Life is Short, Take the Scenic Route: Taking Photos from the Car

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Taking Photos from the Car

Trees, ugh.

If there is a disadvantage to taking so many road trips it is that we cannot possibly stop at every interesting thing we see, despite how badly I want to stop. My head whips around and an "ooh!" escapes my mouth at every cemetery, old or abandoned building, interesting sign or rusty car. Therefore probably half of all of my photos each trip are taken from the car. Sometimes at very high speed. And taking photos from the car is not an easy thing to do.

Rusty things

Word of Warning: this is by no means an instructional on "how to take photos from the car"! I am really bad at it, please look for professional help if you want to do it better than I do!!!
The first thing I had to tackle was getting the settings right. My first attempts, many moons ago, resulted in nothing but blurry, really awful photos. I didn't really know much about how aperture and other settings worked(totally self taught in the days before internet-I didn't know much about settings. Hell, I still don't really). I finally figured out that setting the speed to at least 1/320(or higher depending on how bright it is outside), the pictures came out less blurry. Higher ISO when it's darker out helps, but does not help the quality of photo. But those have not really been the main problem I have. My main problem is timing. Signs, trees, bushes, telephone poles, other cars-if there is one sign along a long stretch of highway and I want to photograph a barn-that sign will make it into the photo.
To be fair, I'm not usually watching for obstacles. I have a camera against my face, focusing on the subject at hand and bam, that tree or sign just jumps right up in the way! One shot at snapping a place that may be gone next week and I missed it. Maybe I'm complaining, maybe I'm not. Mad at myself, mad at the sign. Wishing I had all the time in the world to stop and properly photograph all the interesting things I see.

Rusty old bridge, concrete barricade.

Usually it doesn't matter how the photos come out. I'm not a journalist or trying for any awards. Most of the time I just snap a photo of something quickly so that I remember to research it when I get home. And sometimes there would be no other way to stop and photograph that really interesting thing. Sometimes the photos actually come out pretty good(rarely), and sometimes I just don't care and post them on Flickr anyway. And I'll keep taking them, because sometimes it's the only chance I get.