One of the most popular pictures we create for supercar driving event days is the in car shot. It’s particularly popular with guest’s relatives and friends as it shows the driver unmistakably sitting in the supercar about to head out on track. The only thing is, how we get the shot sometimes raises a few eyebrows.

In order to get all of the important aspects into the shot, we have to use a very expensive and rather odd lens. For the photography fans out there, it’s a Nikkor 10.5mm Fisheye lens. It’s not cheap, but it’s a lens that gives us a picture of the driver, hands on the wheel, plus you can see pretty much the whole of the car interior, including that all important steering wheel badge, proving without doubt that they were needed driving a Lamborghini.

The big problems with a lens like this and getting the shot successfully are threefold. First off, it has a field of view of almost 180 degrees. This means that in order for the picture to look right, our photographer has to reach into the car to the point that, to the driver, it feels like he’s trying to take a photograph of the inside of their nose! It feels odd to people to have a camera this close to them, but when they see the shot later, everyone loves it. Secondly, there’s a dark car interior plus blue sky hopefully shining into the car. So we need a flash gun. But only a little bit. Too much flash and not only will the driver look a pale bleached white, they’ll probably be blinded and not able to drive. So our photographers are constantly juggling daylight and flash light to get the shot consistently dead-on each time. Finally, we don’t have very long. Just seconds in fact. We’re at the end of the pitlane, the instructor isn’t wanting the driver to be too distracted and of course, the driver is just wanting to get out onto the track.

So if you’re driving a supercar on track this summer and you see one of our pitlane photographers, don’t worry. He’s not trying to photograph your nose hairs. Trust him, enjoy your drive and then take a look at the result in our photo truck. You’ll like it.