There are often situations when you can’t shoot a car in a studio due to budget but want the clean style that a studio shoot offers. That’s where the best option might be to build your own location car studio.I have a regular gig with F1 Racing magazine supplying them with a studio style feature each month.
I usually manage to get a car to the studio but when I can’t I build one on site. You can do this inside or outside. The advantage of shooting outside is that you can use a balance of daylight and flash to light the car and the sky as your studio ceiling. Ideally you want a bright overcast day with flat cloud cover as this will give you a smooth featureless reflection into the bodywork.
Here I was shooting the 1983 Tyrrell 012 Formula One car as driven by Michele Alboreto and Danny Sullivan amongst others and we were able to set up in the yard outside where the car is stored. You could surround the car with white cloth but I find black doesn’t show the dirt and keepLoc the reflections I don’t want to a minimum. I hung the backcloth from a rope strung between two fence posts and a couple of lighting stands I had spare and only lit the camera side of the car with my battery Elinchrom Ranger flash.
Back at home I copy the black cloth around the car and pump up the contrast to get to the finished image.