Hints on getting good pics:
1. Match the background properly with your car.
• Look for elements that might look like they’re “poking up through your car,” like signs and trees.
• Generally, elements like lines in a parking lot are distracting. Ditto for power lines, phone lines.
• Make sure that your car stands out from the background.
2. Look for interesting angles.
• ¾ angles tend to work well
• Head-on shots and side-on shots tend to be weak…but they can work.
• Try getting high above your car or on the ground for other interesting angles.
3. Make sure your car is reasonably obvious. For instance, don’t bury it in the background. At the same time, be careful to not cut off any parts of the car, and leave a little room to account for any necessary cropping.
4. Light
• Usually, it’s best to have the sun behind you and possibly to one side. For most shots, having the sun in the shot or shining from above is not good.
o Best hours for light are the first few hours of the day, or the late afternoon or early evening.
o Shooting within a couple of hours of noon tends to result in weaker photographs that look flat.
o Sometimes using a flash, even in daylight, can help fill in some dark areas. On the other hand, there are some dark areas, like, say the radiator, that tend to look better dark.
o Overcast days tend to yield better results than bright sunny days.
5. Things that I don’t necessarily agree with, but which a lot of people say, so I feel you should know:
• Make sure the front rims are facing the camera.
o I think this tends to be true, but like all compositional questions, it can sometimes be ignored
• Don’t shoot your car on the grass.
o This is a lot more problematic. Some cars look great on grass; others don’t. I think a well-framed, well-composed shot on grass beats a poorly-framed, poorly-composed shot on a parking lot, especially if the parking lines are distracting from the car.
