Taking better car photos: 5 essential tips & tricks

Here are 5 tips for taking better car photos, courtesy of motoring journalist and photographer Ben Griffin. So grab your camera and prepare to learn.

Taking better car photos can be tough. Unlike people, four-wheelers can’t smile, change into a different outfit or complain that you’re taking too long to capture the moment. Unless you’re David Hasselhoff and the car is KITT from Knight Rider.

Nor can they climb over a fence for the perfect background. They are, in fact, rather large, which makes using depth of field for a blurry background more difficult, and rather hard to manoeuvre, which makes it harder to find the right location.

Still, with the following five tips and practice you should find life a bit easier. In fact, all of these can be applied to any type of landscape or portrait photography and not just cars.

I’d like to make this a regular thing so if you have any car photos you are proud of and would like to learn how to improve them, feel free to send them to me at atribecalledcars@gmail.com. I will then potentially do a video where I show you the finished result and what I did.

1) Taking better car photos: Make your photo say something

People often say you need a photo to tell a story. I think it’s easier imagine your photo saying one sentence or word. That could be anything from ‘look how cool this car is’ to ‘my car in the sunset’. Just a short description in your head that gives you a theme.

Then use that theme for the composition. If the photo shows a frantic race, maybe deliberately choose an angle that enhances a sense of chaos. If the theme is speed, consider reducing the shutter speed to add blur.

Whatever you do, just try to make sure it fits with the feeling you want the photo to create when someone looks at it.

2) Taking better car photos: Straighten those edges

This is a more practical tip. Given that a car spends most of its life outside and that you probably don’t have one of those elevators that brings it into the living room, there is a strong chance the background will feature a landscape. One easy-to-avoid mistake that can ruin a photo is a wonky horizon. Unless you‘re deliberately making a statement, it usually looks wrong.

Hop into image editing software such as photoshop or a smartphone photo editing app. Use the transform or crop function to rotate the image as necessary. You may see grid lines that will help you make sure the horizon is completely flat. If not, draw a straight line and use that.

If there isn’t a horizon but there’s at least one straight edge, whether horizontal or vertical, fix that instead unless it comes at the detriment of your photo. If there are multiple straight edges but only one can be correct, make it the most prominent one.

You may need a little trial and error to perfect the technique, but honestly it’s a simple trick that can make a world of difference.

3) Think about the light

Some think of a good photographer as a master of their camera. In reality, they are a master of lighting. Learning how to make it work for you is probably the most important thing when it comes to taking better car photos. Or, in fact, any type of photo.

As nice as it is to be out and about at midday in the summer, soaking up the rays, this is a bad time for photos because of harsh shadows.

In fact, direct sunlight and generally very bright conditions makes life more challenging. Over-exposure being one of a few potential issues you need to watch out for.

There are also times of the year when you get long shadows, which can creep into a photo if you aren’t careful. Or you have to deal with shorter days because it gets darker more quickly in winter.

Ideally, you want clouds to help diffuse the light and reduce direct sunlight. Or hide in shade. If this is impossible, embrace either a shadow or bright light as opposed to a bit of both. Alternatively, use a diffuser or buy some cardboard and stick foil to it and bounce the light onto your subject. Just don’t give them sunburn.

For the best lighting, the golden hour, which is just after sunrise and before sunset, is hard to beat. It adds a golden hue, which can provide warmth and beauty. You can cheat a bit and add this on a cold day by adjusting the colour temperature.

Also consider a lens filter for two reasons. One, it allows you to keep the aperture wide open and enjoy background blur. Two, a polarising filter reduces car reflections and can help you see through glass. I’ll put links to all my kit in the description.

Those really serious about photo editing should definitely switch on RAW image capture. JPEGs are great in some situations such as when speed matters, but the ability to fine-tune an image or rescue areas of under-exposure are greatly reduced. Just remember they take up more space on your memory card. On my Sony A7RII, for instance, a photo is 43-odd-megabytes.

4) Consider black and white

Some cars and objects just look great in black and white. It’s just such a timeless style that works particularly well with classic and vintage machinery. It also really brings out contrast and can be used to create a more atmospheric photo.

To do this, you can cheat a little and use software called Nik which works within Photoshop. It has various presets and useful functionality to make a photo look good in black and white. Not cheap, but the results are worth it.

Alternatively, you can use Photoshop’s black and white function or any smartphone app if using your phone. There’s Lightroom Mobile, Pixlr, Afterlight, Snapseed and VSCO to name a few of the good ones.

Alternatively, you can switch your camera or smartphone to black and white mode if it has that feature. Usually it’s a creative style or picture profile.

Or, if you have loads of money and are really serious, you could buy a Leica Monochrome because it only takes black and white photos. Overkill, yes, but Leicas do take nice photos.

Just remember that capturing a photo in colour usually gives you more data to convert to black and white later. And, of course, if you shoot without colour there’s never an option to revert if you change your mind.

5) Improve the final image

So, you’ve been out, done the photo shoot and are happy with what you got. Now it’s time to first go through all the photos and rate them from 1 to 5. For me, if it’s below a 3 it’s out. 4s can be made a 5 with editing and 5s obviously are great.

This system will help you whittle down even the snappiest shooter’s memory card to something more manageable. Be ruthless. Think to yourself, would you be proud to show this to someone you care about? If not, then it’s maybe not good enough.

Once the sorting stage is complete, now you get to edit them. I’ll be doing a video on my editing techniques in the near future so be sure to subscribe and hit the bell notification. But what I will say is that I have a ten-minute rule.

What that means is that I have ten minutes to edit a photo. If I need longer to ‘save’ a photo from being rubbish, then it wasn’t great. Or perhaps it’s becoming too artificial. Yes, it’s painful to be this tough, but it does lead to a higher quality portfolio. And that is a key part of taking better car photos.

I will say that, in a lot of cases, the auto correction button in Photoshop is decent. Consider the light temperature, make sure the exposure is correct and play with the various sliders until you are happy with the finished look. Stay tuned for a photo on how I edit my photos and videos soon!

And that, as they say in showbusiness, is a wrap. More photography guides are on the way, thanks for watching, keep washing those hands and stay indoors. Byeeeee.