One to One

Every issue, we join a top pro on a shoot. This month, Lauren Scott spends a Sunday morning with Amy Shore as she captures classic cars

Behind the scenes at a classic car day

While I know very little about cars, I recognise a good car image when I see it. I came across Amy Shore’s work on Instagram, and immediately wanted to find out how she creates her elegant and classy photographs. Perhaps knowing little about a subject or genre makes it more intriguing, but fortunately for me, Amy invited me along to a ‘Sunday Scramble’ event at Bicester Heritage to see her at work.

Bicester Heritage was founded in 2013 and is based at a beautiful 425-acre former RAF WWII bomber base. The site, which is north-east of Oxford, has quickly become a national hub for classic car enthusiasts. The meetup that I’d be attending runs several times throughout the year, but the January date is designed to shake off the post-Christmas and New Year inertia and encourage owners to take their prized vintage, classic or modern classic vehicles out for a bracing morning blast.

When I arrive at the Scramble, I find Amy already firing away with two Nikon DSLRs attached to her harness – one full-frame camera for each lens so that she doesn’t have to keep changing them. As I am going to be following her on a live shoot, I wonder whether she had a plan and shot list, or will adapt to the day as it unfolded. “Most of the time, especially with events, I try to blend in and be unnoticed,” she answers. “I want to photograph true reactions as honestly as I can.”

Amy had a loose brief from Bicester Heritage – to capture the atmosphere of the day – but is this always the case? “If I have certain things to photograph on a brief, I’ll spread those items out through my day so I’m not stressing about getting everything as soon as possible. Mostly, though, it’s wandering (or running, if I see a good shot about to happen!) and talking. Talking to people is by far the best way to get great images of people – simply being approachable.”

I don’t mind running about as Amy does. (At times she’ll take a lunge for camera stability, or crouch down for a dynamic low angle). Like so many pros, she sticks to Manual mode when shooting, so that she’s got full control over her exposure. On the day, the light is flat and even, and that means changing settings is less frequent.

“I tend to stick the lens on f/1.4 because I love the look it gives,” Amy says. “I always use Manual, and today I’m only really changing my shutter speed. I’ll increase the ISO later when we’re inside the hangar, though.” Amy’s white balance is set to Auto mode, but this can be changed at the editing stage. We both agree that sometimes the camera really does know best, rather than what we think.

As I shadow Amy (looking very much like her new assistant) she tells me more about Bicester Heritage, as well as how she got into automotive photography. “I’m photographing for Bicester Heritage itself. It was one of my earliest-ever clients, around four years ago. At the time, it had only just begun renovating a couple of the buildings and I photographed one of the early Sunday Scrambles – it may even have been the first one. This event is a real comfort to me because of that: Bicester Heritage’s growth has exploded, and it has seen me grow as a photographer, too.”

Amy’s career has taken off and snowballed since her first event, but while she had always liked photography, she never thought it was a realistic job opportunity. It wasn’t until her final year of university “when I was studying something I definitely wouldn’t get a job in” that she decided to spend her student loan on her first full-frame camera, a Nikon D600.

“With that camera, I started shooting weddings. When friends of my dad asked me to photograph a car they had built, in all honesty I had no idea how to photograph a car. But I said ‘yes’ anyway, shooting it like I would a wedding couple – looking for the best features, angles and lighting. The same month, I went to a Goodwood Revival event and captured the incredible atmosphere of the classic car world, being only a little into classic cars at the time. The images from these shoots kickstarted my career.”

We’re often told to pursue our passions – but if you love cars, Amy encourages you to forget you’re shooting a car. “I think

I prefer using the viewfinder. I like to really feel the image, if that makes sense.

I’ve done well with car photography because I was never into cars when I started. It was purely an object I was attempting to highlight the best features of.”

Thinking that we should touch on settings and technique a bit more, I’m unsurprised to find out that Amy always shoots in raw mode rather than JPEG, so that she can capture the full tonal range of a scene. She also tends to underexpose slightly, so that she can bring back details at the editing stage. “I always use the light meter displayed in my viewfinder, so I can more or less see where I am.”

At Bicester Heritage, I’m slightly amazed by the amount of ‘big’ cameras I see flying around. Amy might have two of them, but she’s definitely in favour of honing skills before buying new gear. “To look like a ‘proper’ photographer, there’s an assumption that you need to have the newest camera.

“Skill outweighs gear any day. You can learn composition, but it’s something that then has to occur naturally. You can have a bad photographer with the best camera setup on the market, but they’ll create high-quality bad photos.” That being said, Amy does like using her two DSLRs and wide-aperture prime lenses, because it’s what she’s learnt to shoot on and feels comfortable with.

As the day ends, gear and career tips aside, I consider Amy’s best piece of advice for aspiring professionals. “Comparison is the thief of joy. Never stop trying to improve yourself, but stop comparing yourself with others.”