photos of cars

[Tegan Payton]

My husband owns and is very proud of his husk of a 70 roadrunner, a 64 galaxy, and his prized possession is safe to say his 2003 mustang gt. Hard top, black.

I know this isn't a car forum, but as we move into our new home, I'd like to gift him/his garage with some cool car photos.
I just have no idea how to capture a car.. I know that with portraits you have certain attributes that need to happen for it to be a good picture. But what about cars...?

 

[Designer]

Doing cars well is not easy. They are large, so to get the entire car, you're going to have to either use a wide lens (can occasionally work) or move back so your longer lens will capture the whole car.

Sometimes detail images (small parts of a car) can be done quite well with less hassle, but details alone will not substitute for the whole thing.

Some problems associated with cars; lighting. Your lighting should be the largest possible source you can come up with. One way I can envision this is to construct a huge softbox, nearly the size of a garage, and powered by multiple flash heads. Another way (cheaper) is to obtain some large white cards, such as "foamcore" from which to bounce your flash. I have several that I purchased from a local art supply store. You will have to devise some way to hold these reflectors in such a way that the light will light up the car fairly evenly, or at least the darker parts leaving the lighter parts to be lit with the sky.

Another problem is that cars are shiny, so they reflect. Often, the reflected objects/lights/people will spoil an otherwise good shot. Watch for reflections while shooting. Some small reflections can be corrected in post, but large ones become a lot of extra work.

I hope you do this, and make a mix of overall shots and some detail shots as well. Please post the results, too! Good luck!

 

[tirediron]

Designer alluded to a couple of key points. When pros do this, they use multiple lights, and HUGE soft-boxes, some which are much larger than the car. Since I'm guessing that's just a little outside your budget, let Ma Nature do the work for you. Wait for a nice, overcast day (dark storm clouds are excellent for this), so that you get the largest soft-box of all. Since lighting for cars is very tricky, I would suggest shooting multiple images and combing for an HDR.

Use a polarizing filter to control reflections (Unless you luck out and get some cool reflections) and in addition to detail shots, shoot the car on angles; 3/4 front, 3/4 side, etc. Look for an appropriate area to shoot in; I like industrial/concrete and junk yards are cool too.

 

[wyogirl]

Its also very important to consider a good background. On the street isn't usually a good background. Dramatic skys, city views, etc... just drive around and "shop" for a good location.

 

[snowbear]

A wet street (not puddles) can really enhance car photos, if you are luck enough to shoot after a rain.

 

[lambertpix]

Great input above. I think one of the thing you'll need to figure out is whether you're going to shoot where they are or drive them to a location for a shoot. Hint: if you're shooting there in the garage, it's going to be at least as challenging as shooting at a car show -- maybe even worse because you won't have a lot of light. We've had a few good threads here with car photos, and there are tons of good examples on Flickr & 500px -- are there any examples or styles that you'd like to emulate?

 

[TheStunch]

whatever you do, just don't shoot from eye level, go up or down. Also, avoid head on shots, unless they are very carefully composed, as they tend to flatten the car. I'm not being a shameless self promoter, but I pretty much photo cars all day every day, and while I'm sure there's better work out there, check out my website, and my blog, for some examples of what has worked well for me.

The trick with cars is not to treat them like something for a catalog photo, but more like people, they have good sides and bad sides, so try to capture the good angles, also, it should be noted that a good car photograph doesn't simply record the object, but creates a mood, it creates feeling, so try to emotionalize the cars in a meaningful way.
hopefully that helps