Automotive photography

My weekends are full of automotive events - meets, track days, races, road trips - and I like to capture exciting and memorable moments. In middle school I took photos on film at the Atlanta Auto Show, and in my early days of driving I had a digital point-and-shoot with which I documented Scion club events in the Atlanta area. I bought my first DSLR six years ago to better photograph vacations and my expanding schedule of car happenings. The tools have improved immensely and today it’s easier than ever to capture, edit, and share high-quality photos.

Tools

Photography is an evolving hobby for me and I am learning new things all the time. My first DSLR was a Nikon D3300, and now I shoot with a D500. I use a pretty limited selection of lenses - the kit 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, an inexpensive zoom 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6, and a prime 50mm f/1.8. For a couple of race events at Laguna Seca I have rented much nicer lenses: a 24-70mm f/2.8 and the “motorsport essential” 70-200mm f/2.8. In my opinion I am still “operator limited” in my photo quality and I’m not ready to pay the step-function price increase to move up to the next level of hardware.

Digital photography is really a two-step process: capturing the photo, and then editing. In 2020 I made big strides in the latter category. When I got started with my DSLR I shot in JPG, and initially didn’t even bother to do any editing. Shoot, sort out the decent shots, post. Eventually I started using Windows’ built-in basic tools to adjust lighting and color. This year I transitioned to shooting in RAW and editing with Lightroom. Combined with more deliberate exploration and embrace of my camera settings, I feel that I have taken my best photographs this year. I look at some of these older shots and see where I could improve them with editing, but alas, it’s all part of the learning process.

Finding a home online

Of course after working hard to document cars and events, I am eager to share. In the good old days I hosted everything on Photobucket and posted photos on forums. For every car I have owned, I have joined the appropriate community forum and usually had a “build thread” for my car. Social media arrived, and car communities shifted, some permanently relocating to Facebook or Instagram. The Mazdaspeed Miata forum shut down for good. The E30 M3 forum is a bit of a ghost town.

I have struggled to find a home for myself and my content online in the wake of all of these changes. I now host my photos on Flickr, where I can upload images at full resolution and embed them in posts fairly easily. For a while I shared all of my event photography on a Facebook page called American Drive, which is still live but has fallen by the wayside. I finally joined Instagram when I bought my Skyline, but the format is better-suited for promotional work than sharing long-form reports, photo collections, or write-ups.

A little more than a year ago I decided that I would try to consolidate all of my content into one place. I still participate in multiple forums and Facebook groups, but I wanted a landing page where everything I wanted to share could be mixed and matched. I found the Blogger format to be effective and approachable and created a website for myself: Magnus Drives. If you click the link “Automotive Blog” in the header it’ll take you to the same place. So as of today, the workstream is: take photo; edit in Lightroom; host on Flickr; full write-up on forums and blog; abbreviated snippet/story on Instagram.

Extremely amateur gig photography

The vast majority of the photos I take are for my own personal enjoyment, but I have done a little bit of paid shooting and some of my photos have been featured/recognized. I have photographed two cars for a seller who listed his cars on the auction website BringATrailer. Of course I took my own photos when I sold my Integra Type-R through the platform as well.

Because I attend the events of Monterey Car Week each year, I have provided some event photography to The Ultimate Classic, the quarterly magazine of the BMW Classic Car Club of America (BMW CCCA).

In 2017 I attended “The Vintage” BMW meet in North Carolina, and submitted some of my images to the event photo contest. I am proud that my photo of a widebody BMW 2002 was awarded first place in the “Cars in Motion” category. The award was free registration for my dad in 2018!