I worked for a great little entertainment magazine Insite Austin.

While they weren’t able to pay me at least I got to see some cool acts for free and they used my images in their Insite Hinsdsite featured section.

This post and several following are some of the acts I got to shoot.
311 Was far and away to the most exciting and most well known of all the acts I got to cover….in fact, I was actually there specifically to shoot the opening act that night, Pepper! In talking with one of the concert goers during a downpour break, he encouraged me to get down there and slip into the same spot with my credentials (sticker) and have @ it with 311! And the guys working security let me!! :-)

As luck would have it, I now have time to go out and get some more shots but wouldn’t you know it, the weather outlook is grim over the next 3.8-5.57 days.

No matter, I need to remind myself to always be on the look out for potential locations and you know what, come to think of it, now might be a good time to check out the parking garage @ Round Rock city hall; that should provide cover from the weather (of course the car might get dirty on the road!) Maybe I’ll just scout the location!

They must have been like, waaaaaaat is he doing?? :D

The other (not so) funny thing was that it took me 16.8mins to figure out the self timer setting on my camera which enables you to take consecutive pictures. I’ve never had this feature on any Canon before but bravo to whomever thought it up, it’s brilliant. You can tell it to take 2-8(or so) consecutive pictures. It would have been even better if I had timed or calculated the entire sequence though, so I knew when to stop the car! Next time I go out I’ll definitely have to run the time elapsed on that!

I was loving how evenly most of the shots came out in terms of the car being exposed. Really not a lot of uneven areas or weird shadows which pleasantly surprised me.

The only thing I guess I didn’t like, sometimes the parking lot lights ate up too much real estate on the top of the frame or were too “strong”.

Ok! Yes, the windows are filthy! They’re actually clean but have huge amounts of water spots from the water drying. Note to self: wipe those windows down!

The rims look pretty uniform from picture to picture. I really like how they came out in the shot above, a really cool star pattern. I am not sure if that was due to the light or length of exposure or what, I suspect the lighting.

So does anyone want to volenteer their vehicle for my next series?? :)

It’s something he has researched far before I even knew about it, and thankfully the very generous photographers online have posted and discussed their own rigs for some time now which was integral in our attempt.

This was my first time out. I picked night b/c it was convenient and I figured there would be ample places that had cool lights that would make interesting backgrounds.

I loved this lens flare I got so I had to include it

Cruising around and while you can’t see it, my eyes are GLUED to the suction cups on the hood of the car.

The hardest part is maintaining the same color balance between the car and the background. While one white balance setting makes the cars look best, the original setting makes the lights look best. The car is suited for ~2K to 2.5K under the lights that exposed the Rav4.

For such a long exposure (5-10s) I was surprised by the clarity of the images. The (focus) falloff is due to the F/5 setting, though I ran to 6.3 towards the end of the night.

I thought these would make excellent stock photos but the wizards @ istock deem that the body shape of the SUV is © material….even though they have LOTS of full featured cars and SUV’s on their website (I do not care for them much!!)

BUT, that was just to be an added bonus. The real reason for us creating this rig and trying these shots was to build a client base here in Austin, Round Rock, Pflugerville, and surrounding areas.

We hope to tap into the large market of car enthusiasts in the area and provide some unique pictures for those folks that really LOVE their autos!!

First Baptist Church Pflugerville

I have yet to be on a boat to photograph this…some day!!!