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Shooting Interior Panoramas of The Dash

Lesson 9 from: The Automotive Photography Workshop

Aaron Brimhall

Shooting Interior Panoramas of The Dash

Lesson 9 from: The Automotive Photography Workshop

Aaron Brimhall

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Lesson Info

9. Shooting Interior Panoramas of The Dash

Aaron breaks down the process of shooting hero dashboard photos for magazines and web. He takes a series of bracketed photos ensuring there is no distortion to lines of the car.

Lesson Info

Shooting Interior Panoramas of The Dash

(upbeat music) All right, so we are now in a different location doing interior detail shots. And we moved the vehicle in all shade because I don't want anything being blown out and I don't wanna see anything in the background with harsh light and I want everything staying as consistent as possible with the interior. And I don't want any like sunlight spots hitting anywhere because brands love just clean interior shots. Most of the time, we will, since we've been out here in the desert we've been kind of rallying the truck and it's, it's been dusty and dirty. But, so these, like this particular, like interior stuff is not a main focus but I'm gonna show you kind of like what I do and what I work around when I'm shooting interiors. And for the most part, we did clean it a bit. So we're gonna be able to get some few detail shots and kind of go from there. And then there's gonna be a few key pointers to do when you're shooting interiors. If a brand has like, little features such as CarPl...

