Hero car shots, light painting and stock shots x3, all in a days work. Why hire a professional photographer?

These days virtually everybody has a camera with them don’t they? Phone cameras are pretty amazing, unless you require a large, very high quality image, your phone is generally up to the task. I won’t lie it’s definitely impacted my job as a professional automotive photographer.

So what’s the point in hiring a professional photographer? I guess the analogy of ‘you own a pair of scissors but you don’t call yourself a hairdresser’ comes into play here. Let’s just quickly gloss over the fact that during Covid most of us did turn into our own and sometimes other people’s hairdressers!

Complimenting this analogy too is the fact that whilst you are shooting these images yourself you’re not doing what your’re good at and why you started your business in the first place are you? You know what it’s like when you try and fix something at home instead of getting an experienced professional in, it could take you all day to dome something pro would do in a fraction of the time and more often, better.

Every time I press the shutter there is over 30 years of experience, passion and creativity go into the 125th of a second. Couple that with the fact that I will turn up to a job with approximately £20k worth of equipment, I seriously hope I can do better than someone with a phone!!

Oh and preparation is a massive key factor too, going into every job fully equipped with all the tools you need goes a long way to ensuring success.

As a professional photographer, you have to get the shot quickly, know when you have the shot and move onto the next. This ensures your client is getting good value for money.

A Porsche 911 GTS Taga, Aston Martin DB2/4 Drophead Coupe and a 1933 Aston Martin Team car

Tom Hardman constantly updates his stock of excellent condition, quality classic, vintage and new (ish) cars. Tom and Helen are without doubt high-end dealers, what comes with that territory is an eye for detail and quality in everything that they do. Also, and this is not common in the classic car world, is the fact they look for modern and forward thinking methods to move the business forward. That is why I’m always delighted to do a shoot at their Clitheroe base. It’s this eye for quality that demands high end product stock shots but also a little something different. Why not do some ‘hero’ shots too? Why not indeed, it certainly gets my vote and photographically is one of my favourite things to do, I love a hero shot.

If you would like to see many more images and more information on these cars- The 1955 Aston Martin DB/2, Porsche Taga 4 GTS, 1933 Aston Martin Team Car, or the Porsche 911 3.2 Cabriolet , follow the links to the website