Hands-Free Car Photography

Photography Tips

Sometimes it’s useful to have a hands-free option when doing a shoot, particularly if you know you’ll need to move lighting equipment often and you don’t have an assistant. In the video below, photographer Ashley Border demonstrates how to light a Ferrari using just one light and a voice activated shutter release:

For this shoot, Border wanted to create dramatic photos, with the cars isolated from the background. He put the cars in a pool of light using just one stand light, and then he manually moved the lighting rig along the car, using sound signals to trigger the shutter via his ioShutter SLR. The ioShutter SLR connects to your smart phone or tablet and allows you to control your camera’s shutter through sound alone. You can use any sound that stands out from the background—a shout, a clap, or stomping your foot on the floor, etc.

As you can see, Border achieves his wish of clean, dramatic photos, all taken in a fraction of the time it would have taken had he been moving back and forth between the camera and the lighting rig after each adjustment. So next time you’re working solo and need to move you’re lighting around a lot, consider this tip.