You can see my work here ; https://rmsphoto.mystrikingly.com/
Hi, I’m a Car Photographer, and I’ve done quite a few shoots in the past, some free some paid, with some amazing cars, for example I shot a lamborghini tour in the Yorkshire dales and an M5 & X7 for a car dealership. I’ve probably made about £300 in total from photography. I’ve emailed about 10-15 Companies around me asking if they would be interested in my photography, social media management & developing videography skills, with quite professional sounding emails. I’ve not told any of the company’s the price or the fact I’m 14, but haven’t got any responses at all even though I genuinely think I could help companies- I’m stuck on what to do. Any advice is appreciated or critique on my photos. I have a free photoshoot this Sunday of a Porsche 356, as I know the owner quite well (who also has a 992 GT3) but nothing after. Thanks so much
I shoot cars on occasion, mostly for Turo.com. The demand for vehicle photography is quite low compared to other work (real estate and sporting events, I kinda stopped with portraiture).
You have potential, but it seems like you haven’t mastered your settings. Some photos have distracting foregrounds/backgrounds that could be solved with narrower depth of field (or shooting at a longer focal length, I like somewhere between 100-200mm). Some of the action shots aren’t shot at a high enough shutter speed to freeze the subject.
You should add some more interior shots. I’m a fan of this shot where you sit in the backseat and shoot the front dash.
Just keep shooting for fun!
At 14 you will struggle to find an insurance company willing to insure you for any sort of business insurance, without it a lot of work will be unavailable to you.
For example you can’t take a car out and shoot it somewhere for a restoration company, car sales company etc as your not old enough to drive and you wouldnt have the business insurance to cover you if you damaged it.
You can’t shoot motorsports as you need to be 18 to be trackside and you need £5 or £10 million PLI at most tracks now.
Just enjoy shooting everything, work towards being better all the time and once things will start to fall into place as you get old enough to be able to do these things.
A photographer shooting expensive (or otherwise) would very much need to carry a general liability policy. What if photog bumps camera into the side of a $250k Porsche and does $10k in damage? Or more.
Most of your stuff is really really good. And you being 14 should actually help a lot with promotion and all that, not a lot of people have these skills at this age. I myself am a 16 year old photographer and haven’t reached that level yet, I’m currently working on a website, so if you got any tips there that would be helpful.
You have some nice examples and a good eye, just consider that when you’re shooting a car, you want it to be the centerpiece. Nothing should be in the way or steer a viewer’s eye to something else. For instance the photo of the car coming out of the garage with lettering on the left, it’s distracting, crop the photo to make the car the focus. The lamborghini framed by leaves, right idea but it’s zoomed in too much. The leaves are blocking the driver’s door. Take out some books to understand the law of thirds.
Making the car the emphasis of the photo cannot be emphasized enough. I upvoted the comment but I upvoted several comments so I had to reply to do extra to show that I wanted this comment to stand out. You need to strike a balance with providing context for the car and avoiding unintended distractions. Just takes practice. Don’t be in a rush to be a standout at an early age and miss out on the opportunity to develop your skills and talents.
You have an excellent eye and your photos look really professional! Selling your services is exceptionally hard at the beginning. Don’t be discouraged by a lack of responses to your pitch, follow up every so often and most importantly keep finding new ways to improve your portfolio. As sad as it is many companies are more interested in follower counts and likes than they are technical ability, so my suggestion would be to post as much high quality content as you can (1-2x daily) and start creating reels/tiktoks to build your follower count and portfolio. While photos are certainly still used and it’s perfectly fine to stay a still photo purist, the algorithms definitely favor video content.
At the beginning of your career you should do as many shoots as you can, paid or not, and explore your creativity so you learn as much as possible. In order to reliably make real money as a photographer ($100k+ annually) you will need one of the following: Significant social follower count (5k+) + consistent content posting in your specialty (automotive photography,) a network of paying professional clients with consistent work for you every month, a very successful print/stock image operation, art galleries representing your work, get hired full time by a dealership chain or car magazine or get a solid stream of one off clients who might pay less than the commercial/regular ones but come in enough quantity to fill your schedule and pay the bills. I have been in most of these situations, they all have their pros and cons.
As others have mentioned, you should be more ruthless in your culling of your photos and cropping/framing. Presenting 10 exceptional photos each of which show a clear subject and tell a story is infinitely more compelling than 50 images of varying quality on a webpage. Other than that you need to focus on the basics: Build a brand, set your pricing, develop a marketing strategy and plan for gear upgrades before you impulse buy.