How to photograph a customer's car so the wheel preview sells itself

A wheel preview can only be as good as the photo it starts with. Give a visualizer a blurry, badly angled shot and the render will look off, and a customer who's on the fence will notice. Give it a clean shot and the result looks like a photo of their car with new wheels on it, which is the whole point.

The good news is that a good photo doesn't need a good camera. A phone is fine. It just needs the right angle, height and light. Most of this takes a few seconds once your staff are used to it.

Shoot from the side or a three-quarter angle

Wheels are the star here, so the camera has to see them. A straight side view shows both wheels clearly. A three-quarter view, from somewhere near a front corner, also works and tends to look more like a car ad. Avoid shooting from straight in front or behind. You'll barely see the wheels, and there isn't much for the preview to change.

Get down to wheel height

This is the one people get wrong most often. Standing up and shooting down at the car makes the wheels look small and squashed. Crouch so the phone is roughly level with the middle of the wheels. The car looks better, and the wheels are shown face-on enough for a new design to read clearly.

Step back instead of zooming out

Fit the whole car in the frame with a little space around it, and don't cut off a bumper or a wheel. If you're too close, a phone's wide lens stretches the car and makes the near wheel look much bigger than the far one. Take a few steps back rather than switching to the ultra-wide lens. Turn the phone sideways, too. Cars are wide.

Straighten the front wheels

If the car was parked with the steering turned, the front wheel faces away from the camera at an angle. It's worth straightening the wheels before you take the picture, especially for a side view, so both wheels face the camera the same way.

Watch the light

Even daylight is best, like an overcast day or open shade. Harsh midday sun throws hard shadows into the wheel wells, and shooting straight into the sun turns the whole car into a silhouette. Inside a dark shop bay, pull the car out if you can. RimFit matches the new wheels to the light in your photo, so if the photo is dim and muddy, the render will be too.

Keep the background simple

RimFit leaves the background alone and only changes the wheels. That's what you want, but it means whatever is behind the car stays in the final image. A clean wall or open lot looks better than a pile of old tires, and a customer is more likely to forward a picture that looks good. It also helps to keep other cars out of the frame, so there's no question which car is getting the new wheels.

Use a clean photo of the wheel, too

The other half of a render is the wheel image. The best reference is a straightforward catalog shot of one wheel on a plain background, facing the camera. Lifestyle photos with the wheel already on a car, or shots taken at a steep angle, make it harder to copy the design accurately. If you import your catalog from supplier product pages, you're usually already getting the right kind of image. See bulk rim import for how that works.

A 10-second check before you shoot

1. Side or three-quarter view, with both visible wheels in the frame
2. Phone at wheel height, held sideways
3. Whole car in the shot, with a little space around it
4. Front wheels straight
5. Even light, not straight into the sun
6. Nothing messy right behind the car

Once the photo's right, the rest is quick: pick the wheel, render it, and show the customer. For more on what makes a preview convincing, read using your own car photo in a wheel visualizer, or see RimFit's wheel visualizer.