Photographing a car in the dark is far from an easy task. With clouds, light drizzle and freezing cold wind I grabbed my camera and set out for a mission.

One of my friends are going to sell his Citroën Berlingo in favor of a new car. He obviously needed some photos of it and asked me for assistance. Since we live way up north it was already pitch black outside when we got home from work. We drove to the nearest car wash and washed the car. We then tried to find an open parking lot with a lot of light. Easier said than done but we eventually found a spot that seemed appropriate.

You can see the final images below, slightly edited using Adobe Lightroom.

I was not satisfied with the result and found it very hard to shoot with the difficult light. It was easier said than done. It could have helped to turn off the headlights, but the pictures would still look rather average. Since the pictures didn’t turn out like we hoped we had to find a new spot. We wanted to try a place where light was very limited and with an interesting background.

We decided to try a spot overlooking the bright city while at the same time it was completely dark where the car was parked. The city was visible in the background without taking away the attention from the car. I tried to use a longer exposure and use my smartphone’s flashlight to light up the car and make a cool light painting effect. This was to highlight the car to further distinguish it from the bright city in the background. I didn’t really know how to light up the car so I just flew around the car with my light trying to light up as much as possible.

The final images can be found right beneath this chunk of text. I don’t know if they met my requirements for a good car photograph, but it looked cool nonetheless. These images are slightly edited in Adobe Lightroom and cleaned up in Adobe Photoshop afterwards. Removing odd light spots and bleeding from the flashlight.

While it was a fun experiment I wasn’t quite satisfied yet and it was insanely difficult to shoot interior shots when it was so dark. We once again had to find a new spot to shoot.

While overlooking the city I found the obvious spot to shoot and knew we had try and shoot there. Not only was there plenty of light there from various sources, but there was a also a very large unique light source. We parked the car in front of this light source and I snapped away. Photographing a Berlingo isn’t an easy task, but I finally felt that I was getting some good shots.

The final shots are shown below. Once again touched up using Adobe Lightroom.

Were these the images I was searching for when my friend contacted me about snapping some photos of his car for an advertisement? To be totally honest: probably not. While I felt I didn’t get to show what I was capable of, I both me and him was satisfied with how the images turned out in the end. I certainly had loads of fun and I take it as an opportunity to learn. I mostly shoot northern lights so I told him that it would be amazing to get some northern lights photos with the car in front. I also let him know that I found it difficult to shoot in the dark and that we might have to do another photo shoot when there is adequate light outside. Nevertheless, it was a great experience and I’m thankful that he gave me this opportunity.

Let me know what you think about my photos down below! Make sure to also let me know how I can improve as that is my end goal. Thank you so much for reading!