“Unwanted” people and cars in your photos

[Pál_K]

I remember being at a car show many years ago - a nice exhibit of European cars out on a large field - and being frustrated by people intruding into the photo I was about to make. Some of those people were wearing very obnoxious clothing (such as T-shirts with vulgar sexual phrases) and lingering about for lengthy periods. It was a challenge to make a photo at just the right moment so as not to have something to detract from the image.

Since then, when making scenic photos, I’ve tried to exclude distractions such as cars or people. I don’t do this if I’m making city photos.

With that in mind, this year, like every other year where I promise myself I won’t make photos of autumn foliage and do so anyway, I was trying to capture a line of trees with a nice multitude of of green, yellow, and red shading. Naturally, cars were entering the scene - especially cars whose owners who’ve chosen to drive during a bright sunny day with full highbeams on (not sure if that’s a disease of the Pacific Northwest or everywhere - people will even retrofit 30 year old vehicles with such lights in this war of luminosity). Anyway, while waiting for cars to pass out of sight, I suddenly realized something…

For the last 10 months I’ve been scanning and archiving photos I made in the 1970’s, but which I never printed. I could afford only to develop the negatives myself, but could not afford to buy much paper for printing. So, I printed perhaps 1% of what I photographed. So now, I’m seeing (and printing) many of these photos for the first time in 45 years. And, aside from seeing long familiar houses, streets, and buildings, what else do I find most remarkable? The cars! The people! Back then, I didn’t gripe or even notice such things in my photos - I just made the photo and moved on. Today I’m glad I did that: having the cars and people of that time period in those photos truly adds value to the images. Lesson learned.

So now, unless it’s something truly obnoxious, I won’t care as much about things intruding into the photo.

 

[peterm1]

I go tend to go to some lengths to get rid of or at least diminish unwanted distractions from photos - less so perhaps with casual shots taken on holidays etc. in places where there might be expected to be crowds but in general. I have not often tried merging images thought this is possible with modern photo editors (i.e. left hand side of one exposure and the right hand side of another by merging them). I have tried it but unless the software is smart it can produce sub optimal results (e.g. if the different images do not have exactly the same exposure). Something I do a lot though is to shoot wide open to blur backgrounds out and if necessary to supplement this when post processing. In the one linked below for example I would have found the people in the background distracting, thought I would wanted some evidence of their presence as that was part of the scene and context for the main subject. I clearly used a wide open lens to throw them out of focus and I am guessing (I cannot recall) may have enhanced this during post processing by applying a little differential blur. I do not mind doing this kind of thing as I enjoy the process of fiddling with my images till I am happy with them. So long as I am happy with the outcome of course. I acknowledge that many do not feel this way.

The issue of cars in scenes is interesting, if bedevilling. I hate my photos being intruded upon by modern cars which all tend to look bland and similar. Though interestingly, when I look at old photos by Ernst Hass, Saul Leiter, Fred Herzog etc I very much enjoy the classic cars from the 1950s/60's (the more so because their colors look wonderful in Kodachrome and because it is redolent of an older and seemingly more genteel age.) So I guess it is all relative and nostalgia over rides other factors.

One Moment of Time on the Street by Life in Shadows, on Flickr

 

[farlymac]

I usually just stick it out, and wait for people to get out of the shot, or get close in with a wide angle so they don't show. But sometimes I use them as part of the subject, such as this gent who nonchalantly walked in front of me, so I took his photo too. It lends itself to the story of the show, that folks come to look at the vehicles, and dream about ones they used to own, or wish they did.


DSC_4345_2c by P F McFarland, on Flickr

"Roanoke Valley MOPAR Club Show September 1, 2018" on Flickr at https://flic.kr/s/aHsmrM7NHx

PF

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Learn to be able to wait. Or even come back.
If you like old cars this much where are old cars shows, get togethers.

 

[nikon_sam]

Sometimes the person makes the photo better...in this case I never saw him enter my shot and was pleasantly suprised after developing the roll of film...

 

[Coldkennels]

Cars are the bane of my existence as far as photos go. It's almost impossible to shoot anything in any town or city in England without getting an annoying amorphous blob on wheels somewhere in the shot. Even if cars aren't present (which is rare), the overwhelming amount of clutter put in town centres for cars - the road signs, the barriers, the traffic lights - can totally block the view of or distract from the intended subject.

I have a wonderful book of Kertész's photographs called Paris, Autumn 1963 and you physically can't take photos like that anymore. Same with a lot of Bresson or Doisneau's work. There's just too much visual noise in the modern world.