Car photography: how to take great pics of your car

If you’re selling a car online, you’ll need some decent pictures to boost your car’s chances of achieving the right price. Taking the best pictures you can for your used car advert is just as important as wording it properly.

If the car you’re selling isn’t pictured clearly enough or the pictures you take aren’t that attractive, it can have a real negative effect on the price you get for the car or prolong the selling process as fewer buyers are interested.

We’ve compiled some simple but effective tips and advice to help you make your look great car in the pictures when it comes selling it on. Even if you're just looking to show your car off with some nice pictures to post on social media, our guide will give the solid car photography foundations.

Scroll down for our simple rules for photographing your car well…

Clean the car! 

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Before you do anything else, make sure your car is clean! It sounds really obvious, but a quick wash can really boost your car’s appearance in pictures and its ultimate value. Remember to scrub off any brake dust, as shiny alloys can make a big difference. This extends to the interior, too: brush down the seats, hoover the footwells and remove as many of your personal belongings as possible!

Put yourself in a buyer’s shoes

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It’s a great idea to look at car ads that are already out there to get a feel of what kind of pictures you should be looking to take yourself. If you lose patience with an advert because there is only one picture, or images are pixelated, dark or blurry, then that’s what you need to avoid doing with your own ad. Search our ads for a similar car to the one you’re selling and take a leaf out of their book. 

It will pay to have a list of the shots you want to take before going out to photograph your car. Make sure you get images of special features that you intend to mention in your description and any damage on the vehicle, too. Generally, you want to give buyers a good all-round view of the car, while showing it in its best light. 

Location, location

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Parking your car down a dingy alley or in front of an industrial estate isn’t going to look particularly attractive to potential buyers, so pay attention to where you take your pictures. It's fine to take pictures on your driveway or on an on-street parking space, but make sure you have enough space around the car to take pictures from all angles. Also, avoid overhanging trees, overhead wires or buildings that will cause unsightly shadows. Your best bet is an open space like a public park, which can provide great backgrounds. Try to aim for a clean background without other cars or people in shot. 

Don’t shoot into the sun

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Many cameras, particularly ones found on smartphones, can struggle with bright sunlight. Glare from the sun will cause lens flare, will bleach out the details in pictures and leave them over-exposed. For the best light conditions, either take the pictures with the sun behind you or on an overcast day. The latter should be pretty easy to achieve if you live in the UK. Generally, the light is better in the morning or evening when the sun is lower in the sky and less intense. 

Choose your angle

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Taking pictures of your car can make it appear sporty, whether it is or not. It also helps to have as many angles of the car as you can: just taking one head-on shot and leaving it at that is a sure-fire way to make sure your car flounders on the used car market for far too long. Three-quarter angles are best and stand far back enough away to get all of the car in.

Moving the camera lower to the ground can give the car a more dynamic look but remember that the main object of the exercise is to let people see the car clearly. Don't overdo it with the extreme angles.  

Try to use a good camera

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Smartphone cameras are getting better and better these days with the images taken by the best phone cameras coming close to the standard of a professional SLR camera for image quality. For most people, a modern phone camera will be just fine but using an SLR could be worthwhile to get the very best shots. They're expensive to buy but if you don’t own one, you can always borrow one. 

The devil is in the details

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Be honest with potential buyers by taking photographs of any damage the car may have. As for interiors, choose an open space to let plenty of natural light through the windows and keep the interior lighting on. For pictures of the dashboard, take a tip from our pro photographers and recline the driver's seat back and rest your camera on the headrest to hold the camera still. If you have the steering column reach adjustment pulled out, push it in as far as it will go for the pics so that the wheel doesn't obscure the dials. Don’t forget to snap an image of the mileage, too.

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