Advice on truckspotting

[dsf.fernando]

My photography teacher adviced me to keep photographing, as my work on trucks didn't received a good grade. For the truck spotters here, which kind of advice would you give me to get the best possible pictures?

Currently i'm using a college camera, a Canon EOS 250D, with a single zoom lens.

[Underscore_101_]

I'm not a truck spotter and I haven't seen any of your photos, but I do like trucks and big machinery in general and photography is a big hobby for me, but I don't take photos of trucks specifically
Also don't know what you want to achieve, do you have a specific goal, like be a photographer for a magazine, or have a stock photo portfolio for prints people can buy, etc,.... or do you just want to take photos of trucks you like.

If you are the kind of truck spotter that finds a spot next to a highway or something and just photograph trucks that pass by, that will never get you any appreciation by your teacher.
That is assuming your teacher is an artsy fartsy photography teacher (and they all are).

If you want to gain some teacher appreciation, look for different angles, use light or the lack off light to your advantage, look for interesting details or comparisons, if you have the money, get a cheap(ish) 50mm 1.8 or better 1.4, lens (Nikon user myself, not up to date with Canon lenses) to get (a) nice bokeh (faded) backgrounds.
Learn how to use your aperture, for example a large aperture to get those lights look like stars (need ND filter), small aperture makes the background fade (bokeh).
Learn how to play with shutter speed, look into the use of ND filters, can be useful on bright days for truck photography to "slow" things down (for example get light trails even when it's not dark).

Watch Youtube videos about general photography.

edit: and don't be afraid to ask a trucker to take photos of his/her truck when they aren't driving (of course) and offer them a copy.

[dsf.fernando]

Yeah, my teacher liked the theme but gave me a particularly bad grade. I had to redo the entire essay in the local castle. Some of my pictures can be found at the Portugal research thread.

My main motivation now is to keep shooting, but only at weekends because i have to loan the college's camera (i have no money/job to buy one for now), and my main motivation is to help game developers, right now to help improving Iberia.

[Garrington_Levy]

The best advise I can give is have a look on Google/bing/etc for transport firms in your area and contact them to ask about going down to there depo and taking some photographs of their trucks, theres only two answers they can give really - yes or no - if they say yes, there is always a posssiblity of them wanting you to do some work for them if your images are of a high quality and earning a bit of money in the process too. Or find a flyover on a motorway/highway/ major road and just wait for a bit, which is always a less than interesting way but you do get the oppertunity to see some older or rarer trucks being used.

Your camera is absolutely fine for purpose. it is better than mine! Finding good angles, setting your iso and chosing the right 'mode' are critical, genreally sport mode is good as it means a much faster shutter speed, meaning your less likely to have blurry images, but really its all about just fiddling with the settings and finding the right one for the right moment, I use my phone for most photography these days as I still used a film SLR -got a 1988 Nikon F801, it was the first SLR camera to have duel processors and was codenamed 'the pig' due to the horrid noise it makes when running film. So you stand a far greater chance of getting some cool shots of trucks.

[dsf.fernando]

Is a cellphone camera proper? Right now i am using the phone camera to spot some rare / interesting automobiles, but only static.

[Underscore_101_]

You can do a lot with a phone camera nowadays though most effects are created digitally, it will never have the flexibility and quality and editing options a proper camera (with the right lenses) has.
The sensor is just too small for that, even if it can shoot RAW

idk what phone you have, but for a fraction of the price of a new S21, or soon s22, you can get a used Nikon D90 with a 50mm 1.4 (plus the standard 18-105mm it often comes with).

But what (phone) camera is best for you mostly depends on what you want to achieve, maybe a phone camera is all you need

edit, if memory serves me correct the D90 in my example doesn't have movie options, but you can get good (used) cameras for much less than a phone that have.

[busted85]

Regardless of what camera you are using. The proper exposure, light, and composition are the key to an image. I would find a nearby truck stop where you can get a ton of images. You can do shots on details, lifestyle and you could also do panning shots as they come in and out. I could look at what you have shot and critique them for you. I shoot mainly sports for the newspaper and landscape on the side. But I would be willing to help you out.

[dsf.fernando]

The problem is that right now i am restricted to the areas near home, since access to highways or nearby motorways is prohibited for pedestrians and bicycles, and the road near college is classified as a motorway. Right now i am restricted to the default camera app, i tried Camera FV5 and struggled with the configurations (specially shutter speed, for some reason the minimal speed the app allowed me to use was something like 1/1 or even slower).

[busted85]

That's odd the shutter wouldn't go any faster than that. That's hard to shoot anything that slow.

