Be a speed demon

Have fun photographing friends and family using a car-mounted camera

We’re going to show you how to create a powerful image of a car that’s seemingly screaming down the road. Essentially, we’ll be mounting the Nikon to the car we’re shooting with a suction-mounted attachment (we used the Delkin Fat Gecko mount) so the Nikon moves with the car, ensuring it stays sharp while the background blurs due to the movement of the car.

Then, sat in the passenger sear, we’ll trigger the Nikon to take photos as the car is driven along (we advise getting someone else to drive, as you’ll be busy shooting). Our friend, Matt, took us out for a spin in his BMW Z3 Roadster, nicknamed ‘The Beast’, which is capable of some eye-watering speeds. Surprisingly, though, you won’t need to drive very fast at all to make this shot work, so don’t worry about breaking the speed limit. Trundling along at around 10mph should work fine because it’s the slow shutter that’ll give the sense of speed by blurring the background.

We’ll use a Speedlight to light up the driver and inside of the car, and underexpose the background to place the emphasis was on the vehicle. As we’re shooting in the middle of the day, we’ll use a variable neutral density filter to darken the entire frame, thus enabling a longer shutter speed to blur the background whilst the car moves. So that’s the concept, let’s see how it’s done…