SUVs blocking my images.

I am used to not being able to see over the SUV in front of me when I

drive, but I've now discovered they also get in the way of my

photography. I am interested in photographing buildings in my town

and cityscapes in general. In most cases I have to get on the

opposite side of the street and even with a 75 mm lens, I can

sometimes just barely make it. Ordinary sedans on my side don't block

the image signficantly, but those SUVs and vans really get in the way.

 

I suppose I should just wait until the late spring ans summer when I

can get out there really early before they have had a chance to park. ;-)

Or, get one yourself, and stand on top of it. ;-)

Those SUVs are gonna look 'classic' in a few years with shots like this, so leave them in. Those long gaudy 70s, two-door barges in an archive photo of any given built environment scene is a plus. So, shoot the bling bling and wait for it to age to perfection.

I don't know if I agree with that answer, but it's pretty darned funny.

I live in Saratoga Springs, NY. A while back I tried to reproduce some of those famous Walker Evans photographs of downtown Saratoga - you know, the ones with the 1930's vintage automobiles diagonally parked along the street.

 

But I encountered a number of problems:

 

- Evans photographed from the second floor veranda of the old Grand Union Hotel. That building was torn down 40 years ago. I had to stand on the sidewalk in front of the new Borders store, and the perspective was awful.

 

- Evans photographs show both sides of the street fairly well. On close inspection, the trees in his photographs are much smaller than they are today, and they didn't have leaves - he must have photographed in either late Fall or early Spring. It looks different in Summer, and cutting down the trees isn't an option.

 

- I encountered some of those SUVs also, only they are parallel-parked now to free up additional space for additional lanes of traffic on the street. Whatever happened to the old black 1930's vintage Hudson's and Chevy's?

 

- When I tried to change my perspective by moving down the street a few hundred feet, the owner of a restaurant hassled me for occupying space on "his" sidewalk. It seems that the town fathers now have a policy of allowing shop owners to construct little cafes along what used to be a fully public sidewalk. It looks quaint, al fresco dining is pleasant, and it does produce a small amount of incremental income for the town, but it also limits the ability of photographers to work.

 

Seriously, my point is that the photographs that we make reflect what we see - and it is a fact that we see a lot of SUVs today. A photogaph of your town with all those H2s lined up along the sidewalk will become as classic 20 years from now as Evans photographs of my town in its distant past now appear to be. So include them in your composition as part of the life you are recording on film.

This issue is similar to that of protruding utility poles and cables. These can be cloned out in Photoshop nicely. For cars, trucks, buses and similar moving pests you may want to try a timed exposure of at least 15 seconds, with a low iso film and a dark ND filter. The moving subjects will be blurred (i.e. attract less attention) and possibly even vanish entirely. Make sure cars have their lights off. You can obviously use this to develop your style!

 

 

It won't help for parked vehicles, of course. I found that people are surprisingly willing to lend their higher floor rooms and roofs with views, so that you avoid the parked cars and have a more natural perspective (particularly with your 75mm) as a bonus!

 

 

Trust this helps.

 

 

Mark

Get yourself a bunch of orange road cones, scout your location the night before and place them along the sidewalks.<br>

Either that or become really good with Photoshop...

<br><br>

Guy

Look at the work of Ezra Stoller, photographing the modern architecture of the 1950's- '60s. Seagram building, Lever House, TWA terminal, Guggenheim, etc., and enjoy the lumpish '40s behemoths and tailfinned '50s monsters that park in his foregrounds. I look at my own prints from 20 years ago and see mostly American cars...

Feel free to climb on top of any full-sized SUV, provided that you use rubber feet on your tripod legs. The other option is a periscope-style ground glass viewer that will allow you to place your camera on a very tall tripod. Occasionally, surplus viewers are available at www.sovietnavy4sale.ru.

Leonard, I just received a demo version of SUViewPro. Its a plug-in to Photoshop that illiminates vehicles of your choice from digital images. You have to get a 'model-year update' once per year, however.

 

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with images that originated from cameras that use any kind of geometric correction. The software engineers are still working the bugs out of that one.

 

Seriously, though, I whole heartedly ditto the comments of others that automobiles are part of our urban architecture. In fact, most recent communities were built completely around the automobile, especially western-US cities, built on grids.

 

Its also a sad fact of life that with the collusion of corporate land developers with local governments, this trend will probably continue unabated.

 

I'm no anti-business socialist, but there are times when I wish for a more pedestrian-oriented city architecture to the urban sprawl that is my home town. And documenting the facts of our local environs, for future generations to behold, is a worthy task, indeed.

 

BTW, Leonard, are you going to publish a complete book on your DOF and optics knowledge? Your ability to explain them to the lay-photographers out here is impressive.

Be sure to <a href="http://www.changingtheclimate.com/index.html">tag</a> those damn SUV's!

You could do like AA, get your own SUV and photograph from the top of it...........

A year ago I witness one of the most surreal scenes I've ever witnesed. I had already had to move my tripod once that day because some couple in Mercedes SUV decided to park their car right in front of my shot, even though there was plenty of parking space a little further down the block. They see me shooting and it never occurs to them to not park their SUV in front of my camera- and they could be bothered with moving their car a few feet forward when I asked them.

 

So later that day I am shhooting on a side street a few blocks over, but I'm shooting this tree and highrise in the distance so the cars parked directly in front of me aren't in the way. I am just getting ready to shoot when a Black SUV just like the one blocking me earlier double parks in front of me. No big deal since I'm shooting upwards. Then within five minutes the entire block fill with Black SUV's of varying types- BMW's, Mercedes, Range Rovers, etc. It turns out that a rich private school was down the block, it was three o'clock, and these parents- none of whom had an original thought in their head were all driving black SUV's- and basically blocking the street while they pick up their little darlings. My shot wasn't affected until I look down the street and I see a school bus coming that can't get past this sea of SUVs. So I start hurrying up to get my shot- and in my haste I shoot off 3 frames in 6x9 holder- without removing the dark slide. I had one frame left in the holder by the time I realized what I had done- and the school but is almost in the shot.

 

I could just about scream ever explicative I could think of, when at the precise moment I realize I left the dark slide in this lady shows up asking if I was shooting her house. My camera was not pointed at her house- it was pointed up toward the tree and highrise. I told her that but she wasn't having any of it. She keep on asking me if I was a developer and why I was interested in her house. I told her I am a photographer and I was strictly shooting for the beauty of fall colors- not for a client. She still wasn't having any of it, saying anybody with the elaborate equipment I was shooting with had to be doing it for money, and demanding to know what real estate company I was working for- she wanted know because she was selling her home.

 

It took every thing within me not blow up in this woman's face. Finally she give up and I can concentrate on not blowing this last frame. The school bus is almost in the scene, the sun is going down, and with this instant yuppie made traffic jam ahead, the shot won't be there when the bus finally passes. I decide to bias my only exposure towards 3/4 underexposure. Dropped it off at Triangle Photo just down the block, and picked up at 6:00. It was by far the best shot I did that day.

Got RPG?

If they are moving, using a dark enough ND filter will give you a shutter speed

long enough so that they won't even record on film. If they are parked, try

shooting in a more graphic style with a 210mm or longer lens...

Three words... Rocket Powered Grenade! :-) that will get them out of the way.

I'm just wondering if the shot above should have been of all the black SUV's;

Surely a sign of the times.