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Car Garage Shoot: Under the Car

Lesson 18 from: Taking the Fear Out Of Low Light Photography

Jared Polin

Car Garage Shoot: Under the Car

Lesson 18 from: Taking the Fear Out Of Low Light Photography

Jared Polin

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Lesson Info

18. Car Garage Shoot: Under the Car

Lesson Info

Car Garage Shoot: Under the Car

Alex over here had a challenge for me. And what is your challenge, alex? I think you should take that d thirty three hundred and the kit lends underneath that car and see what you can do with it. Was that scripted? Know exactly. So well, this isn't this is a challenge. This is one of those things that I guess this is what this is all about using the kit that you have to try to get better result to try to get any results at all. I am going to get underneath the car here with jason. And jason says that a lot of times he uses his iphone. Just just the widow around and see what's going on underneath the car. All right, all right. Let's. See? Oh, this is this is this is interesting. All right, shine that. Turn the light back. Actually, I like where it's at this is interesting. This is a challenge because I have to find good composition. It's not just taking a picture of a guy laying underneath a car, which means totally wide would make more sense. But I'd love to be under the car shooting u...

p adam or I can shoot up at him, but, um, if you look towards me, say you're putting the light towards the car right here. There you go. See this? I just had to find him looking straight up into the car. Doesn't give me much of a composition to look at. Not interesting, but here I have his eyes at the light bouncing back. So my focus is now going to be I have to make sure I have the car in here. Oh, this is pretty good. I need camera two. Move a little to the left though, out of the background just so I could do this. Here we go. Yeah, you're look, they're going to continue to look up. I'm checking my settings here, let's. See, I'm in sixty four hundred s o I'm getting that light groups didn't mean to take two and it looks good, but I want to I want to challenge myself even even further. I want to kill the lights in the room so we're going to kill the lights and then give these guys a opportunity get their lighting, right? Yeah, this is even more of a challenge. So bring away a little closer to you. There you go. Perfect. Now we're in much lower light eyes looking up. There you go that that opens them up for me got it, and that actually works, we have enough light under here. I gotta focus here. I got to see what? See what the results are now you see a lot of noise in this because we're at sixty four hundred eyes so that's the nature of the beast but the fear is the whole thing is to get the picture, we want to get the photo and this is probably going to go black and white, which is going to make it look pretty darn good. All right? Yeah, I like where you're looking right there. I'm actually gonna back up more in my bag tilted over. I want to get his whole I want to get all his feet up in here because I want to show the whole scene. All right, here we go. We have everything. I gotta back up even further. Nice focusing seventeen times cause it's harder to focus on this and it is actually more light under there then I really expected, but this looks pretty cool. We see the light from the iphone shining underneath the car we have the light bouncing off the floor from the outside from the extra windows that we have filling in underneath the car slightly we have the car tires, we have a little bit of the car, we have the dolly thingy that rolls around, we have his feet and we have the edsel in the background this's working I may not be under the car but I will want to get under there with a fish I will do something else. Um so this works let's see what other angles we have here so have that on top of this could be interesting we have the jack we have everything we have the car lit up top let's see photo journalistically guys, what do you think? We're pretty cool with the way that the lights on the hood pretty cool to have that glow we have underneath you can see the light you can you see the scene he's working on a car that tells a story that jack is right there unlike the tripod the jack belongs this is cool let's see higher angle I don't know I'll take it any way we'll see how it works I also see that my bag is getting in the way on the side and guys have no no so we would want to move that out. I could just take one step closer and I could get my own bag out cool that's looking cool interesting idea. I wonder I can see the light through here. Ah see, I was thinking why don't I get a picture of him sticking his legs out from under the car of focusing on the his belt and it's just oh and that's from up top actually that's pretty cool what do you think it's interesting right but also we're going to get down on a lower angle just to get his feet sticking out because that could be cool as well I'm going to use my I'm going to use the tire tow block everything I like it I like that I haven't gotten under the car yet but I have a very interesting thing jason what I need you to do oh my god don't move that's what I need you to dio holy god this is cool I see his eyeball I see his eyeball through the car so point the light back at you oh my god oh, my god oh my god. Oh my god. Oh, my god. You guys should see this. Can we get a camera over here to just take a look just so they can see how I could do this with the go pro but you see his eye right there oh yeah it's in there somewhere, right? Interesting now I'm gonna try and shoot that we're going to do the challenge still let's see how we did it in there? I mean it's through a car it would be cool to have some filling light up here which I still have this here I wonder how this is gonna work oh, pull it too hard and there we go here we go let's see how this works check that. So that put in a little bit more, phil light into the car. You can see. Now we have some detail oriented stuff going on in here. So basically, what I'm doing is making sure that you can see the car inside. This would so it's not just a black void while still getting jason's I in here, all of this with a kit lens, and there we go. Uh, jason, you can relax for a second. I'm going to just show everybody this and see if we have questions. What do we see what's going on here? So that's cool, right? All right. So that was just something that happened from looking through the car. Who knew why that would actually work? I don't know. I thought maybe his eyeball would show up, and then the iphone was lighting it up. And then we took that shot. But you saw that the car was dark and being that the well, the engine block was dark. I used the one light that we had here to put light and basically fill the light end in the top of the car, using the iphone light to light up his eye, all using the d thirty, three hundred or the dirty three hundred, as I like to call it. With a kit lens so if you couldn't do it with this little setup, you can do it with anything. So with that said I'm going from a d thirty three hundred to a d for us because I haven't used it yet so I want to break that out and I have some ideas I'm gonna go behind the car and try to shoot jason working here to get some detail shots from the back and then what was the other thing I wanted to do? I wanted to get under the car with a fish eye and actually try to get something there so let's let's see if we can make this work changing cameras striking cameras turn it off so we got to get the d for us in ok. All right, I need to remove this well, let's first take this off on my black rapid strap that's going like that let's get to deforest