Every once in a while I’ll see a photograph on CarDomain that stops me in my tracks. This is one of them. Is the light perfect or what? And I have to say, I really love Mineral Gray Mustangs. Joe has done some nice mods, too, so be sure to check out his ride page.

So did this weekend’s American Le Mans Series race look like a blast or what? If you thought so, you might be stoked to enter the new photography contest we’re running with BP/Amoco, which is going to send multiple winners to American Le Mans Series races and one grand prize winner to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. Plus they’re giving a way free gas—a lot of it—every week! All you have to do is submit the most beautiful photo of your ride, along with a brief blurb on why it’s worth the high-dollar Amoco Ultimate premium fuel you’re running. And you know how to snap a stunning pic, right? Check out Rich Truesdell’s sage advice on the subject, and don’t forget to get the whole car in the shot. Then head on over to our Amoco Ultimate minisite to check out the full contest details, start rating some of the other pics that have been entered, and enter a photo of your own. Best of luck to all!

Patrick Ernzen took some great shots at the Copperstate 1000 vintage car rally back in April. I have a few more pics after the jump, but be sure to check out the full gallery at Desert-Motors.com. I’m really digging the Hemi-powered 1965 McKee Mk VI below.

Continue reading "Copperstate 1000" »

Jen already wrote about how not to photograph a car. Well, here’s an example of how not to shoot a video. Don’t stand behind a tree.

There’s a great thread over at The Supercar Registry where people pasted in a bunch of pics from back in the day. This photo of a Southern Pacific "Auto-Pack" train passing Mt. Shasta on its way to Portland just kind of jumped out at me, but if you like old cars or street scenes, be sure to check out all the pics.

Yesterday I wrote about the super cool Andrew Bush photos of people in their cars, mostly taken in Southern California during the 80s and 90s. One of the stranger photos was of the woman below in the Pepto Bismol Vette. I assumed she was a drag queen, but then it was pointed out that this is the famous Angelyne, who used to be seen on billboards all over the LA area. She was also a candidate in the 2003 California recall election, and placed 28th out of 135 candidates. From this Flickr page it looks like she now has a C5 Vette.

Murilee Martin over at Jalopnik came across this awesome gallery of people in their cars on Boing Boing. The photos are all so amazing I had a hard time picking out just a few for the blog. This pic of the Westwood high school kids in a Deux Chevaux just killed me. I have a bunch more after the jump but you really should check out Andrew Bush’s site. The shots were mostly taken in California during the 80s and 90s and made me feel all nostalgic for the days when it wasn’t that big of a deal to see a beat up Dart cruising on the freeway.

Continue reading "Andrew Bush Photos" »

A few days back Jen posted that she couldn’t understand why people trying to sell their rides on eBay or Craigslist post such crappy photos. As her blog popped up on my screen, I was editing some photos of a bitchin’ and rare 1968 Ford Mustang California Special that I had taken the night before. I started to think–always dangerous–how it might be useful to explain to CarDomain readers exactly what goes into a magazine feature-level photo shoot. So as soon as I was done editing, I pulled out a sequence of ten images from the California Special shoot and wrote some text explaining the process. If you would like to see what it takes to produce shots like this, check out Car Photography for Dummies over at Automotive Traveler.

It’s no big deal that there’s a lot of bad automotive photography out there. So what, you can rebuild an engine blindfolded but you’re not so handy with the digital camera? It doesn’t make you a bad person. But one rule of thumb that seems to me the most straightforward way to avoid ruining a photo of your ride: get the whole car in the shot. I’m no photographic genius myself, but this seems absolutely basic. Yet you’d be surprised how many people out there just don’t grasp this simple principle—even the pro photographers who cover shows for us sometimes have to be reminded that posting a picture of a car with the front clip clipped off, or the wheels missing, is like hanging up a group portrait on your wall that looks like this. It’s one thing if you’re going for something arty, or doing a detail closeup of some interesting feature on the vehicle—sure, those can turn out beautifully. But when it’s clear that you’ve intended to photograph "the car," and it’s just not all there, the result is like fingernails on a blackboard. Read on…

Continue reading "Why Is This So Difficult? Why?" »

As an automotive photographer and editor, I spend a lot of time looking at and editing images of cars, my own as well as those taken by other photographers. And like many of you, I have my favorites; Lucinda Lewis, whose book Roadside America is the gold standard coffee table book of period-correct imagery of vintage cars, Les Bidrawn, the Editor of european car, whose mastery of the pan shot leaves me in awe, and evo shooter Gus Gregory, who can make a drive to the supermarket in a minivan look spectacular.

But today I want to point you in another direction, to Breck Rothage, an outstanding artist whom I’ve profiled today over at Automotive Traveler. Breck, who works in the area of extensively enhanced photographs, shows just how far a true artist can go working within the framework of Photoshop. Spending 40 hours or more on each image–something that those of us who toil in the area of editorial photography can only dream about–Brock combines art and the auto in unique ways, with the limit of his imagination the only limit on his creativity.

Continue reading "Breck Rothage: Automotive Artist Capturing the Essence of Art and the Automobile" »