A rig is a tool often used in automotive photography that attaches to the car or vehicle, enabling a photographic motion shot to be taken by the camera on the end of the rig. The results of using a rig are fantastic, allowing the camera to move at the exact same pace as the car gives a high speed motion blurring to the background and wheels whilst keeping the bodywork in crisp focus.
Rigs are available in a variety of shapes and sizes, from professionally built units that bolt directly to the chassis to DIY constructions using large vacuum cups, aluminium poles and specialist camera mounts (as per the example above by Matt Watkinson, from his excellent blog post; How to remove a rig in Photoshop.
The shots taken on rigs are usually at slow driving pace with a long shutter speed, allowing for the blurring action of the background and moving parts. The rig is then edited out in Photoshop by overlaying a photograph of the car without the rig attached, erasing out the unwanted poles and mountings.
Here are 37 awesome examples of rig based car photography from a range of talented photographers:
wow…this is crazy … I don’t know much about cars but I am sure that these cars looks amazing.
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Sweet, I bet that would look great on my Renault ha!
Think I can see the reflection of the rig in one of those pics – the blue subaru. Still sweet though!
Does this Renault make my butt look big?
wow this is awesome. Great post Chris. I never realized how they did those fantastic shots. I expected them to be a Studio image and Photoshoped.
Woah, these are awesome!
Only one American car…
Amazing! I’d be so scared of my camera falling off though haha. Great shots. Rig shots and rolling shots are by far my favourites.
Wow! These pictures are awesome!
There are some good shots here, I never really thought about how shots of cars in motion were taken but this one solves the problem. Now all i need to do is learn to drive!
@ WIll.
Through some researching I found that most rig shots are created using a super low shutter speed (about 10 seconds or more) with the car traveling no more than a couple miles-per-hour. Some people actually PUSH the cars haha. This reduces vibration from both the road AND engine (since it’s off).
Wow, truly great shots. Thanks for sharing!
great wonderful car …
awesome woks…
Nice collection & good going Dean! I’ve got a whole lot on my website too. A couple of Shelby GT500 (Eleanor) & several other exotics.
Perfect!
Wow! The Porsche pic is just incredible!
Hi guys, just fell across this site and have to say that there is some really superb work on here. I work as a commercial car photographer and some opf this stuff is really top notch, great work guys I’m now a big fan of the site
Tim
pony of the ‘one trick’
excellents pics…
Awesome pictures.
i think some of the shots were made in photoshop… you know.. blur.. mutiple pastes.. you know… the cars are still shots and they just made some edits on the background…