It is recommended that you take reasonable care with how and where you take the photos of the vehicles that you post to your website. The following are some points to follow when taking these photos.

Good Photo Tips

1. Find a nice clean spot where you move the vehicle to be photographed. Make sure it is free of clutter, trash, cars being repaired or washed, or other types of distractions. You should use this spot for all your photos because this gives your site a more professional and cleaner look to it. You line up your cars on your lot all nice and neat; your website should have the same appearance.
2. A bright overcast day is perfect for taking photos outside. This will prevent unwanted glare from reflecting off the car or from the camera lens being blinded by direct sunlight.
3. Make sure the vehicle is recently washed. You don’t want to show a photo of a car that is covered in dirt.
4. If you are forced to take photos of your vehicles in the winter with snow on the ground and the car is still on your lot come springtime, you will want to take a fresh set of photos so as to not give away the fact that the car has been on the lot for a long time.
5. When using a digital camera hold the camera steady for an extra second after the shutter is pressed. Moving the camera right away after snapping the shutter will often result in the vehicle appearing off center in the resulting photo. This is because there is often a short time delay between the moment you press the shutter button and the camera actually taking the picture.
6. Center the vehicle properly in the camera viewfinder. It is often better to use a camera with a LCD screen on the back so you can be sure the vehicle is properly positioned in the frame. The problem is that often the viewfinder shows a larger field of view than the camera actually will record in the photo.
7. Don’t stand too far back from the vehicle. You want it to be clearly visible in the picture and not be too far away that details are not clear to the website visitor.
8. Set your camera settings to produce smaller and more compressed images. The difference being a hi-rez pic (1280x1140 - uncompressed) will be something like 500,000 bytes in size and a smaller image (800x600 - compressed) will only be about 60,000 bytes or about 1/10th the file size. The website system management is going to shrink your photos anyway to make them to fit your page so you won’t be gaining anything by uploading hi-rez pics.

Subject Matter

1. Your first photo should be from the left front of the vehicle so that you can see both the front end and driver’s side of the vehicle equally.
2. Your second photo should be a side view of the vehicle.
3. Your third photo should be a right rear view of the vehicle so that you can see both the rear end and passenger side of the vehicle equally.
4. Your fourth photo should be a shot of the interior of the vehicle as seen from standing just outside the driver’s door. This is important for female customers because they are more interested in how the inside of the car looks than a man would be.
5. Your fifth shot should be reserved for anything special that you would like to show such as the back end of a minivan showing the seats in folded down position or the underhood of a classic ‘65 Mustang showing how the clean the engine is.

Good Photo Examples

Good centering and angle of shot.

Well framed pic.

Vehicle is positioned well and nicely centered.

Good shot of the interior.

Detail showing the back of an SUV.

Nice shot of an engine compartment.

Bad Photo Examples

Shadow of the photographer showing.

Remove the paper floor mats before taking the interior shot. Especially bad if they have greasy footprints on them.

Vehicle is positioned poorly. Too much hood, not enough driver’s side showing.
Please tell the help to get out of the car! He does not come with the deal. (or does he?)

It is now Springtime and this pic still shows the snow from the previous Winter..

Move the vehicle to a place where there is not a pile of debris nearby.

Move the vehicle from its parking space so we can see all of it.

American flags are nice and patriotic but tend to clutter up the pic here.

Not sure what that is in the left of the pic but it is distracting.

Remove the car wash hoses and buckets from around the car where the pic is being taken.

The sign that says ‘BAD’ does not covey much confidence for the quality of this car.
Lighting is all wrong, too much dark shadowing. The car is very difficult to see clearly.

In Summary

It is not critical that you post 4 or 5 pictures of the vehicle that you have for sale. Some dealers prefer to show just one. Just keep in mind that the photos you put on the internet are meant to show off your inventory to prospective customers. This is not any different from the type of picture that you would want to display if you were posting a personals ad on a matchmaking site. People make their first impressions from what they see and will judge you and your business accordingly. For this reason it is important that you take the extra time to see to it that your photos are well taken because it could mean the difference between a website visitor actually buying a car from you or taking their business somewhere else.