I’m a bit obsessed with my car. But I’m also generally obsessed with design, which is why I bought a Defender rather than a Prado. I’m a sucker for Apple products too. It’s all in the design. Functional but also beautiful.
The two cars below are, in my opinion, functional and beautiful. The backdrop, the hinterlands north of the Otway Ranges in Victoria’s west, were bathed in golden light through mist when we took most of these shots, and it was freezing but just perfect. The morning was cold , really cold, which the turbo-charged engines loved and the tyres hated, but that cold created wonderful conditions for taking photos, with the background soft and muted, a hint of the sun’s warmth casting a glow over the land, and hoarfrost on the rough grass.
Both of these cars have some of the most sophisticated passive aero you’ll see on a sports car, all but hidden unless you look closely. Take the Alpine and that rear three quarter shot. Around the tailpipe you’ll see vertical fins. These diffuser strakes extend half way to the front wheels, and the whole underbody is flat (that’s right, no exposed mechanicals), which allows the air to accelerate under the car, creating a vacuum, and then slow down as it escapes at the rear, creating positive pressure. The result: downforce without drag. The Trophy R has the same advanced underbody structure.
Now look at the front of the Alpine. Those two vertical wedges ahead of the front wheels are actually tunnels that pass air over the face of the wheels, drawing trapped air out from the wheel arches to reduce high pressure lift. At the same time, they direct air to cool the brakes. And the Trophy R has a big splitter, forcing air under the car, again helping to create high velocity flow that sucks the car to the ground.
Finally, the shoulders running under the windows of the Alpine might look cosmetic, but they actually funnel airflow to the small air intakes sitting just behind the doors. As a mid-engined car, air needs to be fed into the back and not the front. Those shoulders keep oxygen flowing to the combustion chamber. All functional, but all beautiful design as well.
Now some tips for photopgraphing cars:
Shoot (if possible) when the sun is low in the sky. Winter is good, because it stays lower for longer.
Look for the defining shapes of the car. The Alpine has a single line that goes from front to back, an arc starting at the headlight and flowing to the tail light. The Trophy R has a distinctive wedge to both the stance of the car and to the way the nose develops. Find these angles and bring them out.
Get low. Cars are designed to be seen from other cars. Not from head height. Or get high to show the car from an angle no-one ever sees it.
The rear 3/4 view is particularly important. When you see a car on the road, you typically see it from this angle for the longest. Shooting side on doesn’t always work, but 3/4 shots almost always do.
Take a polariser. Metal reflects, and unless you have really soft and low light you are going to get all sorts of complex reflections from your surroundings. Polarisers get rid of that.
Situate your cars. The background matters. Sparse, urban, rural, coastal all work, but make sure the background adds weight to the image. In some sense, the background can become a secondary subject, like the tree and the fence and stop signs you see here.
Use depth of field to create a sense of depth (duh). Open up your aperture and blur the foreground and background to make your subject car standout. The photo with the front corner of the Trophy R works because the relatively narrow depth of field blurs it, allowing the eye to focus on the Alpine while maintaining a sense of the environment and the presence of a second vehicle.
Turn your headlights on. Especially if they’re cool.
Turn the wheel to expose the rims. Not all the time, but some of the time. Maybe even pop the bonnet, or open a door. Have someone in the car, or leaning over it.
Clean your car, or make sure it has road grime representative of spirited driving. A sense of the car as a useful object is important, but bird crap isn’t (unless you use it collect specimens for your study the ornithological scatology).
Love the car you’re shooting. Forget about whether it costs a lot or a little, whether it goes fast or is in your favourite colour, whether it is an Audi. or a Kia. Just learn to love it as a design study. All cars are engineered to meet standards, but all cars are visually appealing if you can open up your mind and forget about the badge.