Shot on iPod, edited in PhotoToaster
By the Clover
How to Take Photos to Sell a Car
Selling Online or in Print
When selling a car (or anything else for that matter) online, there are a few key principles to follow to increase your chances of a sale. One of the big ones is photos and images. Even with things like cars, where 99% of people come to look before they buy, having nice images gets your foot in the door. Looking over the classifieds, I’m often surprised how little effort some people put into making their item for sale look good. Sometimes these can be high ticket items – but when shot at night, on a mobile, multiple times on one side, in a shed (you get my drift) – you really are not helping your chances in making a quick win. Worse case, you loose all your potential buyers.
Now, I’m by no means an automotive magazine quality photographer, but if you follow some of my general guidelines below I have developed when selling my cars, you wont be any worse off!
1 – Clean the car!
Spend 30minutes (or much more) giving it a good wash. Even if you don’t look after something – make it look like you do. Dry the car off after! (unless you are hiding that faded or lost clear coat?) Of course, if you kept it clean all along, this step is easy.
2 – When
Shoot during the day, where possible in good weather and light. Those few hours around sunrise and sunset are best, avoiding the high midday sun where you can. If you have some lights or whatnot you want to show off for night shots, taken them – but include daytime shots also.
3 – What with
If you are using your cellphone, shoot in landscape format. Well, that applies to all cameras really – its just a lot of mobile phones are shot by habit in portrait. If you are lucky enough to have a camera that can adjust aperture shoot fairly wide open (within reason). Throwing your background out of focus just enough to keep the focus on the car. If you have a tripod, you might like to use it here. Also, if you have lenses, or a zoom, try at different focal lengths. Often 50-80mm portrait can work well.
4- Venue
Venue sets the scene. Travelling 10min from your garage to an open spot helps paint the picture for the buyer. This cars not just shoved in a garage – it looks nice when out and about. If you shoot in attractive, or themed surrounds, it gives the item for sale a bit of appealing background. This in turn, helps it be a pleasing image. I prefer shooting off the road (If I can find somewhere) with a bit of nature in the background. Equally, I have also shot some cars in built up industry areas early morning and in weekends before people are out and about.
5 – Angles
Personally, aside from roof and interior shots, I’m of the strong opinion that you want to shoot cars from below head height. Get down low – not on the ground (well, for some shots maybe), but around waist height works well. Capture the lines of the car – contrasting to the background. Rather than just shooting square front and sides, which works, but can be a little uninteresting, also shoot some angles of the vehicle – capturing the front and one side gives depth to the car, and allows people to see the nice shiny and straight panel work (of course, if its not straight you can use these tips still, just with different intentions)
6- Images of What
People buying online like to see as much as they can before taking the plunge to come see you. Without flicking through 20 pictures of the glovebox at different angles (I’ve seen it), make a capture of the car circling round – front corners, Back corners, under the hood, in the boot/trunk, back seats and front seats. Maybe the dash with mileage showing. If you have special parts on the car that appeal to your intended market, shoot them too.
Thats it!
And thats It! The main bulk of things I consider when shooting a vehicle for sale. Start with that and your images will already be in the top 15% of the classifieds. Obviously other factors like price, ‘words’ etc. are also important in selling, but I’m running out of space today.
Editing todays images
For todays images, I shot them on my Sony Nex using the kit zoom, and also a polarising filter to remove the glare from the windscreen. If you compare the below originals with those posted above you might also see a few more tweaks I made in post. Aside from the whited out number plate, I didn’t make any adjustments to the car itself – I want to keep that as honest as possible. However, I did edit out power poles and power lines – both which distracted from the focus on the car. Finally for personal taste today, I added a minor vignette to the images. Why? – I think it adds a small difference and makes one look for that split second longer when scrolling through the hundreds of cars available.
So if any of you reading are selling something, hope todays list has helped!
Mount Hobson – Remuera
Picking my my new old Minolta Hi-matic 7s after work today, I took a quick stroll up Mt Hobson with the GRD IV. Originally called Remuera in Maori, the Mount is an old volcanic cone just of of the city in the suburb of Remuera. Sitting at 143m high, following one of the zig-zag cow tracks up to the summit makes it a fairly easy climb. Over its life its been used as a Maori Pa, a quarry, pasture land and finally a water reservoir. Going by the young cows on there today, still pasture also!
