If you've ever agonized over getting the lighting and reflections just right in your 3ds Max vehicle rendering, just imagine doing all of that in real life. Tabletop product photography is challenging enough, but car photography—where you're dealing with an enormous and ultra-reflective object whose surfaces seem to bend in every direction—takes it to a whole ’nother level.
"One of the biggest problems shooting pictures of cars is controlling the light," says Lance Kouchi of the So Cal Viper Club, an auto enthusiast group. "Sunlight always puts hot spots on the car or there is incredible glare." In the photo below, you can see the massive overhead softbox rigged up in photographer Lyle Okihara's studio, where Lance's Dodge Viper ACR was the shooting subject. Softboxes like these are used to diffuse the light, softening and spreading it over as wide an area as possible.
A less expensive alternative to ginormous softboxes—which can reportedly run upwards of US $300,000, depending on the size—is to use standard studio lighting and bounce light off of an enormous overhead reflector, as seen in this shoot by the UK's Pure Creative Marketing.
Depending on what kinds of reflections you need, these overhead "bounces" can get absurdly large, as seen below in Belgium's Izmo Studio.