we're just cycling this through now I feel like I'm ready to go with that let's get the seventy two, two hundred on first cause I want to shoot from behind the car. We got that. Oh my god! This is so much heavier than using the d thirty three hundred it's so much lighter you always have to take the weight into consideration here but we got this all right, so I'm going behind the car and I'm going to shoot from on the ground good thing I'm svelte looked this good thing I looking go sideways through the car like this being that this is the first time I'm breaking this camera today I want to make sure my settings air right this allows me to get into extreme low light situations I was at sixty four hundred with the d thirty three hundred and that worked out pretty well, so I'm thinking it's pretty much going to be the same thing here I'm going to get three to one sixteenth of a second let's just see what happens making sure that I'm in single focus see I'm running through the process of everything I'm making sure that before I start shooting my settings air right? I'm shooting role yep says we're on the back of the camera twice, making sure that I'm in the single focus mode for what I'm doing right here and now I'm just going to get down low down low check this out you ever seen a photographer with moves like this it's not like jagger, but look at that you see that? All right let's, get down here, jason you're perfect don't change all right don't change for anything all nice I have to move around the transmission turned the light back to your face a little more perfect let's see how we did hear single I am out of focus that's why? I didn't hear a beep. I don't like this angle. Do we see how I'm laying down? You see how I'm laying down here, right? This isn't a good position to shoot and it's awkward. I want to get into prone position. I think like army crawled position so I could get down here. This is so much more stable. All right, all right. Light on your face a little more. And here I guess what? I just realized the reason it did not focus it wasn't that I did something wrong is that the camera was set to manual. It was set to manual because the last time I used it, I was shooting video, so you always have to try to figure out what you did wrong it's going to happen on a chute? You can't worry about it, you just have to think logically because sometimes people forget to hit record on cameras and that's, okay? Because then they hit record again. It's the same thing if you put it in manual focus because then you have to just, uh I think what you did and just go through step by step I was in manual now I'm an auto, so it should focus wealth can you turn a little more sign on to your right side so your face is probably tilted back here a little more. Is that awkward or does that work that's perfect right there the lights in the face how about eyes looking more yes, right there there's that focus I was looking for settings oh, my god. Oh, my god! If you guys could get under here and see this with me right now this is perfect. All right, now turn the light or actually move your eyes so you're looking up at the car so it's not like, hey, we have an iphone here but we're on what's cool about this is we have the jack we have everything in this shot that we're looking for we have the jack the tires with light and he's lighting himself. This is really, really sweet, so I'm going to go a little wider remember I talked about that cropping thing I have this tire right here that I'm going to have on the right hand side of the frame just to give us some dimension all this should be nice let's say is it nice? You can't really tell the tires there but it's a dark area and everything is hey lowing around jason I'm going to keep doing that just I'm going to be quiet now though right there I'm moving to my center focusing point because that's what we talked about the cross type centre locking re composing boom moving more to the side to get more of that tire they all this is great dimension boom taking a couple's frames more of the car this is awkward but it worked very good I'm getting up is my shirt dirty? Oh, boy. Ok, jason, you can relax now. I'm going to get under there with you. I want to show you guys see if we have any questions who is sweating under there questions while I was under there, I know you couldn't see the results here, but at home they could so let me quickly show you what I did cool, so just focusing need underneath the car right there trying to get that happen happening. So to wrap up the segment, I'm going to try and get under the car now with the d for us and the fish eye and see what we can get of jason working his magic and then we'll move on to shooting the vessel metal all right switching lanes has turned the camera off pointing it face down, finding my fisheye lens. Like I said, it serves a purpose. It has a purpose to be in the in your bag, but it's just a matter of of when to break it out and when not to break it out so now I have to figure out where I want to go I liked when you are on your side so we can spoon face the face is that called spooning is of its face ah well I want to see what you're looking at and see if we can do anything I'm going under get your hair cut oh that's true maybe horizontal is going to work here not so much let me move this way this is one of most awkward situation angles you could ever be in but this is looking cool it's worth it it's hard to go vertical with the go pro alone but it's so much better horizontal sorry it's so much better horizontal all right I'm going to switch positions real quick here's something I'd like to tell you guys out there when you get into an awkward position like I was it makes it almost impossible to see if your lines and levels or straight because you're onto your side your eyes are messing up like I couldn't tell what was up in what was down and I'm a big fan of getting my lines and angle straight that's something again that I don't crop or do after the fact I want my lines to be straight so I look for ways to do that so I'm going to come in from the side here and try to get the same shot because I think it's better from right here oh you're doing good what is ah that that's that's a well I need you moved it all right a little bit like you all right let's see how we did I like the ones underneath the car more because you khun it's just more extreme and I love the ones from the back there all right jason you control yourself out we're going to move on to the next thing oh it's getting sweaty up in this place um so yeah the way I like doing photo shoots is you just feel it out there's no like you have your set notions off what you want to capture you have these ideas but sometimes they don't work and the only way to know that they don't work is when you actually try them so don't be worried don't be afraid that oh my idea didn't work you need to have other ideas things they're going to go wrong you have to jump past it and figure out how to get it right so you get those those happy little accidents is bob ross would say when you're looking down through the car engine block and you're able to see his eye sticking out that is pretty darn cool and the shoot that with the deed thirty three hundred with the kit lends yes it looks noisy and yes it looks grainy but when riposte processing that you're going to see how the black and white actually it works with grain it's not a big deal switching off to the d four, as I feel most comfortable using that because that's what I'm used to using. But when you see that, you could do it with a six hundred dollars set up. And, well, if you could do anything with the basic setup, you could do anything. Like I've said with the deforest for any top of the line camera, it doesn't matter.

