Phil's '95 VW Golf Sport VR6 (Update: exhaust clip!)

A place to post photos and discuss your car.
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Updated 05-07-08: Keyless Entry!)

Post by hockeystyx16 »

i was about to ask where the pics were at, then looked on the 1st page. lol

i looked over your other pics as well, and your a excellent photographer. what are you shooting with? care to throw some tips or suggestions my way to what i could try to do with a PNS? im running out of picture ideas, my car in the park with some trees in the back is old. i know a couple other spots, but i dont have the photographer instinct, you probalby know what im talking about, you look at something and you see good picture angles and spots, i dont have that.
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Updated 05-07-08: Keyless Entry!)

Post by pmacutay »

I was shooting with a point and shoot up until the DDI Gauges set and onward. Canon PowerShot G7.
Currently I'm shooting with a Canon EOS-30D.

I know what you're talking about with the "photographer's eye." I guess a more proper term for it would be "compositional skill" since that's what I notice most about it. Pictures can be boiled down into simple shapes, and the art of composition is placing those shapes in eye-pleasing combinations.

Here's an example utilizing a few techniques, but mainly Leading Lines and Rule of Thirds:
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This photo can be boiled down to this:
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...yet it still retains compositional strength. I see a few main reasons as to why this composition is strong:
-It gives leading lines. The lines in the picture seem to all agree and point to a natural direction. The horizon is tilted toward the left, with the planter being a main horizon reference line pointing down and to the left.
The car itself is facing to the left as well, with its windshield and hood lines pointing in that same general direction. The bumper as well has a horizontal line in-line with the down-and-left movement.
The natural-ness of all this is helped by the fact that your eyes are being lead in the same direction as the car is facing, not the other way around. Your eye will always be drawn toward the front of a car or the direction it is facing because of the way cars are designed (pointier in the front, flatter in the back).

-It utilizes the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is usually one photographic technique that laymen will hear about because of its ubiquity. Take your viewfinder and divide it into thirds, like a tic-tac-toe board. The viewer's eyes are naturally drawn to the intersection of those lines, as well as the lines themselves. For example, the horizon in my picture takes up roughly the bottom 1/3rd of the pic. The car's mass seems to be anchored in the bottom-right third, with the upper left 2/3rds having empty space (and that tree).
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Look at that picture. If I had centered the people it would look boring and surrounded by empty space, but by placing them in a third, it gives it a much more effective composition. The horizon line is on the bottom third, and their EYES are on the top third. Eyes are important because viewers are drawn to them as well.
Offsetting the subject can give a much stronger composition as opposed to centering the subject. In fact, I rarely ever center the subject unless it's actually PART of the composition that I'm putting something in the center.

-It is taken from a non-eye-level angle. A nice exercise to do if you're not feeling any angles is this: "be a baby or a giant...but never a human." You walk around day to day with your eyes at eye level, but being a photographer, you have complete control over the scene that the camera sees. Use that power, eye-level is mundane, take control of the camera's height, position, rotation. Get angles from down low, cars generally are photogenic from low angles. Find a high spot and take pictures at a sharp angle downward, from above. Tilt the camera a bit and see if the lines look better at an angle. Do anything except take a picture at eye level because if the composition doesn't have anything strong in it, the feel of it being at eye level will just put the last nail in its mundane-ness coffin.

Basically, play around. Shoot more, it's the digital age, no one's paying for film so you can afford to shoot a hundred pictures in one photoshoot, and just keep what you like. That was the biggest hump I had to get over once I got my camera, was never shooting enough. I'd come back and get the pictures on the computer, and realize "this picture would've been nice IF ___________." I'm talking, take a picture, move your camera a few inches to the left and take another. Don't take 100 of the same pictures, make it a different (if ever so slightly) picture every time, and you might be amazed with what you find. Often times the background will completely change in relation to the subject and the background can make/break a scene as well.

