Money Shot - Photograph your Mustang - Part 2

Part 2 of 2 - Read part 1 here

Camera Position – There’s no more boring photo than an eye level shot of a car. Well, except maybe an eye level photo taken directly from the side or front. What you want is to create drama and interest! Mustangs are stylish, bold machines! Accentuate that "attitude" with your camera and car position.

Get shots from down low looking up at your car. Crouch down (even lie down) to get that dramatic angle. Help bring out that aggressive stance in your Mustang! Overhead shots can also be dramatic, although these are tricky and many people won’t do them correctly. If you’re up to the challenge, drag out a step stool or ladder and get some shots from above, but not directly above. For some cars this can be a compelling shot. For others it isn’t. Convertibles are good candidates for overhead photos.

Car Position – Depending on your advertising medium you may be limited to the number of photos you can submit. At a minimum you’ll want 1 or 2 “overall shots” and then some additional detailed photos, like interior or engine bay. For your main, overall shots you’ll want a ¾ angle. This means not straight on to either the front or the side, but in between.

You also don’t want to be right up next to the car. Unless you have a wide angle lens (not typical with most digital cameras) your car will have strange proportions if you stand too close. Stand back several yards and use your camera zoom to fill the shot with car. Just don’t make the classic mistake of taking a photo that’s 20% Mustang and 80% background. The car is what you’re selling, so it should take up almost the whole shot. Hint: Turning your front wheels can really add attitude to your shot. Which direction they are turned depends on the shot, so experiment. Turning on your head lights or parking lights can also add drama, especially if the sun is low.

Camera – Getting into the myriad of different cameras is its own article, so I’ll just touch on some basics. You’ll likely be using these photos to advertise your car on the web, so digital cameras are easiest. Luckily just about any digital camera will do for the web. For web viewing 1280x960 pixels is as big as you probably want to go. That’s already larger than a lot of computer screens out there. So a 1 megapixel camera or higher is just fine. Although, the bigger the better, so be sure it’s set on the highest resolution. You can always downsize later, but you can’t upsize.

Many cameras have a “force flash” feature where you can tell it to use the flash no matter what the light condition. You’ll want this if you can find it. Check your zoom settings. Many digital cameras will have both optical zoom and digital zoom. For these shots (well, really for most shots) you don’t want digital zoom. All it does is lower your photo resolution, which isn’t what you want. So either turn off the digital zoom feature, or know when it kicks in so you can stay away from it.

Example Photos - Click on the thumbnails below to see some examples of both good and bad photographs of Mustangs for sale. Hopefully this article has given you some tips and ideas for photographing your Mustang. Now pick up your camera and get going!

Poor Shot - Bad eye-level angle, boring location, distracting background.

Poor Shot - Distracting background, shadow cast toward you, annoying date-time stamp. The whole car isn't even in the shot!

Pretty Good - Great light quality, but turning the car would have put light also on the nose, background is good, but tree, wall shadow and road stripe are distracting. This could be a great shot with some photoshopping.

Great Shot - Excellent lighting, nice background, clean asphalt, interesting angle shot uphill to the car. If this were used to advertise the car I probably would crop a little closer and lose some of the background.

Amazing Shot - No, this isn't from a Ford commercial, but it could be. It was taken by a professional, but with some practice you could achieve similar shots. The background is dramatic, but not distracting because of the great angle of the car, making it dominate the scene. Great color contrast and lighting. Good example of "force flash" adding light to the near side and removing what would otherwise be a bad, dark shadow.

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