ay or air conditioning seats or heated seats and speakers you're gonna want to grab those details as well. So right now we're gonna just kind of wrap around outside of the vehicle, grabbing little details here and there and then yeah, we'll, then we'll move on into the inside and we'll use a tripod for that. And we'll grab more of a wide establishing shot of the full main cab, so. I'm gonna walk around using a 24 to 70, that way I can get wide, I can get tight, and work around little details, so. I'm gonna work right now on the Ford badge that's on the steering wheel. It's just like a main thing, normally, clients love to see and the trim package that the Raptor has, they have like a key signature, like a red little Stripe here on the top of the steering wheel. You definitely need to capture that. So as long as that is in focus, or you can see it in any way around the steering wheel, that's gonna be a key component to this specific image. So I'm gonna try to figure out the best way possible to figure that out and then we will go from there. Another little trick too, I kind of like having some foreground in the images with interior, just looks in my opinion, looks really cool. So I'll usually like roll up the window, like a tad. And sometimes in cases like this, you can get a nice little foreground with some reflection and it just is something just different for client. And it looks really cool. And again, make sure with all of this, that your F stop is you're using a higher F stop to get everything in focus cause brands love to see steering wheel and the dash in focus. So that cluster on the, like the gauge, the gauge, the RPMs, everything behind the steering wheel they're gonna wanna see that as well. So keep that in mind. (intense upbeat music) Little like things here and there. Like if you, if you're looking at, like, if you see some of this in the rear view mirror and you can see the seat with the Raptor logo on it, that's kind of another cool thing to do. You can shoot just grabbing some kind of more like abstract stuff too. And I, right now I'm seeing my, I'm seeing my reflection from the window actually in the rear view mirror. So I'm gonna roll it down. (car chiming) And we'll grab this cause right now you can see in the background of this photo, you're gonna see like a little bit of what's behind the car right now. And it looks kind of cool, so. This is small details that matter, you know. (camera shutter) But when you're shooting a lot of the times when you're shooting like mirror stuff like this, sometimes it'll be distorted and it won't work out. I think that's using the passenger side cause it's a little, the mirror's a little warped but using that driver's side mirror or anything like that, I think you're gonna be fine. When I move into the interior of the car, we're gonna actually get a full shot of the gauge. So it's not just like from the side, it's gonna be like straight on cause they're gonna want to use everything. They're gonna want everything straight on from steering wheel to gauge cluster to the middle dash console. And then even like the, always yeah, even like the gear shifter they're gonna want to use for catalog stuff. Any types of buttons for like trailer, lights, parking brake, the rear view mirror sensors. Everything. Just gotta be aware, there's a lot of moving parts in the interior detail stuff, so. Be aware when you're shooting interiors cause yeah, there's a lot of ground to cover. So I'm gonna be just shooting like random, random little clips here and there of the gauge. Most of the time there will be like options for the gauge or I guess just the cluster on the driver dash that you can play with. They're gonna want to see like either a map or a compass or they'll sometimes have you do every single type of menu option that's on there just so they can have that for whatever catalog they're gonna be doing. (intense upbeat music) I'm gonna work around now, getting some of these seats with the Raptor logo on them and trying to, if you can, as best as you can, getting these little, these little vents that are in the seat cause there's air condition and heating seats in this vehicle and they're gonna want to see the textures that are on the seat. They're gonna wanna see there's leather, there's cloth. There's like some cool octagon, yeah. Some like octagon stitching here. That's just like a nice feature for this trim and for this model of vehicle. So make sure you get all of that as well. (intense upbeat music) I am shooting a tad underexposed. I'm gonna be able to play with all the shadows in here though. I am at ISO 400, I could even go lower, but I'm just gonna stick with 400. 200 to 400 is the range that you're gonna want to be at for most things cause I feel like anything over 400, it's gonna get a bit noisy and you don't want any noise at all. So just that's another detail that you want to keep, just be aware of when you're shooting. (intense upbeat music) (camera shutter) So I'm in the back of the truck now. Luckily this cab has a big back, obviously a big back rear cab, so. What I'm wanting to do is get the full interior of the car just because every brand you're gonna work for is gonna want a full interior dash, everything. One thing I think to keep in mind is, you can have the car off and you can get plates of the, everything like digitally off. And what happens most of the time is clients will usually have files that they'll make you throw in to the dash sometimes and sometimes not. In this instance, I'm gonna be shooting CarPlay cause that's like one of the main features here and we'll just we'll kind of we'll shoot CarPlay, we'll shoot some of the maps, and then basically just work from a wide and then going into detail shots of the gear shifter, the middle console. And then we'll just mess around with just different angles from back here, so. We'll work wide and then we will yeah just work our way in. The reason I'm using a tripod in here is because I will be bracketing a lot because everything is very dark in here, as you can tell, but if you bracket and you get all your exposures from an overexposed shot to a very underexposed shot, you're gonna have a very complete image with everything very consistent. And you're not just gonna have dark shadows on the ground. You're gonna see, cause they're gonna wanna see like the pedals, the brake, the gas pedal. They're gonna wanna see floor mats. They're gonna wanna see the entire front of the vehicle. So be aware of that and bracket every image that you do interiorly and then tripod. Make sure your shutter is on a two second shutter. That way you're not getting any movement and everything's gonna be perfectly in focus. Another thing to note when you are shooting wide as I am now, I'm on a 15, I'm on the 15 to 35. Sometimes, I mean, they're marketing as these lenses are not distorted but you're gonna get distortion no matter what. So in this case, I'm gonna do like a panoramic image. So I'll take three images and then I can stitch them together in the end. And that way you're gonna get a clean, a very clean image and it's gonna be like a very wide, a wide, wide shot but nothing's gonna be distorted and you can crop that after and yeah, you're gonna be solid and stoked. So what I'm gonna do now is shoot over here and just like anytime you've ever taken a panoramic image, it doesn't have to be perfect because LightRoom does it all for you, so. We'll go into that in post. But panoramic stitching for interior is like very key. All right, make sure everything's in focus and I'm gonna take three separate images but on each image I'm gonna bracket three different, three different exposures. So I'm gonna do this left side three times, middle three times, and then the right side three times. (intense upbeat music) That's our interior establishing shot. Now let's move on to, I'm gonna like mess around. So with these, you can ideally like, realistically you can you can punch in and just crop in on, on the dash. But in some of these, in some of these cases I want to have just those zoomed in shots and that way I can just mess around with everything and I have more stuff to play with in the end. So I'm gonna go full zoomed in of just that middle dash, right there. Go a little low. Make sure your gyroscope is level. Even in here, you need a straight horizon too. So just be aware of that. (intense upbeat music) Okay. So I want a straight on shot for the dash. So I am actually gonna come out into the front seat. I will bracket basically everything interior just so you're again, you're having consistency throughout the entire inside of the car. A lot of times shapes and just anything black interior is gonna get lost. So just be aware to bracket everything. (intense upbeat music) All right, so that's a wrap with interiors. Just to recap just make sure you're getting everything detail wise, digital cluster, steering wheel, Ford badge any main features that they have on display, like CarPlay et cetera, like a higher end model will have a lot more features than like a standard model. So there's a lot of things like air conditioning seats, heated seats, CarPlay, the sound system, and then just different things on the digital cluster as well. And then make sure you're using a tripod and then you're bracketing every image and make sure the entire lighting is consistent as consistent as possible when you're shooting all interior things. That is a wrap with interiors and yeah. Let's go have some fun with the, with the dirt.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Automotive Presets

Ratings and Reviews

Ben Waugh
 

Worth Every Cent! Keen For More! This was awesome, definitely keen to see more of these in the future! Keep them coming dude! Loved seeing your edit breakdown and workflow. Would love to see some more of the behind the scenes of planning a shoot too - @benwaugh

Allison Gregory
 

From Zero to Hero Awesome workshop to not only get my first taste of automotive shoots, but I am walking away with a shoot set-up and planned to create speck work and present brands with decks. I loved how Aaron really explained everything he was doing. He rocks.

Adrian Mirabal
 

Amazing and WORTH IT! I have followed Aaron Brimhall for a while now and when I saw he was releasing a workshop I knew I had to get it! If you are wanting to shoot anything in motion or automotive action this is the workshop for you!

Student Work

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