Ratings and Reviews

Rusty Shinault
 

I'm a huge fan of Jared Polin; love his humorous and relaxed style of teaching. I love that he's passionate about photography, and that he is willing to share his experiences, opinions, and knowledge. I really enjoy Creative Live classes, and really enjoyed watching Jared teach in front of a live class. Hope to see more of Jared teaching on your platform.

user cf5d2d
 

Jared did not disappoint! He shared his knowledge of composition, exposure, and capturing the moment - all while engaging his audience and keeping things light and fun. I absolutely LOVE when how he sets up his equipment so that we can see each snapshot he takes, and then tells us why it's a good shot or why it's not a keeper. It's so easy to learn that way. I'm a second grade teacher (a.k.a. an educator) who, thanks to Jared can call myself a photographer. Jared is a photographer who is also a great educator!

a Creativelive Student
 

I've seen a few CreativeLive sessions and this was one of the best. It was very unique and engaging I liked the onsite shooting and review and critique. I have done teaching and I know how hard it is to teach WHILE you are doing and I think Jared did a great job of balancing that. I'm quite familiar with his FroKnowsPhoto podcast and website so I knew what to expect and both HE and CreativeLive EXCEEDED my expectations. Thanks much also for letting him use use studio for Raw Talk on the Road (my suggested name for it), I could see a real opportunity for CL to provide access to their facilities for others wanting to record training, etc.

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