Over the past little while, I’ve been playing with shooting cars and learning the ins and outs of car photography and lighting etc. This whole genre of photography is proving to be quite interesting and challenging, which is driving me to try new things and experiment. My latest experiment is with a car camera rig that allows me to shoot cars in motion.

I’ve been researching and buying parts for this rig for a while. Most of the parts are easily available and reasonably priced. But like most things in the photography world, there are retail products that you can buy which are incredibly over-priced, and there are do-it-yourself options. In this case, the crazy expensive part was a $600+ aluminum pole – not such a happy festivus miracle. So, being the type of person that refuses to pay crazy prices for something that I can fabricate myself, I went the DIY route when it came to the pole. That proved to be a proper pain in the neck, but I did save a lot of money once I was able to source all the parts.

Once I had accumulated all the parts I needed it was time for a test drive (literally). Easy right? All I had to do was stick a couple of suction cups to my car, hang a 16 foot pole off of them with my camera hanging off the end… oh… and drive around while taking pictures. What could possiblie go wrong? Nothing to worry about… but just in case I did wrap my camera in some bubble wrap and gaffers tape… you know, just in case.

Luckily it all went exactly as planned… well, it did take a couple of tries to get everything in the right place, but I managed to get a couple of good shots out of it. Not bad for the first test run, and I already have bigger plans for this setup. Next time, I may even wash the car first. Hey it was only a test run!