You know, there’s a funny thing about borrowing things that are nicer than yours…
I have been toying with the idea of getting a new camera for a while. There is, frankly, nothing wrong with the one I have, but the newer ones out now would allow me to do cooler things at night than I can pull off today. And, well, you guys know how much I love night photography. A few weeks back, I decided to rent a newer camera for a weekend, just to play around with it. I talked my nephew, who has the same -older- camera as me, into tagging along so we could do a side-by-side comparison. I suddenly don’t like my camera anymore.
Now as it turns out, at the same time, a good friend of mine is also letting me borrow his car (read: take care of it for him) for 6 months while he and his wife are out of town, so my nephew and I decided to make that our photography subject. The car, which has appeared on Picture of the Week before, is also super awesome. BAH! I suddenly don’t like my car anymore.
I hate it when that happens!
Now, about the picture. If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you’ve seen a concept shot similar to this before. I tried this same shot about a year ago just as a goof in my car (that piece of junk LOL), but my windshield was dirty and I found that very distracting. With that knowledge under my belt, I finally got around to trying it again. The shot is fairly easy to setup. I just put the tripod in the backseat with the camera over my (the driver) left shoulder. I had to lean way in to get out of the shot, but outside of that, just set the camera for 30 seconds or so and let it rip! Since the new camera has wireless capabilities and an app for your phone, my nephew could operate the camera (my sweet precious) safely from the passenger seat while I operated the vehicle. Pretty slick! …and yes, I still want one (the camera… and the car).
–Dan Thompson