Photographing cars can present unique challenges and it’s hard to do right. A friend of mine is a dealer of rare and vintage cars and hired a “professional” photographer to take pictures of some of her cars when she was behind schedule one week.
I watched the photographer work, he was using a Canon camera with a 430 EX II on a bracket handle with a bounce card. It didn’t seem right to me, but it wasn’t my job so I kept my nose out of it.
The photos were dreadful. Beyond bad and that’s not just my opinion as a photographer, that was the client’s opinion. They were worse than the pictures she took with her little point-and-shoot. I don’t think I would have even delivered the photos I saw. If I screwed up a job that bad, I’d just give them their money back.
Cars are hard to shoot because they’re so reflective and with clear coats, pearalesent paint, and a variety of waxes and finishes employed, those reflections are rarely uniform and can cause bad things to happen to your photos.
Job One, Cut The Glare
A rotating polarizing filter is a must for shooting cars. You can eliminate most reflections, or, ideally, tone them down to the point they don’t distract from the picture. Sometimes a complete lack of reflections is unnatural looking, particularly in glass.
With a rotating polarizer you can pick the amount of reflection you want, though do be aware that with some types of custom paint, a polarizing filter can yield some strange results.
Don’t Touch
If you’re at a car show or vintage car show, never touch a vehicle without the owner’s permission. The velvet ropes are there for a reason. Most owners are very approachable and will gladly help you stage photos, especially if you volunteer to send them copies.
Try to get them to remove the show placards and Do Not Touch signs if at all possible.
Lighting
The best lighting is light overcast daylight, open shade, or golden hour daylight just after the sun has set. The worst lighting is indoors with fluorescent or arc lighting.
Lighting with strobes presents its own unique set of problems. Getting something the size of a car to light evenly with strobes is going to be a challenge. Situations like this is where you’ll be glad you bought high quality light stands because you want to get your soft boxes up as high as your stands will go. I’ve never been able to get really good car shots with handheld lighting, but there are show offs like Steve Demmit who pull it off.
Some big shops that do a lot of high-end vehicle photography have banks of softboxes suspended from the ceiling in a studio the size of a garage.
Movement
Know what you’re doing before attempting any shots of or from a moving car. As you can see in this video, the car doesn’t have to be moving that fast, or even moving forward, to get the sensation of speed at slow shutter speeds. Walking speed is plenty fast enough.
Working out on public streets is illegal in some places, though if you use a bit of common sense it’s rare anyone gets in trouble.