And this turned into a huge essay, but whatever, there ya go Roman, you wanted to know what goes on in my head before I click the shutter, then this is a pretty good example =P

Sorry if it's long as hell to read, though.
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Updated: Keyless Entry. Photography Essay pg4)

Post by hockeystyx16 »

thanks a bunch Phil, ill definitely keep those in mind. i washed my car sunday or monday and went to the park to snap some pics, took about 20, kept 2 lol. i never really gave the leading lines a thought til i just read about it, it never really crossed my mind.

i guess it almost takes a 6th sense to feel what the picture want to do to be a good photographer lol. maybe ill develop that overtime. well see. i might drive around monday or whenever i get a day off and take a bunch of pics, theres a bunch of good spots around where i used to live
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Updated: Keyless Entry. Photography Essay pg4)

Post by VTECaddict »

*scoff* canon shooter. :roll:

j/k. nice pics, i like those gauges. i still need to develop my compositional skill more.
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Updated: Keyless Entry. Photography Essay pg4)

Post by camera_man »

Haha, I wasn't going to say it

<<<------ Nikon FTW!

That aside, your pics look great! The lighting and composition is spot on. Well done!
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Updated: Keyless Entry. Photography Essay pg4)

Post by wannabe »

i shoot w/ an olympus. pns, but more than just a pns if i want it to be...i'll get some of my pics uploaded sometime...it'll be cool...i have to find the one of the inside of a tulip i took...its fricken awesome :P
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Updated: Keyless Entry. Photography Essay pg4)

Post by pmacutay »

Haha, it's rarely about the camera anyway.

I used to shoot with a cameraphone back in 06, got some pretty nifty pics out of that thing. Nokia N90, Zeiss lens and all. A few pics from the phone:

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big pics to show the quality of this phone:
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Keep in mind that that phone was ALREADY one year old in asia when I got my hands on it in 2006. This is a 3-year-old cameraphone and the thing had autofocus. They're no print-sized photos, it does get noisy really fast when it starts running out of light, and its far-focus shots are slightly blurry, but when you work the autofocus with something closer to the camera, the subtle DoF it's able to achieve instantly sets the pics apart from every cameraphone-looking picture. Especially on the picture of my friend smiling, I love the way the background came out blurred.

Hence why I didn't NEED a camera until I ended up getting rid of that phone, haha. I still kinda miss it, it was really nice to always have a semi-decent camera on you at all times. "The camera that stays at home never gets the shot", or whatever.
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (and photography discussion)

Post by hockeystyx16 »

damn, thats better than some PNSs.
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (and photography discussion)

Post by Zexel »

Did you replace it with an N82? That thing is a beast for photos.
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (and photography discussion)

Post by pmacutay »

I replaced it with a Canon PowerShot G7, and a Sidekick 3. (addicted to AIM and imho the best physical qwerty keyboard on a phone, ever. i can type 70wpm on the thing and that's the reason i can't use another phone after the sidekick)

Sometimes all-in-one devices turn out to be jack of all trades, master of none. Still, a damn good cameraphone when it was in service.

(Plus, the N93 was actually the successor to the N90, with a better lens and sensor.)
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (and photography discussion)

Post by watkins »

pmacutay wrote:I replaced it with a Canon PowerShot G7
I love my PowerShot SD500. Canon really does make a good digital camera. Easy to use, and most are compact enough to keep with you. Mine is almost always in my pocket.
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Update: Projectors!)

Post by pmacutay »

bump for headlights
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Update: Projectors!)

Post by Leedeth »

That looks very nice. 8) Me like.

What's that decal on your back window mean?

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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Update: Projectors!)

Post by pmacutay »

haha, thank you.

to Chris: the icon is a Check Engine Light. It's a joke that VW's always have their CEL's lit because something's always breaking (some of them have the CEL lit so much that the light burns out). :mrgreen:
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Re: Phil's V-Dub (Update: Projectors!)

Post by Bawked »

Wow loving the projectors! :D

lol @ the decal
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