Drive-By Photography

Some thoughts on drive-by photography

Drive-by photography is just that – taking photos from a moving vehicle. It might be done when it is not possible or inconvenient to stop. Many of my drive-by sessions are planned as part of journeys. It can be a rich way of capturing towns and countryside that otherwise are way too difficult to reach.

My preferred way is to shoot from the passenger side backseat through an open window. That eliminates all the problems of reflections and dirty glass. There are plenty of other challenges to this type of photography.

For this article I have chosen photos from one day of travel through Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

First and foremost is the fact that you are moving. Often quite fast.

From the back seat you only have a few seconds to recognize an opportunity. In drive-by photography there is no such thing as the decisive moment – you better shoot while the scene is in view.

For this discussion let’s slow down to 30 miles-per-hour. That is a reasonable speed in urban areas. At that speed you are moving about 4 inches in 1/125 of a second (ok, 4.192 inches). That can result in significant motion blur, which means that panning is desirable. Besides, it is natural to point the camera at the subject you picked out and follow it as it goes by.

Even with panning, objects between the camera and subject will be blurred. That sign on the edge of the road is still going by essentially at car speed. An object halfway between will be appear to be moving at half that speed. That can make for interesting effects, or annoying motion blurring.

Allow me to illustrate.

Here the camera was pointing into the SUPER FUN ZONE! store. The passersby are clear and sharp. The somewhat closer folks by and on the bench at the left show distinct motion blur. That is even more noticeable in the railing and the tree at the right, objects much closer to the camera.

Now let me jump ahead and show you what technology can do nowadays.

In this image, processed with Topaz Labs Sharpen AI, the people by the bench are much sharper and you can see the slats in the lower part of the railing. (There is also subtle perspective correction applied.)

Another example.

Here the folks are walking in the opposite direction of the car motion, making the motion blur larger. This photo also brings up another concern – depth of field. This was shot at f/5 with the focus on the buildings in the background. When things go by fast you can’t take time to focus, with autofocus the camera might pick the wrong subject. Best to use a smaller aperture, say f/8 or f/11, and with the lens set to wide-angle for greatest depth of field, set manual focus to the hyperfocal distance.

Can technology rescue this photo?

Much better, don’t you think? This didn’t make it into my Street Photography project, but it is acceptable.

Here is a screen capture of Topaz Sharpen AI working on that image.

Especially in urban areas there is another problem. It is easy to tilt the camera up to get in a view – after all, we can’t back up in this situation. So getting the “building-falling-over syndrome” is all too frequent. Here is a frame as it came out of the camera:

We pretty much are forced to turn to technology for the rescue. Doing perspective correction is almost mandatory in drive-by photography.

One last consideration. Light. You have little control over light. You need to work with what you get. However, there is one choice that can make the difference. On the trip that resulted in the photos used here, we were travelling north. I chose the right side of the car so the afternoon sun would be mostly behind the camera. You can, in fact, see the shadow of our vehicle in this photo.

Here, then, my …

Tips for Drive-By Photography

1. Don’t drive. Let somebody else do the driving. Drive slow when safe, keep up with traffic, and mind the road.
2. Pick the side of the vehicle with the better light. You can’t get everything. Leave the other side for another day.
3. Open the window if possible, to avoid reflections and dirty glass.
4. Use a wide-angle lens, or the wide-angle setting on a zoom lens. Cropping for composition can be done at post-processing.
5. Choose a fast shutter speed, maybe 1/250 sec or higher. Motion blur is the bane of drive-by photography.
6. Pan with the scene. There will still be motion blur in front of and behind the subject you pick, but panning will get you much better photos.
7. Choose an aperture for good depth of field, f/8 or f/11.
8. Use manual focus set to the hyperfocal distance for maximum depth of field.
9. Let the camera set the ISO. Even if it gets to be fairly high, much of the noise can be eliminated with modern tools.
10. Make full use of post-processing tools for tuning the exposure, cropping for composition, perspective correction, sharpening and noise reduction.
11. Have fun!

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.:. © 2024 Ludwig Keck