Kelowna Car Photography: Lighting & Lamborghinis
Hiilite photography recently had the opportunity to shoot some stunning Lamborghinis right here in Okanagan Valley. We love automotive photography and couldn’t have been more excited to shoot Ryan Fipke’s Lamborghini collection.
Ryan is the proud collector of six Lamborghinis varying from the classics to the flagship Aventador. We reached out to him to for some car photography of these Italian beauties and he was all for it.
Our first shoot with Ryan was a memorable experience. He wanted some photos of his 1997 Diablo and his 25th anniversary Countach. These are iconic classics; one of our automotive photographers even had a poster of a Diablo on their wall as a child. We shot these two cars in daylight at his house. We shot with our Sony A7Riii and Sigma Art 24-70mm F2.8 for this and managed to shoot without a tripod.
Light Painting Lamborghinis
The second time we shot with Ryan, we were excited to see he had his Lamborghini Aventador out of storage. He had mentioned that we should do some light painting with this car and he was interested in learning more about this car photography technique.
Light painting is when you take a long exposure photo that will be underexposed without any artificial light, you then paint in the light on areas you want with a flashlight or some form of artificial light.
In our case, we used a Strobepro L500 Pro continuous LED light. We set up the Sony A7Riii and Tamron 70-200mm F2.8 G2 on our Manfrotto tripod and began shooting.
We found a perfect balance of exposure shooting at a shutter speed of 13 seconds and aperture of F8.0 and ISO 200. We then had Grant (our lovely lighting master) walk along the car shining light on only the vehicle and avoiding light splash on the ground or allowing any light to show directly to the camera.
Want to try light painting car photography? It’s easy. There are a few pieces of equipment you’ll need to get started:
- DSLR camera or Mirrorless camera with adjustable shutter speed and manual settings
- Tripod
- A light source such as a flashlight, continuous video light or Speedlight
- Patience (that 30-second exposure will feel like a lifetime while you wait in excitement).
After seeing the finished light painting car photos, Ryan was blown away. So next time we met, we did something we love even more: rolling shots.
Rolling shots are our obsession. It brings so much life to a photo and you’re able to read a story within these photos due to the blur of the road and the overall motion in the background. Rolling photography of cars are extremely rewarding because you’re forced to be concentrating on your exposure and changing settings on the fly depending on variables such as sunlight, shadows and reflections.
We met at Lamborghini Kelowna (Ryan’s garage) and picked out two cars we were going to take out and shoot on the roads. We chose the Aventador again and a black Countach.
We chose to shoot these photos with two different cameras. The first camera was our Pentax K-1 paired with an ultra-wide angle Rokinon 14mm F2.8, the second camera we used for our Sony A7Riii with Sigma Art 24-70mm F2.8.
We drove into the hills of the Okanagan where we found some nice scenic roads to start shooting.
For successful rolling shots you need a few components:
- A camera car to drive alongside your subject (Keep in mind it’s important to maintain a steady matched speed between both vehicles)
- A high aperture to allow you to slow your shutter speed down to approx. 1/25 to 1/50 of a sec.
- A stabilized lens or camera body is highly recommended to capture sharp images at these slower shutter speeds while driving
When you follow these guidelines, you’ll notice your subject will be sharp and the background and road will be blurred to perfection. Don’t get discouraged if you have lots of blurry unusable images; even the best car photographers will throw away hundreds of rolling shots in order to get that one perfect shot.
We had a blast shooting Ryan’s enviable car collection. If you have further questions or would like to set up a session to shoot your own automotive photography collection, get in touch with us today. We’re passionate about automotive photography and would love to help you shoot creative shots that show off your collection.