Infinity cove studios are getting rarer and rarer these days and costs rising so it’s important to choose the right one to suit your shoot. Too big and you won’t be able to focus your lighting properly, too small and you won’t achieve the angles you want. The concept of the cove is to remove all distractions in the background allowing you to paint the car with your lighting. First rule if you working with constant movie style lighting is to point the lights away from the car into the walls and ceiling ,not towards the car.
There are a number of different types of cove:-The Alfa Romeo Gulietta SS is being photographed in a 3/4 cove called Gun Hill Studio in Sussex with a fixed floating ceiling that can only be raised and lowered not moved in and out of the cove.
The Citroen DS below was for a book shoot in a cove built within a private collection called Studio 434 north of London in Pottars Bar .With just 2 walls and a floating ceiling we needed to fill in the missing third wall with large poly boards which is not ideal…as it is difficult to get a good reflection. It would be OK if you are using large soft boxes with flash however but here we have constant tungsten lighting.
One of my favourite coves is Plough studios in South London,below.It’s been a haunt of car and fashion snappers for nearly 50 years and the great Richard Avedon loved it so much he block booked it every year during his working summers in the city.Ideal for one car it’s a small cove but good and deep with one long wall so although they have now removed the floating ceiling it still works well.Here’s the MGB Roadster I photographed for the British Auto Legends stamps for the Royal Mail.http://www.royalmailgroup.com/royal-mail-celebrates-best-british-motor-cars-%E2%80%98british-auto-legends%E2%80%99-stamp-issue
A large full cove like Junction Eleven in Banbury, below, will have have three even walls and a solid ceiling .There is a floating ceiling that can be moved in and out and angled as in the image below of the super cool Jaguar XKSS. It is also painted mid grey in colour which reduces contrast and allows more subtle lighting rather than the white of the other featured coves.