How it's judged

Do you understand what the light is doing, and did you use it?

• Direction and quality of the light on the panels
• Whether highlights hold detail instead of blowing out
• Reflections working for the shape of the car, not fighting it
• Ambient, natural, artificial, all of it works. Using it well is the point.

Where the car sits in the frame, and what you chose to leave out.

• Camera height and angle relative to the car
• Background doing a job, either backing up the subject or getting out of the way
• Balance, negative space, and how the eye travels the frame
• Cropping with intent rather than to rescue a shot

The technical execution, and an edit that serves the photo instead of shouting over it.

• Focus landing where you meant it to
• Clean exposure with shadows and highlights under control
• Colour that looks deliberate, not filtered
• Retouching that stays invisible

Whether it stops us scrolling. Hard to define, easy to spot.

• The photo says something instead of just documenting a car
• Mood, energy, or atmosphere you built on purpose
• A point of view we haven't seen a hundred times
• It still holds up on the second and third look