Car Photography at Downtown Phoenix – Andrew S.’s Dodge Challenger Hellcat

Hey

everyone!

This is Joshua again and I was the photographer who covered this photo shoot for Andrew and Elora.

My background for this type of work is that I love cars and consider myself a ‘gearhead’.

I personally believe it’s important to have someone who is passionate about what they do photography for – so for me I am able to wrap both my interests into one thing.

Andrew and Elora reached out to me to take photos of their Dodge Challenger Hellcat for their dealership business that they are currently developing.

After explaining to them the packages MediaSmith offers, they picked our Apex Package and a location to do the car photoshoot at.

The type of gear I bring with me to a gig is important and I like to explain to people the ‘surface level knowledge’ of why I bring gear and what it functions for.

So, I won’t get into the specifications of my cameras or my lenses, but I will make references to their focal lengths and other, as I like to call it, ‘surface level knowledge’ features in a camera.

The gear I brought with me to this car photoshoot was:

·         Canon EOS R5

·         Canon RF 85mm f/2.0

·         Canon 6D Mark II (backup DSLR)

·         GoPro Hero 8 (for filming purposes)

The camera bodies I brought – the Canon R5 and the Canon 6D Mark II - are all professional camera bodies. They provide high quality content for myself and my clients. 

The Canon EOS R5 is paired with the 85mm because I wanted all my shots that were up close to have as much detail as possible.

The Canon 6D Mark III was my backup camera in the event that my EOS R5 ran into technical issues while on set.

The original concept for this photo shoot was to do the photos a little ‘deeper’ into Downtown Phoenix.

I have a location with a narrow street that I would love to use for photos, but I had no clue that the day we planned to do the photo shoot was the first day of the NBA playoffs – the Phoenix Suns were hosting the Los Angeles Lakers in town.

Every parking garage was packed with cars and every street in the vicinity was lined up with cars as well.

The sun was setting fast while we thought about places nearby that we could do the photo shoot.

I always have a contingency plan in mind, however, I was hopeful to do the photo shoot with the Hellcat on that specific street.

However, there were no spots open to park on that street and the street was too busy with other cars on it to risk driving up and down the street getting the photos we wanted.

From there, we hopped in the Hellcat and decided to drive it around to the contingency spot.

Carefully avoiding all the foot traffic around the Phoenix Suns Arena, we found our way to a parking garage right next to Heritage Square Park.

Heritage Square Park is one of my favorite spots to take photos in here in the city of Phoenix.

I separate that one specific area into four locations: the garage just south of the Arizona Science Center, the Arizona Science Center itself, the area outside of Heritage Square, and then Heritage Square itself too.

 I have done car photos on top of the parking garage here multiple times. It’s a nice location because you get enough buildings in the back to get big city vibes, but there’s just enough space in between these buildings for light to peek through.

Before we went into the parking garage, we went and took photos on the side of the road.

The following photos are examples of the photos I took of the car on the street:

[ f-stop f/4 | Exposure 1/320s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

[ f-stop f/4 | Exposure 1/320s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

[ f-stop f/4 | Exposure 1/320s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

[ f-stop f/4 | Exposure 1/320s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

The great thing about the color of this Hellcat is that it goes perfectly well with my photo style.

I like to have heavy shadows in my photos as it allows me to highlight specific parts of a person or thing.

This last photo in particular showcases how well my photo style matches up with this style of photography.

I think another thing to keep in mind is that all of these were done on one camera and one lens: the Canon EOS R5 with a RF 85mm f/2.0.

There were no lighting effects needed for this – all I used was the natural evening glow light.

After grabbing a few more photos such as this:

[ f-stop f/2 | Exposure 1/250s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

[ f-stop f/2 | Exposure 1/250s | ISO 200 | 85mm | Meeeeeeeeow ]

We will have a vlog and blog later on in the year explaining how to properly take pictures of an interior of a car to showcase all of its details in the right manner.

In the meantime, with the light slowly fading away, we decided to take the Hellcat up to the top floor of the parking garage and do some photos there.

Not only were we able to get photos of the Hellcat, we were also able to get photos of Elora modeling with the car:

[ f-stop f/2 | Exposure 1/250s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

[ f-stop f/2 | Exposure 1/250s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

[ f-stop f/2 | Exposure 1/250s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

As mentioned above, there will also be a separate vlog and blog about the topic of car modeling as well some time in the near future.

There are aspects about car photography that I would like to go further in depth with at another time as using a prop within a photo can be difficult as we want emphasis on the model, but we also need to have emphasis on the prop as well, otherwise, why else would we have it in the photo? It’s questions like that that I think are better answered in depth rather than briefly in a blog post recapping a photo shoot.

In regards to the photos without the model, Elora, in them, I took a liking to these particular photos:

[ f-stop f/2 | Exposure 1/250s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

[ f-stop f/2 | Exposure 1/250s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

[ f-stop f/2 | Exposure 1/250s | ISO 200 | 85mm ]

I liked these in particular because, as I mentioned previously, it fits my photo style of heavy shadows with emphasis on one particular part of a photo.

So, I reduce the shadows and the blacks within a photo to put more emphasis on the highlights and the whites.

After we finished up with the detail shots: more of the interior, the trunk, and the engine bay; we completed the photo shoot for the day.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog or if you’re just looking for car photography locations in the city of Phoenix, AZ, I hope you enjoyed looking at the photos and hopefully reading the blog.

You can check us out on Instagram and Facebook if you’d like.

If you’re interested in booking us for a car photography shoot, please feel free to call, text, and/or email us to book your session!

Thanks for reading! I hope the in-depth analysis of this photo shoot has helped improve your knowledge of car photography and/or gave you an idea of where to do photo shoots of cars here in the state of Arizona.