How to Photograph Objects

Okay, once again, we’re discussing light and personality, how to emphasize things, how
to really bring things out and make them handsome, beautiful, sellable. Now, I’m going
to turn around. We’ve got the car here, I’m coming down.

Okay, we know what the car is, it’s a Ford. But I’ve got the cone there, I’ve got the trailer
over there, I’ve got other things in the background, I got these cars here, it distracts. This
car looks like any other car. Let’s do something, let’s bring it into the light and let’s see
the difference.

Okay, we got a little bit different light, we got a little bit different background.
Remember before when I got out with the kids and the puppy, well I’m going to get the
personality of the car by coming down on this angle. I’m going to walk around over here
a little bit, come on down. Let’s get the personality again. It’s a car, it represents us.
Okay, we got it.

We’ve just sold your car.

Let’s review a certain theme here and that’s the theme of personality. Everything has a
personality, cars, dogs, people obviously where you live, but cars have personalities too.
So here’s an example of what not to do. We’ve taken an angle where we’re standing
above it. Remember how we moved our angle with the kids and the flowers before?
We’ve got the distracting cone in the background, it’s washed out. There’s a trailer to the
side and there’s another car to the side. There’s nothing about this car that stands out.
Why would anyone want to buy this car?

We’ve worked on the angle a little bit here, we’ve come down a little but lower, we’ve
eliminated one of the cars to the side, we turned it slightly, we’re beginning to get a little
bit more of the car’s lines but it’s still not working.

Well, what we can do here is come down a little bit lower again, try a slightly different
angle. What we’ve done is we stepped back a little bit, we we’d have the picture more
horizontal. This increases the lines of the car. Now the shade which was giving us trouble
before was turned to our advantage. What it’s done is it’s picked up the slight blue tones
of the pavement which emphasizes the color of the car. The green is a little bit dark and it
kicks it up a little bit. We’ve got the angle here but we’re still dealing with a washout
background and we still have those disconcerting objects in the background. Let’s work a
little further.

Now, we’re showing the personality of the car. We’ve stood up a little bit but we’ve
included the environment behind it. We have the house, we’ve got the brick to the side,
we’re showing a certain neighborhood. And also if you notice to the left, we have the
American flag. Now, that little bit of color kicks it up a little bit. We’ve got our washed
out sky, the background is a little bit washed out but the flag is an icon that always
catches our attention and it’s flapping towards the car. We’ve got the lines there. It’s
beginning to work, let’s take it a bit further.

Alright, we’ve come exactly down on the ground, we’re looking at it pretty much at eye
level. The flag is flapping in the background there, it’s pointed to the length of the car.
Now another thing we did was we turned the wheels a little bit. This gives a sense of
motion. It’s turning towards. There are beautiful lines to the car. It’s still a little bit
washed out but we’re getting more personality here.

It’s coming together now. What we’ve done is we’ve come up a little bit closer. We’ve
got the background, we’ve begun to work with the light a little bit. It isn’t as washed out
as much. We’ve got some interesting pinks in there too, we’ve got the flag flapping. And
again, it’s pointing towards the car. What we’ve done also is that we’ve included a little
bit more of the house and this almost gives a sense of motion. We had the flag pointing to
the car, the car moving and then the brick gives a sense of moving off to the left.