Here we go with another photo helper blogpost. I have a friend that has a 2017 BMW m4 coupe. Super fun car. He was thinking about selling it, and before he did, he needed photos of it for a listing to put on the web. I took him up on this offer for the simple fact that I really wanted to try some rolling shutter images.

We started with the standard stuff like right front/front/ left front. Side. Back. Interior. Standard stuff. How it looks from the drivers seat, to how the navigation looks turned on. Who cares right.

Next we started playing around. The BMW is super easy to break lose from the ground, so he did some donuts and we did some more staged stuff with the doors open and whatnot. But what I really wanted was to have him drive and let me drag the shutter for some really fun motion stills.

I learned a lot again on this one… such as you don’t have to be driving very fast, it works really well if you just maintain a constant speed. Next, I learned I prefer to drive/ride at the same speed so the subject is easy to focus on and keep steady (it’s harder to do with a pan shot, especially without a tripod or some way to keep the other axis stable) side by side was the winner. Also… I would never recommend doing this on a public roadway and driving at the same time. Don’t be an idiot.

Compose. Look around first. I hated the background at first, but I loved the asphalt and concrete contrast. I also liked the trees in the foreground. The weeds and debris in the parking lot gave it the “mad max” ish vibe, without the toe cutter causing a threat. (Ha) There was dirt, cars, speed, churches, power lines and burnouts. Everything a little boy loves.

I set my shutter to 1/30 or 1/15 and somewhere close to f/5.6 s I didn’t lose any of the car to shallow focal depth. I really wanted to see the entire thing, not just a wheel or a grill. The ISO was set to make the image exposure meter a little high because of the nature of the scene. Sadly I never think to meter in different parts of the frame because I get too excited (hard to admit at times) I took a ton of images. I only liked a few, but that’s how it goes in this digital photo age.

Why I take gigs like this sometimes because the valuable knowledge gained is so much better than just reading about it. I’ve seen this technique used over and over. Commercial car ads have used it for ages, and they’re going to come and go with it. Cars are for motion, and that’s what I wanted to capture. He ended up selling the car, and was really happy we took some time to enjoy it before it was gone forever. I made sure the entire vehicle was in focus and made sure to make the image wide enough to capture the surroundings, but not lose the object in the busy background. All in all I’m really glad I have these images, and so is my client.

During a solo surf trip to Holden ran into these very animated characters that had taken a bike frame and flipped it upside down, welded the seat on and extended the forks and handlebars, apparently it always takes two to mount this tall fun machine. i thought the trip was fairly mundane as I didn’t catch many waves or have anyone i knew there, but then this opportunity presented itself to take photographs of these fine, fully committed mullet wearing individuals. I normally stick to the corporate headshots, but I hadn’t done an environmental headshot in a long time. I’m so glad that I hadn’t wasted the last few shots on this roll on taking photos of the ground. I love personal projects of headshot of strange folks doing extrodinary things, and just being out in the North carolina sunshine. I love it. I pray I see 100 more people like this. 

signing off. 

I’ve been attending as many of the Black lives matter assembly’s. I think it’s important to document this event as a local as I can, Its history happening right now. The few I have been to have ranged in attendance and location, but the cause is all the same, to end systemic discrimination immediately. There is much opposition that says because the civil rights bills passed that it doesn’t exist, but it’s apparent that these huge gatherings prove otherwise…. mind you they are also happening during the worlds biggest pandemic since the spanish flu.  

The first amendment has been exercised to protest the violent measures used to violate citizens sixth amendment right, and thats breaking it down to the most simple way. 

More than anything i see when I attend is the unity, the healing and the use of our voices to come together and sing a unified song. I hear lots of older folks saying they used to say “no justice, no peace” during the marches for rodney king and other awful things that happened in the 90’s. I think most of these images speak for themselves. 

please feel free to reach out, discuss, and share if you’d like.