Use reflections to cast shadows on the body of the car

Once you’ve found your preferred angle, the next step is to consider the way the car is lit. It’s worth paying very close attention to this.

Skilful use of light and shadow is an essential part of automobile photography.

When shooting a car outside, it will already be lit in one way or another (be it naturally or artificially), from in front or from behind. Whichever way the light is striking the car, there will always be parts that are illuminated and others that remain in shadow.

Slowly rotate a car using the 'Scapes' feature of Gran Turismo 7, and you’ll see that the way light bounces off the vehicle changes dramatically. Examining a car in this way will allow you to grasp how best to light it, which will be crucial if you want to take more expressive photographs. For example, you might want to illuminate the front of the car while causing a gentle shadow to fall on the side of its body. Using light and shadow in this way will enable you to increase the depth of expression in the images you create.

Incidentally, extremely bright spots—such as parts of a car’s body that catch direct light—are known as highlights. When photographing cars, ensuring that there is at least one highlight can increase the drama of the photograph enormously.

Let’s say you’re taking a photo from a front-on 7:3 angle (that is, the car is positioned diagonally, showing its side and front in a direction from 3 to 7 o’clock; this is a well-balanced view that’s often used for magazine photographs.) When shooting from this angle, I like to ensure there is a highlight somewhere around the car’s headlights.

A long time ago, my mentor taught me that “a car is a mirror.” What he meant was that a car reflects its surroundings in their entirety. Using the reflections of your surroundings is an important technique in car photography. The 'Scapes' feature provides information about the surroundings of the car you’re photographing, which means you can really make the most of the reflections it provides. Place the car in the middle of the screen and rotate it slowly—you’ll see all sorts of subtle changes in the reflections as it turns.

The other important element is the car’s body colour. Be aware that, with red cars, areas in shadow often look murky. With white cars, it’s difficult to create shadow, especially under the blazing summer sun. With black cars, on the other hand, parts of the car’s body that are directly lit can look dingy, so it’s better to place the whole car in shadow and use reflections from the background to illuminate it. I find that the body colour that works best on the whole (in terms of the ease with which good photos can be taken) is silver, as it performs well under all strengths of light.