Ten Easy Steps to Better Car Show Shots

See the giant hot-spot around the back of the car, where the sun is reflecting? Yowza!

We’ve seen it a million times: car show photos shot at noon. Tired of your car-show shots looking lousy? It may not be your equipment. Here are 10 easy tips to making your car show photos look degrees better than they have in years past. They’re the basics, and will work for people using point-and-shoot digital photos as well as the giant digital SLRs that the Hemmings staff uses in their daily life. No tripods or crazy special equipment necessary.

1) Get there early. High-noon sun has a tendency to make weird shadows on the sides of the car, and wash out the sides in favor of the sunny (top) side. It makes for an uneven photo. Morning (or late-afternoon) sun will shine on the sides of the car, casting it all in a warm glow.

2) Make sure that the sun is behind you. Shooting into the sun makes for lens flare and harsh shadows that your camera may not be able to compensate for. Cloudy days make this easier, but even when it’s diffused, shooting into the light can make for odd results.

3) Don’t always shoot at eye level. Cars take on a whole new shape when seen from a level that you don’t normally see them at. Try holding the camera high above your head, or drop it down low (ie, knee-level) for visual interest. Use the screen on the back of your point-and-shoot to help you center things.

4) Get out of your own shadow. We want to see the car, not you. If you’re in the shadow, take a step either way and get out of it. If you’re not sure whether your shadow is in the shot, hold the camera with one hand and wave—if you see yourself waving back, move.

5) Similarly, move to avoid “hot spots.” Really shiny cars will have pinpoints of light on various curves and points on the body. Try to move yourself around so that they’re minimized.

6) Fill the car in the frame. If you’re shooting one car, we don’t need to see half of the cars on either side of it too. Use your viewscreen and fill it—but don’t go cutting off the ends either. Filling the screen will also help you center the car in the frame.

7) Shoot at the highest resolution possible. You never know what you’re going to do with those photos—send ‘em to friends? Get prints made? Send them to a magazine somewhere? Shooting at internet-quality 72dpi is good if you’re going to post them on the internet. Otherwise… go high-res. (And I don’t want to hear about the cost of camera cards, I found a two-gig SD card for $9 at a major chain store last month. Memory is cheap now.)

8) Ditch the date on the camera. We don’t care when they were shot, and we don’t need to see the date in the pic. A time code is embedded into the picture’s information and is easily found.

Terrible shot all around. Nose cut off from the top and side, hood open, some other dude taking photos in the background, shadowy side of the car, and shot from eye-level.

9) Close the hood. Open hoods are great if you want to look into the engine bay for details to use on your own car. However, if you just want a nice shot of a car, open hoods can look weird. They provide color and shape to the car in your photo; shoot low and it blocks the windshield, shoot high and you’re looking down into a black hole. If the owner of the car is there, and the hood is up, don’t be afraid to ask if they can lower the hood for a shot. Often, owners will accommodate if you ask with a smile and that magic word “please.”

Cool shot…cooler with the people out of the way, and if it had been taken lower, but not bad

10) Take a deep breath and wait for people to get out of the way. We want to see the car, not someone’s dodgy fashion choices. Although, having done this a million times, there’s nothing like standing there, camera at the ready, poised to take a picture, when someone wanders into frame and blocks your shot. And stands there. And doesn’t move. You can always wave, say excuse me, and politely ask them to move for a second, so that you may take your shot and be on your way. Or, so you don’t lose your perfect spot that has good sun, no weird shadows and no hotspots, ask your betrothed/fiancé/lover/kid to go and ask them to move for a  second.