What you’ll need:

• Of course your Camera(s)!
• Extra batteries
• Extra digital storage cards (I assume you are using a digital camera by now)
• A few lenses (I prefer using my Nikkor 18-200mm and 35mm f/1.8)
• An external flash if your camera does not have a built-in unit.
• Bottle of glass cleaner
• Bottle of interior dressing (a dab of sunflower oil will work too)
• Bottle of tire shine (bring a bottle of sunflower oil if you don’t have real tire shine)
• Three clean rags (one soaked in water and wrung out, the other two should be dry)

Step One:

Wash your car, detail the interior and engine, and make sure not to leave any garbage, personal items or your Coach purse on the driver’s seat. It sounds ridiculously rational, but just look at Used Car magazines and see how many of the cars displayed aren’t gleaming. Make sure there aren’t any water spots. Make the paint seamless, the chrome dazzle, the tires sexy.

Step Two:

Be fastidious as to where you shoot your car. Make sure the background is complimentary to the subject, not a distraction (i.e. telephone poles, ungainly buildings or structures, trash and debris, etc) For example, if you use a building as a backdrop, find a reflective building or one where its color contrasts with the car’s hue. Don’t shoot a modern vehicle in front of an old building (unless it’s a retro car or motorcycle). In my experience, driving your car to a nearby open field or empty parking lot yield the best results. Finding the ideal setting may seem like a hassle, but the intention is to capture your viewer’s imagination.

Step Three:

Avoid the temptation of just taking the picture from eye level. Shoot from a ground-up, 45-degree angle to give the proportions of the car more impact. Otherwise, a lateral angle slightly above the vehicle, especially if it’s a convertible, giving the car copious grandeur. Shoot about 15-20 away from the subject. You can also experiment close shots with a wide angle lens or distance shots slightly zooming-in.

Step Four:

Show towards the sun but not directly into it. Shooting in the opposite direction of the sun can cause your shadow to cast onto the car, an undesirable effect. If properly positioned the light from the sun will reflect off the car and into the camera lens, which is especially beautiful if the sun is just at sunset. Shoot all angles of the full exterior body plus some angled close-up shots of body panels, such as the example shown.

Step Five:

Like a landscape shot, lighting will effect the composition and character of your car dramatically. The best lighting conditions are usually right after sunrise or just before sunset. The light is generally warm, seductive and forgiving – the complete opposite to mid-day sun that has a tendency to burn-out top surfaces, cause murky shadows in the lower regions and thoroughly bleaches-out cockpit and engine sections. Use flash during warm lighting conditions. It is also advisable not to photograph the car from the shadow side unless you compensate with flash.

Step Six:

Shoot dark interiors without flash, light interiors with flash. Park your car completely out of direct sunlight, as it can cause ghostly (and ghastly) shadows. The wider the angle your lens is set at the better. Ideally you can shoot looking in from both the driver’s side and passenger side, while not forgetting to shoot the rear seating area, close-ups of the dashboard, center console, and instrument panel.

Step Seven:

Finally, open the hood and take a few shots of the gleaming engine compartment, then the trunk area. Generally keep your flash on when shooting these darker environments. Take close-ups of vital engine components, Vehicle Identification Stickers, books and manuals, and any repair receipts you may have.

Step Eight:

Once you have the photos on your digital camera card, carefully look through them and delete any blurry, odd or poorly angled images. Also delete any clones, and if you have say four clones of the same angle then choose the best one and delete the rest.

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Step Nine:

Emailing your photos to anyone is sooo 1990′s. Rather, upload your incredible photos to a free image host like Google’s Picasa or Yahoo’s Flickr and email the link to potential buyers, place the link in your classified ad, and send the link to us so we can place your car on our website!

Example Photoshoot:

An example of a 1987 Porsche 928 S4 we sold last year. Pay attention to the lighting, the sun location, angles, and lens zoom or lack thereof. We recommend you print the following thumbnails out onto one page and bring with you on your shoot so you can try to duplicate.