[Trenero]

Hello @dsf.fernando, I'm sorry not arrive on time to answer some of this but i just see that topic.
All cameras are a good camera if you know how to use it, so a smartphone camera could be perfectly good.
Every camara have limitations and strengths, try to know the limitations of your smarthphone camera that maner you could improve the photos avoiding that limitations for example like low light performance avoid photos on the dark or autofocus avoid fast subjects... try to find the sweetspot of your phone to take advantage of it to the max.

In my experience usually the best app for the smarthphone camera is the default phone camera, tend to be the fastest focusing and the best taking advance of the camera sensor.
This days some default cameras even have manual modes or RAW archives ouput, but if yours don't you can still make your camera do what you want, many phones have predefinied modes like, sports, pets, food, fireworks... each of this modes change the camera config if you know what do each(what parameters change) you can select the mode that change the parameters to the ones you want or need(like put the fireworks to do a long exposure for example).
Other thing about mobile phones, their cameras have supertiny sensors, so bigger apertures don't create big depth of field like cameras with apsc sensors, that can be and advantage like for example if your using manual focus with hyperfocal distance, or in some situations a disadvantage if you want blurry backgrounds.
For example in your case you said that your camera only have slow speeds you can take advantage of that putting your camera in burst and trying to do panning efect photos following the movement of the truck with the camera while is taking the photos that way probably in one of the photos of the burst the truck was perfectly sharp but the background will apear moved giving a sensation of speed to the photo(that efect is more expectacular if the backgroud have multiple diferent colours).

And don't forget that take the photo is only half of the work after you should improve it with some development software(Is better if your phone can shot RAW but if not this days software can do miracles with JPG also). Adjusting Contrast, Brigtness, high lights, sadows, colour, vigneting, framing, level... is very important to have a great final photo.
In my case i use google Snapseed in my phone a lot even to develop RAWs from my SLRs, when I need to send the photos fast in the moment, that even have brushes to adjust expusure in some places like puntual adjustment, or histogram manual adjustement.

About your teacher and the truckspotting, in my personal experience
(I have both experience being "standard" photographer and as trainspotter)all the photographic "styles" ended by "-spotting"(truckspotting, trainspotting, planespotting...) tend to be very niche, and the people that like the subject tend to like more a type of photos that probably will be mediocre to the "standard" photograpers taste.
The average "-spotting" photo tend to be a close-up of the vehicle taken with a zoom, and the entusiasts like it but like it more the rarest the vehicle will be, so they tend to value more the subject of the photo than the technical quality of the photo itself.
Than kind of photos for a photographer or a person outside that world tend to be all the same and a bit normal because they can see that kind of vehicles every day in a very similar way as they see it in the photo.
For example in my personal experience(trainspotting) you can show the worst tecnical quality photo and if that photo show a rare train for first time and you are the only one that have a photo of that people will love the photo and will crown you for being able to photograph it.
You can show 2 photos of the same train one a good closeup and one in a landscape shot spotters will like more the close up, but normal people probably will like more the landscape.

If you are here and asking I will think that you are a truck fan, so my advise is if you are trying to get photos that appeal the most public posible(Especially photographers) when you go out to take photos of the trucks try contain your truckspotter side and avoid the typicall truckspotter pic.
Try to do something diferent, photos must tell a story to the people that see it, try to have the best composition posible for each photo(remenber that you can crop the photo to improve it),try to give a context to the trucks in the photos(showing a bit of landscape for example), use close ups of the details to show textures, closeups of the details taking advantage of heavy contrasts between colours keeping the pic minimalist, close ups playing with the composition of the lines, if you have oportunity and permision you can also show driver portraits possing next to their truck or while doing their work, details that people usually don't see like wear on the parts of the truck, try to shot the trucks in angles that you normally don't see when you see a truck on the street(like extreme low-angle pics for example)
curves and cambers will give you more dinamic photos, (with the cab and the trailer in diferent angles and twisting)...
You have almost infinite posibilities, the trick is practise, "is not the bullet is the snipper "

And about the places I use a lot Google earth and now in many places you can even have 3d view that can show you the terrain and the angles in advance so you can see if the site is good.
Try to shot ever from public places, if not you must have permision from the owner. keep yourself safe shooting from outside the roads, you can shot trucks on the highways from bridges or fields more elevated.
You can also go to industrial or logistic areas that will have many truck traffic and they usually have pedestrian sidewalks and if your phone can shot at high speed probably the industrial areas are better.


Greetings

Pd:Sorry for my english