9 | PORTRAITSVroom with a view
Jamie Bubb shares his tips for shooting cars and their proud owners
t heart, I’m a designer.
I grew up drawing Judge
Dredd, went to art college,
and ended up studying
illustration at degree level.
Photography came into my life around
15 years ago, when I was working as a
freelance graphic designer and I couldn’t
find images I needed in stock libraries.
So I bought a 4-megapixel compact
and started shooting whatever I needed
to incorporate into my design work.
Photographing people felt awkward,
so I stuck to inanimate objects for
the first few years, mostly buildings.
As my confidence grew, I became drawnto portraiture. Cars came onto the scene
by accident, as I became interested in
the obsessive relationships people
have with their vehicles.
I had a client who supplied tyres for
vintage cars, I’m no petrolhead, but the
beautiful cars rolling in sparked an interest
in them as design objects. In 2016-17, I shot
an entire series centred around portraiture,
involving tractors and motorbikes as well
as cars, it was great fun, and it helped
me develop lighting techniques which
I use in my commercial work to this
day, although they continue to evolve.
Once I’ve decided on the composition,
the camera sits on a tripod while I walkaround aiming and popping the flash using
a remote shutter control. I underexpose
the overall scene by a stop or two, so each
image is quite dark, with one specifically lit
area. This method gives me total control
over which elements will ‘pop’ in the scene
and what stays hidden in the shadows.
The end result is a set of images (as
many as 30 separate files) of myself
striking weird poses holding a lightbox
on a stand, which I layer in Photoshop
then manually erase the dark areas. It’s
great watching the image materialise
on the monitor: the delayed gratification
reminds me of waiting for film to develop.
http://www.jamiebubb.comA
34 DIGITAL CAMERA^ APRIL 2020 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com