior is absolutely stunning so Michael what are you doing now what's this what's this current kind of shooting at this hour you know in my line of business you're always dealing with the light so you have to work when the light is right and that light is either right first thing in the morning or at the end of the day most people think about a long lens for when they can't get to the subject you can get right to that car but using a long lens what's going on yeah the reason I'm doing is I'm compressing the car a little bit compressing the image it'll really bring the focus in on the car and eliminate everything else it'll really make that car pop out because everything else becomes soft and everything else becomes not that important an automobile is reflective I wear dark clothing all the time you told us as we were coming out here no white sneakers no like clothes I never thought of that everyone goes to like a car event you know they're taking pictures of cars how many times you're trying to get rid of that white sneaker you wore the guy next to your war or those khaki short right there on the door yeah cart it you have to realize you're shooting a big mirror why so many shots it gives the art director a little bit of variation gives them a much broader scope I kind of do it the old way I'd like to see all the images in small thumbnails on the screen no matter what if whether it's digital or film that is still the same if it looks good this big and imagine what it's going to look like last pic so I'm going to switch to 70 to 200 to eight-inch stabilization lens so that I can utilize this light that we have right now so pop this one off first thing I do hate dusts so I try to keep my lens down even though there's there's you know sensor cleaners here and here all that I still do it the old way where we make sure that the body is open as little as possible you're using flash now for the first time today what are the tricks to make it look good uh less is more direct it in another direction use it bounced off of something else if I had a white card here and bounce the light away from the car into the white and then have that fill the whole thing evenly you know most people would put the flash in here but with this I take it up not only take it up but I'm angle it if it's too much I just swing it the other way what guys do all the time what does any car person do you know they oh let me see it look under the hood how do you make this sexy that's that's the that's the thing everything's so precision like in there and I want to bring that out a little bit and and show you how beautifully simple it really is I'll do everything nice and crisp and then I will go in and do some shallow depth-of-field thing works better against the red I think you look for the right car and you look for the right photographer and the right eye there's just there's all those sorts of things that's all the technical and then there's just a feeling and some of that is captured in the moment with good with good equipment and a good eye but also a lot of its now captured after the fact in post-production Michael is one of the few who applies treatments that work for me it's basically like a chef in there gravy you know or you'll show us a few of these steps but there'll be a few ingredients you leave that of course I can't give you everything Brian and you know it's I say typically what do you do to most shots the greatest hits for me in terms of touch-up I usually crop in the camera as much as I possibly can but a lot of times there are little things that you miss it's always better to have more and be able to come in and to be too tight and it miss something so first thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to go in and I'm gonna crop this little piece out that I don't like tour crop there's our crop I don't like things that are centered your eye has to start somewhere and it has to go on a journey if you start in the middle where do you go let the mind to take a little journey and then come back and arrest we're so used to hi-def television and everything's really popping right now so a lot of times I'll take an image pump up the blacks a little bit by pumping up the blacks we're actually making those other colorful pieces pop out even more undressed exactly all these little details around the window that's gonna get a little bit darker all of a sudden that blue starts to come out a little bit more another look that's really popular right now if it's kind of cars got a little bit of an edge to it bleach it out make it really a little bit different now I've got an attitude there I've lost the the blue line here I've lost the color but I've got a real kind of interesting a little effect it's really about the mood I've seen you take some shots and kind of just around the perimeter on the very edges kind of bring a little bit of a shadow a little vignette a little vignette you don't want to go too far where you notice that yeah I did yes I never want to do anything that makes it look like oh the photographer did this yeah I want you to look at the photograph and go wow that's cool and not notice any of that that's that's the key to it not go too far now you may not be a pro shooter but with a few tips from guys like Michael Ross you can shoot cars like this pretty damn well and the nice thing about vehicles is that they're the best piece of moving tech we encounter every day