RC Car Action Readers’ Rides: 8 Steps to Get In

RC Car Action Readers’ Rides: 8 Steps to Get In

“Readers Rides” is one of the most popular columns in the magazine, and we receive a lot of mail and emails with your vehicles every day. While we’d love to share each and every submission, often we can’t always show vehicles because of the [poor] quality of the photos that were provided. Taking photos of your ride is super easy to do. Just follow the guidelines listed here:

Shoot outside

That’s right; photograph your vehicle outside, not on your bed or on your counter. You don’t run your RC car inside, so why would you shoot a picture of it inside? Believe it or not, we see this all the time, and those photos are the first ones to get tossed.

Shoot when it’s sunny

A photo taken in the sun is always better than one taken when it’s cloudy. It will give your vehicle proper light and make it look a million times better. When taking the picture of your vehicle, make sure the sun is behind you so that you don’t have any shadows covering up any details.

Use a good camera

You don’t need to use a professional camera to get the job done. A point-and-shoot type is all you need to get cool photos of your vehicle. Cell-phone cameras aren’t all that great yet and won’t give you good results. Make sure that your camera lens is clean before you click.

Shoot on the proper surface

If you have a monster truck or off-road vehicle, shoot it sitting on dirt. Do you have an on-road car? Well, place that on the pavement. It’s always best to shoot a vehicle on the surface it was meant to be driven on.

Fill the frame

When looking at the view finder or screen on your digital camera, make sure you fill the frame with your vehicle. It doesn’t need to take up 100 percent of that area, but make it fill at least 80 percent. Less than that isn’t about the vehicle anymore. The photo becomes more about the vehicle and its surroundings instead, and will be even more about the surroundings depending on how far away you are from the vehicle.

Make sure it’s in focus

Believe it or not, we get photos that are out of focus all the time. If you get your photos back, or download them to your computer, and see that they aren’t in focus, don’t send them to us. Instead, go back outside and reshoot your vehicle.

Give us all your information

We can’t show off your vehicle if we don’t have all the information about it. Why did you send it in? What did you do to it? What parts did you use? These are all things you need to ask yourself when writing up the information on your vehicle.

Look at Readers Rides

The best way to see how to photograph your vehicle is to look at Readers Rides in RC Car Action. That will give you an idea of what we are looking for when we select vehicles. You can even take the magazine with you to use as a reference when shooting your vehicle.

You’re in

Now that you know what we look for when choosing vehicles for Readers Rides, you can go and shoot photos of your vehicle and send them in. You can email them to me at kevinh@airage.com, or email them to readersrides@airage.com, or mail them to us at Air Age Media, 88 Danbury Rd., Wilton, CT 06897.

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Updated: May 23, 2011 — 1:28 PM
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