Automotive Photography

Have you ever tried to sell a vehicle that was a little past its prime? It may not have a lot going for it, but using the “car roller” technique could make that vehicle look as awesome as the day it rolled off the lot.

Photographing cars and motorsport is a unique and exhilarating genre of photography, here are 5 good reasons you should try it.

Car photography is a lot of fun and can be highly dynamic, but it represents one of the hardest products to photograph in a studio environment. Not only do you need a large studio that a car can be driven into, but you need huge lights to evenly light the car too. Or do you?

If you've ever wanted to take a photograph of a car that has motion to it, you may have noticed it's not often straightforward. In this video, go behind the scenes of a rolling car shoot to see how it's done.

Maybe it’s nostalgia or maybe it’s a design classic. Whichever way you look at it, the Nintendo Game Boy and its camera accessory have achieved cult status among photographers and gamers alike thanks to the distinctive lo-fi digital images it creates. 

Panning photography has a few uses, but it's most commonly seen in motorsport. It's a tricky technique to get the most out of and on occasion, it's not even possible. In those situations, perhaps you can fake it instead.

Light painting might be a staple technique most photographers try and learn early on in their time with their first camera, but it has occasional commercial applications. One of the best examples of that is automotive photography. In this video, see an edit of a light-painted Porsche from start to finish.

You can't control the weather, but you can control what the weather looked like. In this video, go behind the scenes of this shoot with a beautiful Porsche 911 GT3 RS and how one photographer made an overcast day look like an epic sunset.

If you've ever wanted to inject a sense of speed into your automotive photos but haven't quite nailed the camera settings, then don't worry, because you can edit in some dynamic motion blur to your images with these simple techniques with Photoshop CC.

Simplistic photoshoots have appeal by virtue of how achievable they are, but sometimes you need to remind yourself just how complex things can get. Watch this shoot by Larry Chen as he captures high-end drifting with a large arsenal of Canon equipment.

Even if commercial car photography is not your thing, there is always something to learn from seeing professionals on a shoot. Especially when the results are this impressive and the gear used was minimal.

As a full-time van dweller and landscape photographer, I’ve come to appreciate the virtues of the pairing. The ability to park up in comfortable accommodations near or at your desired shooting location is tremendously valuable. To do this daily is invaluable.

Car chase scenes in movies have come a long way since the early days of cinema. Let's dive into how things have changed from Buster Keaton movies, through the rear projection era, right up to modern purpose-built rigs for complex scenes in today's blockbusters.

Automotive photography is attractive to us petrol-heads, but it's not the easiest genre to get into. Here are ten tips for taking better pictures of cars and motorbikes.

If you're interested in taking pictures of vehicles and wonder what it takes to get a commercial grade result, sit back and enjoy a complete walkthrough.

Sometimes, everything doesn't line up and you have to add an object, or in this case, an entire vehicle to the shot that was never there to begin with. How would you add an object in a completely different color to your scene? 

While we all adjust to these ongoing changes, it is interesting to see how different types of photographers and videographers have successfully adapted and continued their craft. Being a commercial drone pilot often requires a small team, and that team is often a part of a larger production. With film and video production studios beginning to get back to work, what it looks like behind the scenes on set is going to be different. 

When retouching your images, are you using a check layer to see what might not be seen in the shadows and the highlight areas of the photo? If not, you may be overlooking some areas that need work.

Light painting a car can be tricky to get right and difficult to know exactly what steps to take in camera. This video shows you the complete process, from garage space through to finished (and frankly brilliant) image.

Photographing cars is no small task — literally. Their size makes them trickier to photograph than a lot of other subjects, requiring more lights, more space, and a range of other adjustments and considerations to create a successful shot. This interesting video shows you what it takes to photograph a car in a studio.

This week I spoke with professional motorsports photographer Drew Gibson to find out what 10 things he couldn't live without in his camera bag. With clients such as Aston Martin and Top Gear, Drew certainly knows his way around motorsports photography.

You're a professional photographer using cameras to make a living, and you suddenly end up with no cameras in your possession. What do you do?

When you decide to make a video with one of the world's best professional drivers on a closed track showing off the power of a supercar, you make sure to do it right and spare no expense.

I'd love to shoot the new Tesla Roadster, but being that it's going to cost a quarter-million and it's not even for sale yet, that wasn't a possibility. I got the next best thing, the official Tesla Roadster diecast model. 