What to Bring

• Of course your Camera(s)!
• Extra batteries
• Extra digital storage cards (I assume you are using a digital camera by now)
• A few lenses (I prefer using my Nikkor 18-200mm and 35mm f/1.8)
• An external flash if your camera does not have a built-in unit.
• Bottle of glass cleaner
• Bottle of interior dressing (a dab of sunflower oil will work too)
• Bottle of tire shine (bring a bottle of sunflower oil if you don’t have real tire shine)
• Three clean rags (one soaked in water and wrung out, the other two should be dry)

The Right Spot

Photographing cars poses unique problem regarding lighting, location, background distractions and of course ghastly tree shadows. As a rule of thumb, the more open the area the better. A desert setting is ideal, but if you don’t live in the Sahara try to find an empty parking lot, vineyard or open mountain road. Of course you can always park it in front of your neighbor’s perfectly manicured front lawn or driveway.

Always look with your eyes first, then through the lens second! Pay attention to your surroundings and use your instinct.

Settings to avoid:

• Trees (produces ugly shadows or reflections on the paint that can make it appear the car has been damaged and resprayed with non-matching paint). Stay as far away from trees as possible.
• Graffiti. No explanation needed. Just stay away.
• Pajama-wearing old men in the background. While we have produced excellent results with shooting cars on cobblestone shopping district roads with people walking all around, you don’t want to show any unsightly person in the background glaring at you in his underwear.
• Unsightly buildings or structures.
• Oil-spot covered or overly cracked pavement.
• Never take pictures of the car inside a garage (at least pull the car out first).
• Again, stay away from trees!

Ideal Settings:

• Best: wide-open areas (vineyard, country road, agricultural field, farms, desert, grassy park, beach)
• Good: district in village or city (cobblestone roads, historic sights/architecture, outdoor shopping area, town square)
• Adequate: Nice residential yard (grassy backyard, flowered driveway), church parking lot, quiet residential road

Lighting

The key to excellent car photos is Natural Ambient Light. The best day for a photoshoot is overcast clouds blocking direct sunlight, but letting just enough light in to make the car glow. Look up and find the sun. Where is it? If the sky is clear the ideal sun position is just before dusk or dawn. Midday sun is not recommended as it can cause several undesirable effects like glares, overexposure, and ugly interior and paint shadows. However, if you must shoot during a sunny day use a flash for exterior shots and then park the car under shade for interior shots.

Prepping the Car

(Time: 10-15 minutes)

Now that you have found the sweet setting, getting the car shiny and cleaned up comes next!

1. Make sure there is nothing in the car other than the original equipment. Take off the aftermarket steering wheel cover, seat covers, and remove shabby floor mats. Remove any garbage, personal belongings and anything hanging from the rear view mirror.
2. Take a dry rag and spray some interior shine spray on it or dab a few blotches of sunflower oil. Wipe down dashboard, instrument panel, interior door panels and seats (only if they are leather or vinyl). One of the dirtiest places in the interior are the brake and accelerator pedals. Clean them well. If floor mats are in good condition, don’t remove them. Shake them out.
3. Take another look around the interior and make sure it looks presentable!
4. Now take your damp rag and walk around the exterior. First wipe off the chrome bumpers well. Clean the wheel covers quickly and wipe off any unsighly blotches or dead bugs from the front grill. Wipe off any dirt or bird dropping from the paint. After the car looks clean double check the wheel rims and wipe off any black brake dust.
5. Spray a light coat of tire shine on tires. If you don’t have tire shine dab some sunflower oil on your now dirty damp rag and spread evenly around each tire. Use the same rag to quickly rub down any other rubber exterior parts like the bumper trim and mud flaps.
6. Now open the engine compartment and wipe down anything that looks unsightly with your now dirty damp rag. Add more oil to the rag for extra shine.
7. Open the trunk lid and inspect. Clean out anything that is not original equipment. The trunk can be a good place to lay out any service records or original booklets for display. Lay out these items neatly (fanning or mosaic).

The car should look presentable now. Next is the fun part!

The Photoshoot

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1Step One:

Exterior Wide Angle (18mm to 35mm focal length). Yield: 24-48 images.

Important. Make sure all windows, doors, hood and trunk lid are shut before shooting the car!

