Automotive Panorama Photography

Commercial Automotive Photography Project Objectives

• Pre-production planning, scheduling, and logistics
• Map out best lighting time of day, travel, equipment, crew
• Location panoramic photography at 14 dealerships
• Post-production image stitching, retouching, color corrections
• Deliver six or more 10k high resolution photos of 14 dealerships

About the Customer | Qvale Auto Group

Qvale Auto Group owns and operates 18 automotive dealerships across the United States. They first launched their automotive business in the USA back in 1947. In 1950 Qvale was named the chairman of the first Concours D’Elegance at Del Monte Lodge, Pebble Beach. That’s just the tip of their rich and exciting history.

Not all dealerships are shabby old buildings. The Qvale Auto Group has several spectacular dealership stores. One, in particular, is a four-story, 158,000 square-foot Audi dealership in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. That’s a complete, well-thought-out brand experience. If you’re a car buff, I encourage you to learn more about the Qvale Auto Group.

Commercial Automotive Photography Challenges

The Qvale Auto Group commissioned me to photograph all eighteen dealerships. Car dealerships are busy large physical spaces and offer many complicated visual problems to solve before producing high-resolution panoramas.

We did a mix of interior and exterior commercial automotive photography style images. The first problem to solve was calculating each building’s geographical orientation and the best time of day for the lighting. Then put all these optimal times together and calculate travel and logistics schedules that wouldn’t break the bank.

Once the optimal timed shot list and schedule are together, we collaborate with the GM at each dealership to get the best time of day for photography to mesh with their priorities. This project resulted in a dozen 4 AM call times. Still, it was worth it to create images combining my passions in both architecture and automotive photography.

Many of the resulting photographs are 90 individual 36-megapixel pictures all rendered together for one final image. There are over 150 panorama photographs in this automotive photography campaign. To achieve a 20-30 foot high perspective, I used a cinema stand with a remote control motion control pano head on top. This camera rig sequentially photographs each of the individual nodes in the automotive panoramas.

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