How to: Shoot yourself driving away

Posted on 24 August 2009

When we go out on assignment we’re usually on our own. Our unfortunate friends with real jobs can never join us for the seven to ten days that we usually end up travelling, it’s just too long.

I struggle with this a bit because a landscape is often boring without a point of interest.

In this image, featured as an opening spread in the September 2009 issue of Getaway about Backroading the Eastern Cape, I had to get something happening in this landscape. So I shot myself. I do have a remote shutter release, it’s wireless, but the range is limited and wouldn’t trigger the camera when the car was well into the frame. Here’s how I finally got the shot: I set the camera up on a tripod. I wanted the car to be blurred to show movement so My f-stop was sat a f22 with a polariser gave me a tenth of a second shutter speed. Then, I put the camera on self-timer, the 5D gives you ten seconds, max before it’ll trip the shutter. So it got a bit tricky, but after a few attempts I managed to time it well enough to get this shot. It involved parking the car as close as possible to the camera as possible with the door open and idling. It’s was an automatic which complicated the pull off a bit but practice practice got me tripping the shutter, sprinting around the car jumping in, putting it in gear, then letting the handbrake down (because it was auto) and roaring off, driving far enough into shot before the Canon fired.

And that folks, is how to shoot yourself in a backroad drive-by.

Any comments, tips, tricks or our own solutions? Share them here.






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