I grew up racing motocross, so I have always had a passion for the sport. But my passion for motocross and photography have never had the chance to overlap. Until I recently got the chance to document the Ponca City National by Motoplayground. 

The Fujifilm X-A5 is remarkably cheap, coming in at just $499 including a widely respected kit lens, making for inexpensive entry into the popular X Series. But can it hold its own against its more powerful siblings and will it stand up to the demands of a professional photographer? This great review will answer just that question for you. 

Digital cameras have come along way in the last 20 years, but just how far? Blair Bunting recently took an almost-as-new Nikon D1 out for a spin to see how it stacked up to modern cameras.

The business of photography is unique in a specific way like few other careers are. Many people that call themselves professional photographers are also hobbyists that love to shoot whether they get paid for it or not. Is that a gift or a bonus to calling photography your career or is it an affliction?

Formula 1 photography has every right to be bland; the scope of what can and can’t be done at first seems like it would be limiting and result in the same looking shot of the cars over and over again. The pros that shoot trackside, however, have no intention of fitting into the mold.

Have you ever thought what post-processing is involved behind the car images you see in the ads? An interview with founder and CEO of "Curve Digital" Nick Limb lifts up the curtain behind their workflow.

A freshly released video from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is giving insight into how the organization photographs its respected crash tests, which it conducts on behalf of car insurance companies.

A few days ago, I decided to challenge myself by attempting to photograph a toy car and make it look real. 

Car photography is a sharp learning curve, with the incline coming primarily in post-production. A tutorial like this can save you incredible amounts of time learning techniques.

Using smoke in photo shoots has been popular recently, but adding a smoke effect in Photoshop has a longer history, and it is easier than you think.

VirtualRig Studio is the only software that allows realistic motion blur simulation, and it has many advantages over Photoshop's path blur. In this article, I will walk through the software and explain how to use it.

An agency I work with for product photography hired me to photograph not one, but two race cars. I had already photographed motorbikes, but cars was going to be the first time. With cars the problems are almost always bigger: the surfaces are bigger, the reflections are bigger, the areas to be illuminated are bigger. Everything is bigger.

If you think that photographing Total 24 Hours Spa has anything to do with cucumber slices and a hot stone massage, then you are very wrong indeed. I will say, however, that when you finish photographing one of these endurance races you might need 24 hours in a spa. Have look at this fascinating short documentary to find out more.

Light painting has been a common method for automotive photography, but it is mostly demonstrated on car exteriors. On the other hand, shooting the interior of a car, by using the light painting method can give really good results that can be qualified as a high-end image. In this video, Moe Zainal shows his process from start to finish, including the retouching.

In a saturated market of incoming photographers each holiday or tax season, it is easy to get discouraged when you are trying to get paid clients in the door. When we think of photography sessions we generally tend to lean on the idea of photographing only people in portraits. Families, boudoir, fashion, and even underwater sessions. With so many other creative ways out there to get paid why not tap into another resource for marketing?

Let's be honest, how often do we get perfect conditions where everything just simply falls in the right place? 

Automotive rolling shots are great way of capturing cars on the road and in action to give viewers the feeling of speed. Moe Zainal is a professional automotive photographer from Bahrain, and in this video, he shares his tricks that he uses while working.

San Diego, California, content creator Aldryn Estacio of Flytpath, and photographer Spencer Pablo wanted to collaborate together on a fun project. And what would be more fun than using a light equipped drone to light paint a pair of great looking, matte black Teslas at night?

There are several different ways to light your subject in photography. While light painting isn't a new or exclusive technique within automotive photography, it is a fundamental technique car photographers should understand how to use. If you are new to light painting or never used this technique to photograph a vehicle, you may have some questions on where to begin. 

I recently spent three days in Ensenada shooting with the talented TEMPT Media crew during the Baja 1000. On the second night while unwinding at our Airbnb, in walks a guy with three beefy rigs with all the lenses wrapped in gaff tape, underneath what would appear to be a layer of dust that most normal human beings wouldn’t subject their Canon 1DXs to.

NO SPOILERS HERE! Just in case you were worried. They say inspiration can come from anywhere, and I have to say that definitely couldn't be more true. For one photographer, it came in the form of one his favorite TV Shows. Commercial automotive photographer Pepper Yandell took his work with automotive photography and digital retouching, and combined it with imagery and concepts from the Netflix Series "Stranger Things" to make a truly unique photograph featuring one Lamborghini, and a monster from the show.