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This wheel photography tip will focus on using a soft white reflector
and high noon sun angle to achieve evenly illuminated, high quality results
when photographing open pore aluminum and painted wheels. To a lesser
degree this method will yield decent results with highly polished and
chrome wheels as well.
Because bright and
highly reflective surfaces of rough cast aluminum, painted, polished and
chrome wheels tend to over expose and lose detail in photos taken in direct
sunlight, several different approaches must be employed to achieve detailed
photo documentation or effective advertising photos of wheels.
If you look
around your home or office most likely you can find a white card board
box to break down, white, artists mat board or white bed sheet suitable
to fashion a reflector out of. Ideally, the reflector you create should
measure at least twice the width of the wheel diameter size you intend
to photograph and approximately 2 to 3 feet vertically when stood on edge.
However, a few pieces of printer paper taped to any flat substrate surface
will usually suffice if time does not allow to find a larger reflector.
If you have an old white bed sheet that you can drape over a piece of
plywood or common tan colored cardboard sheet laying about somewhere,
that will usually do the job as well.
The
purpose of illuminating the soft white reflector with the direct overhead
sun, which is larger than the wheel's diameter, is to turn the reflector
board into a large, wrap around, illumination source that will bath the
wheel's reflective surfaces and recessed detail with non harsh illumination
that will reveal detail in the darker areas while at the same time, help
reduce glare and gross over exposure in the brighter or highly reflective
areas of wheel which tend to overexpose badly when hit by direct sunlight.
Once
you've cleaned up the wheel adequately and gathered together your camera
and reflector, find a relatively open space far enough away from colored
buildings or objects that might reflect distracting colors and images
in your wheel's reflective surfaces. Position the car in such a way that
when the sun is relatively high in the sky, the wheel you intend to photograph
will be completely in the shade cast by the car's body. I advise that
you turn your front wheels straight ahead if you intend to photograph
the a front wheel on the car.
Next,
position one edge of the reflector approximately 4-12" away from
where tire touches the ground and angle it upwards, as illustrated in
photo above, in the direction of the sun overhead until whole wheel appears
to be flooded in a bright and even illumination. Depending upon what angle
of view of the wheel you are interested in taking you will want to experiment
as to where you position the reflector to achieve a lighting ratio or
quality that appeals to you.
The
photo above illustrates how I position a reflector when my objective is
to take a squared up, center cap level, view of a wheel for uniform advertising
layout or archive comparison objectives. As useful as a squared up, centered
view can be to documenting the symmetrical design of a wheel, this angle
of view has two drawbacks. 1. it lessens the the sense of 3 dimensional
form and depth of the wheel size  and
2. it obscures the unique beauty and transitional design the manufacturer
used from the center section of the wheel out to the outer lip edge. Above
photo demonstrates this dilemma well. The classic 14x7 Appliance wheel
pictured above is best known for having one of the deepest, most muscular
looks of all the wheel designs produced for the Datsun Z cars in the 70s
and 80s and yet, in the centered view above, only the wire mesh aspect
of it's design stands out dramatically in the the centered view. To the
rights is a photo of same wheel not mounted on car, taken at a different
time of day, using a different type of reflector and photo setup, that
reveals clearly a different impression of this 14x7 wheels "look".
-- Eric Neyerlin -
owner of ZPARTS.COM |
Wheel
Documentation Photography
