Automotive Photography: Shooting Sports Cars

When people typically think of automotive photography they usually think of sports car photography, the type of photography that creates sales images and posters of “dream cars”. This is a fairly lucrative branch of automotive photography, not only in pay but also clientele availability. Sports car owners are usually very found of their vehicles, usually taking great pride in them, often to the point of spending incredible amounts of money on maintaining their appeal. This prideful love of their cars typically warrants photography to commemorate and show off their vehicle.

Dealing with sports car owners can be rather annoying, however. As clients this group of people tend to have a very specific idea in mind of what they want out of a photo set. For example, I once had to redo an entire shoot for a “car family” because I included to much of the children and not enough of the cars. In this regard there are a few things you should know and take into account before shooting sports cars.

Know what the client wants

This is usually a good idea with photography in general, but with sports car photography it is virtually necessary to ensure a good photo shoot (or at the least keep you from redoing it). Sports car owners tend to get rather particular about what they want from a shoot. Take them time ask questions of your client and get an idea of exactly what they want from you.

Shoot Powerful Shots

When your shooting sports cars it is important to remember the appeal they have with most people. They typically resemble statuses of power, and your photography should reflect this. The best way to achieve this is with angles of both the car and your shot. You should typically shot from a lower angle either upwards or towards the back of the car. This will create the illusion of power and movement. Angling the car can also create the effect of power. By angling the car towards the camera it creates a sense of “in your face” power, typically lending itself to American Sports and Muscle cars. Angling the car away from the camera can create the sense of elegant power, lending itself to import vehicles.

Shot the broad side of the vehicle

This is something that is fairly good advice with most automotive photography, but lends itself most to the area of sports car photography. One of the appeals of sports cars is not just the engine in the car but the actual look of the vehicle as well. This is one of the reasons you want to try to capture the vehicles broad side. Another reason is that if you are shooting lower angles, if you shoot other angles of the car your going to get strange looking images. This does not mean that you never should shoot anything except broad shots, but you do need to be careful if you are shooting at other angles.

I strongly recommend shooting a friends sports car before offering any real service to sports car owners, as they are one of the more requiring of photography clients.