Top five places to photograph your car in Melbourne

You've just bought your latest ride and want to show it off to all your friends via socials. Or you've finally decided to sell your beloved car to make way for a new one.

Of course, you'll need some ripper photos to make everyone drool with envy or beat a path to your door wanting a test drive.

Photos are going to be super important, so here are five suggested backdrops in or near Melbourne for some killer shots.

North Road boat ramp, Brighton

The beauty of boat ramps as photographic locations is you can park a car by the sea with no obstructions like bollards or bushes – so it’s always going to look more dramatic than a driveway or suburban street. Port Phillip Bay has dozens and this one at the far end of North Road in Brighton is a corker. Go through the car park, position your car on the boat ramp (without obstructing actual boaties) and not only do you get gently lapping waves in the background but also a view of Melbourne’s city skyscrapers.

The Great Ocean Road

Australia’s most scenic strip of tarmac hardly needs an introduction and few drivers can resist the Great Ocean Road’s turns alongside cliffs and beaches. Finding a place to stop and shoot a car isn’t easy, however, thanks to all those ugly armco barriers and restricted access to the more scenic bits. Try the public jetty at Apollo Bay for a background of water and fishing boats or better still, at Lorne there’s a boat launching spot immediately south of the pier where you can drive (preferably a 4x4) across the sand and park next to the rocks and ocean.

Supercheap Auto or Officeworks, anywhere

Head to one of these suburban superstores after hours and you’ll find many have big, blank, brightly coloured walls (red for Supercheap, blue for Officeworks) that you can park alongside for a nice clean background. Get down really low to eradicate as much tarmac and kerb as possible and the colours will make your car’s profile really pop. When you’re out shopping keep looking for that perfect wall (a yellow Chemist Warehouse, anybody?) if red or blue don’t suit.

North Wharf, Docklands

You can’t get much closer to central Melbourne than Collins Street but in this case we’re not talking the Paris end but the opposite. That’s where North Wharf juts into the Yarra and it is a surprisingly open and empty spot perfect for parking a car in a number of locations with either a city background (looks magic at sunset) or virtually right under the Bolte Bridge.

Woolworths, Prahran

Nobody visualises Woolies and thinks a car would look good parked outside. But this one in Prahran has a roof-top car park that is wide open and often half empty so you can position a car there with dramatic city skylines in the background and (hopefully) nobody to bother you. Better still, you can check out the Prahran market across the road or shop in the supermarket downstairs and get 90 minutes free parking.

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