Car photography: My new interest - Part 1

The last few weekends I have been attending automobile "lawn events" at the Larz Anderson Automobile Museum in Brookline, MA.  Each Sunday for six months there is a different theme; for example, "Swedish Day" or "Triumph Day".  At each of the four events I have attended so far this year, by the time you walk in the gate at 10 a.m. ($10 admission fee or $30 annual membership) perhaps 50 cars are parked and "displayed" on the lawn in front of the museum.

The museum doesn't own the cars.  They are privately owned and come from all over.  I saw one car with Ontario plates.  Many of them are show cars.  For example, last weekend I saw a 1959 Mercedes 190SL with 230 original miles on it.  Others, like some of the muscle cars I saw on another weekend, are definitely "driving" cars.  This was made obvious at the end of the show as muscle cars drove off into the sunset to the sound of screeching tires and deep-throated engines.

Anyway... I knew very little about car photography when I attended my first event.  I still don't know much.  I do recall starting out by taking documentation or record shots using my Sony NEX camera and the 16-50mm kit lens.  I was taking wide angle shots of the entire lawn area and images of single cars.  But I soon thought it would be more interesting to take pictures of people looking at cars (I secretly want to be a "street" photographer) or pictures isolating small closeup pieces of cars, like a wheel or name plate.

Starting with the second show, I added my Olympus to my gear and affixed a long lens with fast aperture.  The shallow depth of field pictures I was then able to take will be included in my next post, Part 2.

Wide angle shots at the top; closeups at the bottom

Sony NEX 6 with 16-50mm