A nice little walk with great views if your in the Remuera/ New Market area!
Ricoh Singlex TLS
Just before Christmas I did a large sell up of my cameras – 35mm film cameras. I was in two minds about it – on one hand, they were all different, unique and cool. On the other hand, I would never use some of them, and they deserved to be used rather than just shelved. I think a number of my SLR’s went to new photography students for school this year – which is great! On top of that, for SLR’s, I also tended towards 50mm prime lenses…how many does one really need? (I guess it depends who you ask).
Without a doubt, I get waves of Gear Acquisition Syndrome, better known as GAS when it comes to cameras. On the positive side, I’ve generally reeled it in to be with old film cameras rather than pocket draining digitals! Selling on I generally break even, so perhaps its just part of the photography way of being for me.
One camera that I didn’t put on the chopping block however was my Ricoh Singlex TLS. My favourite 35mm SLR, the TLS was made in the late 60’s. Featuring a metal and brass construction, this baby weighs in at over 700gm for the body alone! – perhaps just as good for self protection as taking photos!. Joined with its 1.7 50mm Rikenon lens, it captures some beautiful images. Although old, the light meter works precisely (although ideally it ran on the now unavailable 625 mercury batteries), and it rarely gives me a poor exposure measure. Finished in the rarer (I’ve read) black, the years have taken a toll on the TLS – a lot of brassing and the odd minor ding. It all adds to the character. Unlike many film cameras I have had, this one feels really solid and built to last – or at the very least, restorable if it does eventually collapse. Its one of my few remaining 35mm units!
Which brings me onto my last bit…not GAS, but almost. After selling a whole bunch of cameras to ‘minimalise’, I went off and purchased another camera. Have not picked it up yet, but its a Minolta Hi-matic 7s. Similar heft to the TLS, I recall my parents having one (or a 7) of these rangefinders when I was young. Will it replace the TLS?…I ahve room for both I think.
to be continued some time in the future…
Holiday Film Shot
“When someone says ‘How-do-you-do,’ just say you didn’t.”
-Eeyore-
Back to Monday
Back to work today.
Back to one photo for now.
Albany Bush Walk Sunday
Around my old University campus there has always been a large bush area. To be fair, the whole area was bush and crops when the university first was built. Now on the edge of a large shopping area, the university has continued to grow since my days there, yet the bush remains. Strangely, I have never (until today) been through it on a walk. Un signposted, Im not entirely sure its an official walk – but I came across several walkers and mountain bikers on the lower trails – although not a sign of life on the upper, overgrown drainage type trails.
Completing what looks like on google maps to be about half of the area, I ended up strolling through my old campus (Massey University). Its been a few years since I completed my Masters there now, and although the image below is about as it looked when I attended, the back side has grown about double in size.
Holidays over and back to work tomorrow. For anyone familiar with Garfield, Monday’s are something him and I have in common – especially after a holiday break!
Small World in My Garden
With light fading fast today, I switched the Ricoh GRD IV to macro to have a close up look around my garden. Using manual focusing macro to 1cm, I looked around for some test subjects. The little flying creature in the main shot above was sitting on some coriander flowers (quite small in themselves).
The ants below, for the given light, didn’t stand still (no surprise), and the small stinkbug like beetle consistently turned its back to me! The last little mite of a creature was barely visable with my close as possible focus – goes to show no matter how close you look, there is always something smaller around the corner.
Last day of my holiday break tomorrow. Not sure what the weathers going to do, but all going well I’ll be off for a stroll.
Auckland Botanic Gardens (part2)
Continuing on from yesterdays images,here are a few more shots of the flora from my visit to the botanic gardens.
Auckland Botanic Gardens (part1)
A beautiful hot day took us to the Auckland Botanic Gardens for a walk today. 64-hectare’s and home to over 10,000 plants, we only scratched the surface with todays visit. Although its been around in some form since the 1960’s (I think), I had never been before, from memory.
Beautifully set and maintained, the crowds in the car park flooding out onto the road suggested its popularity. Funnily enough, once in and walking around the park, although obviously not alone, one didn’t feel crowded in the masses.
Throughout the park is tables and benches for picnic’s, and plenty of great shaded trees to escape the sun.
I went along with the Olympus E-500 DSLR today and captured a range of shots. I’ll show the flowers in another post, but below is a few more samples of the park.
MikeHawkey.com 
