Mercedes

Bring A Trailer Car Photography in Albuquerque New Mexico with 1966 Mercedes 230SL

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Bring A Trailer Car Photography in Albuquerque New Mexico with 1966 Mercedes 230SL

Classic convertible Mercedes photographed in ABQ for Bring A Trailer

If I could only photograph one thing the rest of my career, cars would be fine with me! The opportunities to professionally photograph cars in Albuquerque, New Mexico are not that often, so I am always glad to get to make professional car auctions photos for Bring A Trailer, this time of a 1966 Mercedes 230SL. This classic car had both a hard top and a soft top, meaning I had to get three different series of photos of the exterior, including the top down. This is the most time consuming part of a car shoot, especially a convertible car. Joanna and her family had the car ready to go from all angles, and chose a very nice location with minimal interference from traffic and passersby. Thank you Joanna for choosing me as your car photographer and good luck with it on Bring A Trailer!

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DSLR Photography Lesson with Alok & his Canon 60D

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Alok with his Canon 60D at the end of our DSLR Photography Lesson in downtown St. PetersburgWith the sun setting earlier and tempertures only at hot and not broil, DSLR Photography Lessons on weekday evenings are starting earlier.  I met new student Alok at 5pm in downtown St. Petersburg.  He was no longer happy with the results from his point and shoot camera so he went right from that to a Canon 60D!  My 1-on-1 private lessons are exactly designed to help someone bridge that large gap between using a camera on auto-everything to using a DSLR with auto-nothing.  Although there is a good amount to learn at first, it does not necessarily need to take a long time to go from brand new DSLR owner to skilled photographer using manual mode.  

Case in point, Alok showed he was quick on the uptake on how to correct overexposed images by manually adjusting shutter speed and aperture.  We started out using aperture priority mode, but in the early evening light, a dark subject (a tree) and a very pale white-gray sky was too tricky for his Canon 60D's meter to expose correctly.  The sky was coming out blown out.  So by switching to manual mode and increasing the shutter speed from a glacial 1/20th of a second to 1/100th of a second, the sky was no longer blown out, though at a bit of a tradeoff in that the tree was now darker.  Still, as a photographer, I want to make that choice myself, not leave it up to the camera to decide for me.

Alok only has one lens now for his Canon 60D, a Sigma 18-50mm f/3.5-5.6.  This lens is a good workhorse choice, but to get the kinds of photos he told me he would like, he will definitely need a longer lens around 70-200mm.  I also advised him to invest in an external flash since he will be doing so much indoor shooting.  

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    2010 Mercedes Benz S-550 photo session

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    2010 Mercedes Benz S-550 at Riverwalk, Tampa

    I've been advertising my Classic Car Photography package on and off for the past month and a half and got my first client from it two weeks ago.  There were several delays in finally doing the shoot, however.  The first scheduled time was rained out.  Then the next scheduled time was canceled by the client because he was assaulted and in the hospital!  When things did finally align we had good weather and very interesting skies.

    The retiree-aged client was a long-time Mercedes owner.  This was his 4th or 5th Mercedes S-class and he was as giddy about it as a 16-year old getting his first car.  When observing his S-550's wide, round girth, he could not contain his excitement and gave out a "yeeeeah!"  I respected his enthusiasm.  I mean, if you own a $70k+ vehicle, you should feel that way about it.  

    2010 Mercedes S-550 at University of Tampa

    Many of my portrait photography sessions have been on the University of Tampa campus.  I found out that it's also a decent setting for car photography as well.  Now when I mentioned before that the client was very enthusiastic about his S-550 and the photo shoot in general, I mean he was really willing to do anything.  He gave me directions on which angles he wanted his S-550 shot from and with what backdrops.  He wanted an all grass footprint for his Mercedes to be photographed on and said he'd drive right into the middle of the lawn on the UT campus!  I told him that I did not feel comfortable with that because I use UT campus for a lot of my photography work and I did not fancy getting banned!  Still, he quickly backed up too much by "accident" ending up on enough grass to get an all-grass footprint shot (not pictured).  

    2010 Mercedes Benz S-550 led grill lightsThe client was also very excited about the sweet LED grill lights in the 2010 S-550 model.  I have seen the exciting new Benz commercials lately and those LED grill lights had me wishing I had the minimum $50k lying around to rush to my nearest Mercedes dealership with.  Although our session did not last until dark, I tried to make due with the pre-sunset diminishing light levels to try and bring the LED lights out in an image for the client.  

    This was a very satisfying photography job as I got to do something totally different and work with an enthusiastic client that ended up very satisfied with the photography product I provided.

    Special for this client, I made not only all the images into iPhone sized wallpapers (standard in the car photography package), but also resized them to his exact laptop screen resolution.

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