Position yourself directly in font of the car. Take three shots at different heights:

1. camera held above your head aiming at the car
2. camera waist high (crouch and look through viewfinder)
3. camera sitting on ground aiming at car

Then take two steps to the left and repeat above shots until you have shot a full circle around the car.Make sure to keep the entire car in the frame in all images. Don’t clip bumpers! Experiment with using a fill flash, some paint colors work well, some don’t.

Now take ten steps backwards and zoom in until the car fits in the frame. From this distance do another 360 shoot but at waist level only.

Examples:

2 Step Two:

Exterior Sectional Wide Angle (18mm to 35mm focal length). Yield: 12 images.

Get on your knees next to the headlight and shoot down an appealing angle down the side of the car. Shoot all four corners. At each corner take another shot down the bumpers/lights section.

Now stand up near the center of each passenger door and shoot towards the front nose and rear hatch area. Be mindful of your own reflection, unless you want to appear amateurish

Examples:

3Step Three:

Close ups of exterior and undercarriage. Yield: 10-20 images.

This is where you can start using your zoom lens. Instead of shooting directly at objects, use angle shots. Resist shooting directly into shiny chrome wheel covers and instead step to the side, crouch down and take angle shots. Angle shots of everything! Although your feet may be cute they don’t look good reflecting off the car. Take shots of emblems (at angle!), wheels, tires, headlights (at angle!), grill (at angle!!!), nice chrome door handles, convertible tops (if it has it), and anything else that looks pretty. Undercarriage: If you are using a DSLR with built in flash, turn on the flash, flip your camera upside down under your legs pointing under the car as low as you can, tilt the lens upwards under the car and take several blind shots. Try to keep the camera level. Of course you wont be using the viewfinder, so this can be difficult. Many will turn out bad, but hopefully you can get a few good ones.

Examples:

4Step Four:

Interior (ideal focal lengths: 10-18mm). Yield: 25-40 images.

Ultrawide angle is best for interiors. Shoot dark interiors without flash, light interiors with flash. But this not a rule, so experiment with both. Park the car completely out of direct sunlight, as it can cause ghostly (and ghastly) shadows. The wider the angle your lens is set at the better. Open all doors then shoot looking in from both the driver’s side and passenger side, then the rear seating area and wide angle shots of the dashboard, center console, and instrument panel. Again, resist taking shots at only at head level. Try kneeling and very low dramatic shots too. Now sit in the center of the back seat and shoot wide angle shots of the dash area. Keep shots centered and balanced. Line up the frame with level lines in the interior. Don’t forget the headliner and zoom shots of the odometer, other instruments, radio, and any other important interior items.

Examples:

5Step Five:

Engine Compartment, Identification Plates, Trunk Area and Paperwork (focal lengths: 18mm to 35mm) Yield: 10-20 images.

Really try to avoid taking pictures of a grimy engine compartment. Use those rags and window spray to clean it up. Better yet, have it professionally detailed before the shoot. Finally, open the hood and take a few shots of the gleaming engine compartment. Generally keep your flash on when shooting these darker environments. Take close-ups of vital engine components, Vehicle Identification Stickers, books and manuals, and any repair receipts you may have. Composing a wide angle shot from the left side, right side and center will suffice. Double shoot each position with flash on and flash off. Some engines look good lit up and some don’t. Don’t forget the trunk floor, spare tire, factory tool kit, owner’s manuals, service records and even the title if possible. Be creative!

Examples:

6Step Six:

Once you have the photos on your digital camera card, carefully look through them and delete any blurry, odd or poorly angled images. Also delete any clones, and if you have say four clones of the same angle then choose the best one and delete the rest.

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7Step Seven:

Emailing your photos to anyone is sooo 1990′s. Rather, upload your incredible photos to a free image host like Google’s Picasa , Yahoo’s Flickr, or the rising star Photobucket.com When your photos are hosted all you have to do is email the album link to potential buyers, place the link in your classified ad, and send the link to us so we can place your car on our website!

Ideal Photoshoot

An example of a 1987 Porsche 928 S4 we sold last year. Pay attention to the lighting, the sun location, angles, and focal length. We recommend you print the following thumbnails out onto one page and bring with you on your shoot as a guide. Of course try to make it even better!