Porsche Monterey Classic During Monterey Car Week 2026
Car show and automotive photography inside and outside Porsche Monterey in Seaside
My third year photographing the Porsche Monterey Classic during Monterey Car Week brought another mix of incredible cars, colorful indoor atmosphere, crowded car show scenes, and opportunities to find new automotive photography angles.
Three Years of Photographing the Porsche Monterey Classic
This was my third year in a row (see the second time) attending the Porsche Monterey Classic, an event that for me has become the unofficial start of Monterey Car Week. After already photographing it twice, the challenge this year was trying to see the same crowded dealership, service bays, and rows of Porsches in a different way. At a car show like this, I am certainly not the only person walking around with a capable camera, and with so many people packed around the cars, making photographs that feel different can be difficult. One thing to be different was bring my Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM lens and shoot it wide open at f/1.4, which gave me a different way to work close to the cars while still showing some of the environment around them. I also kept looking for foreground elements, very low viewpoints, and compositions that you would not normally see just standing next to a car at eye level. Did I find completely new angles compared to last year, or even two years ago? I do not know, but trying to find them is part of what keeps photographing the same great Car Week event interesting for me.
Finding New Angles Outside Porsche Monterey
Creative automotive photography among the cars and crowds of Monterey Car Week
After photographing this event for three consecutive years, one of my goals was to see whether I could still find compositions I had not made before.
Rather than photographing every Porsche from the normal standing eye-level position, I spent time looking for opportunities to get much lower, shoot through plants and other foreground elements, work with the shapes of nearby vehicles, and find angles that emphasized the design of each car.
A car show is not a controlled automotive photo shoot. Cars are parked where they are parked, people are constantly moving through the frame, and backgrounds can change from one second to the next. That makes the process more about observation and timing. Sometimes moving only a few feet—or getting the camera just inches above the ground—can completely change the photograph.
The result is a mix of recognizable car show coverage and more intentional automotive portraits that focus on shape, color, details, and perspective.
Color, Cars, and Crowds Inside the Porsche Monterey Classic
Event photography that captures both the automobiles and the atmosphere around them
Inside Porsche Monterey, the photography became much more about the event itself.
Colorful lighting moved across the walls, cars, and guests while crowds gathered around some very special Porsches. Instead of trying to remove all of that color and activity from the photographs, I wanted to use it to show what being inside the event actually felt like.
That is where car show photography and event photography overlap. The cars are naturally the stars, but the people looking at them, photographing them, talking with one another, and filling the space are what turn a collection of vehicles into an event.
Wide photographs establish the size and atmosphere of the gathering, while closer images can isolate an individual Porsche against the colorful lighting. Together they tell a much more complete story than photographs of the cars alone.
Car Show Photography Is More Than Photographing Cars
There is an important distinction between making photographs of cars and photographing an automotive event.
For a car show, dealership gathering, launch, concours, rally, or private automotive event, the complete story includes much more than individual vehicles. I look for the wide establishing photographs, crowd activity, guests interacting with the cars, branding and signage, details, individual automotive portraits, and the moments happening around the event.
That combination gives an organizer, dealership, sponsor, or automotive business a much broader collection of images to use afterward for websites, social media, marketing, press, and promotion of future events.
Planning an Automotive Event on the Monterey Peninsula?
Selling a Car at Auction? Start With the Photography
Car show photography is only one side of the automotive work I do.
I also photograph individual cars for owners preparing to sell through an auction or automotive marketplace. Those shoots take a very different approach. Rather than working around crowds and other vehicles, I can concentrate entirely on creating a complete visual presentation of one car.
That means systematically photographing the overall exterior from multiple angles along with the interior, wheels, badging, design details, engine area when applicable, and the vehicle-specific features that a potential buyer will want to see.
For an auction listing, a large and consistent set of photographs helps a potential bidder understand the car before ever seeing it in person. The goal is not simply to make one dramatic hero photograph. It is to create an entire collection that presents the vehicle thoroughly while still making it look its best.
Photographing the Porsche Monterey Classic during Monterey Car Week 2026 gave me another chance to capture not only standout Porsches, but also the people, atmosphere, color, and creative details that make car shows so much fun to photograph.