So you have a Cobra roadster
(or a GT40 or a Daytona Coupe) you wish to sell. You don't want to give it away—you want to sell it for a fair price, you want to sell it as promptly as possible and as hassle-free as possible.

1. You must recognize that the potential buyers for your Cobra (for the most part) are NOT nearby, NOT in your hometown. They're scattered all over the planet, from Pennsauken to Peoria to El Paso... and from Hell-n-Gone to Helsinki.

This means you don't fritter away your net worth advertising it in your hometown newspaper, or in your local Auto Swapper or Penny Pincher magazine. Advertise where the Cobra buyers are, not where they ain't (a tip of the gray kepi to Nathan Bedford Forrest). And for the record, CobraCountry is The #1 Watering Hole where Cobra buyers congregate.

2. The vast majority of your prospective buyers are distant from you, so they're unlikely to drop by your house and be impressed with your reptilian hot rod and thus get all lathered up about purchasing it.

So what's an erstwhile serpent merchant to do?

There are two tried & proven methods for you to get a potential buyer thrilled and excited about purchasing your Cobra:

a) You can cajole and implore him to come to see it and examine it in person and thus get snake-charmed into a buying trance. Since he's likely to be 500 or 1,000 or even 8,000 miles away, don't hold your breath in pursuit of that strategy. Or...

b) You can inspire him to contact you and get a dialog started entirely with your photographs. Since the lion's share of your prospective buyers are quite distant from you, this is far-and-away (pardon the unintended pun) your likeliest course of events. And listen carefully: you may easily assume that you show photos of your Cobra to show folks what your Cobra looks like. Wrong. Repeat: WRONG! Most folks shopping for a Cobra already know pretty much what a red one (or a blue one or a silver one) looks like. You display those photos to spur folks' favorable attention—so that they promptly get inspired enough to email you or phone you and begin a dialog. Your ad text won't do that for you, and boring snapshots definitely won't do it. Only good photographs will work those wonders for you. Conduct yourself accordingly...

And there's yet another REALLY BIG advantage of taking and displaying top-notch photographs of your Cobra: a sizable share of Cobras on CobraCountry are sold sight-unseen... the buyers are sufficiently confident in what they see in those excellent photos that they opt to not fly cross-country to see it before they purchase. Read my lips: snapshots WILL NOT DO THAT FOR YOU. Which takes us to #3...

3. You have all the resources you need right in front of you, right here on CobraCountry to capture (with your digital camera) those magnificent photos you need of your Cobra to have buyers lined up at your Cyber-doorstep. And listen: It doesn't matter if you don't know the front end of a camera from the south end of a northbound wart hog—there's no rocket science involved. Each and every splendid Cobra photograph you see on this page was taken by a Cobra owner who had been no more familiar with good motorcar photography than your fleabag beagle... and they sold their serpents based in large measure upon their heeding my tips and thus capturing these good photographs.

If you carefully heed my tips, you'll capture excellent photos of your serpent that will get it sold. Directly below are CobraCountry's Cobra photography advisories. Click on 'A' and examine the sample photos, then click on 'B' and print that page out. Now lissen, fellas: this is a simple A—B—C  enterprise: Don't leave out Part C.

A. Sample Photos Page: Perhaps a 7 or 8-minute viewing and reading. Do it. Click on this link to see good examples (and some typical bad examples) of Cobra photography. Don't print this page out—but DO click on each hotlinked photo to see how you can photograph your car like a pro.

B. Printout Page: Click on this link to call up my "Cobra Photography Tips Step-by-Step" page. Print this page out, then invest six minutes of your time to read it. Take it with you as a reminder/checklist when you photograph your car.

C. Phone me before you photograph your car. My private office line is 661-251-0806, California time. I pledge to make that call well worth your time, by giving you specific tips regarding (for example) the color of your car (including how to best capture metallic paint), how it's equipped, how to best photograph a hard top or soft top, and other tips that will aid you in capturing world-class photos of your formidable serpent.

cockpit photo above is hotlinked view, MUCH larger size.
photograph by Patrick Kerr—Langley, BC, Canada

Understand, my Cobra photography tips aren't some general advisory for you to glance at and mostly ignore. They're expert/professional, well-thought-out and thoroughly field-tested and VERY specific tips that will 1) significantly improve the photos you take of your car, and 2) reduce your time-wasting trial-and-error shooting to ZERO. Carefully follow these tips and you'll very promptly shoot a bunch of professional-quality photographs instead of unsightly, scare-the-buyers-away snapshots.

One other thing: CobraCountry's "Photoshop Finishing School": every "For Sale" photograph that you see on CobraCountry has been expertly "detailed"— i.e., color-corrected, contrast-corrected, cropped, trimmed, sharpened and carefully fine-tuned with every appropriate tool that Adobe Photoshop has to offer, so that your serpentine drivin' machine looks as breathtaking in your CobraCountry display ad or Prestige Showcase page as it does in the flesh.

(Shell Valley Cobra) engine photo above is hotlinked view, MUCH larger size.
photograph by Harold Gumm—Lompoc, California

(Backdraft Racing Cobra) engine photo above is hotlinked view, MUCH larger size.
photograph by Tim Nelson—Las Vegas, Nevada

Note how that bright white surface under the engine thoroughly brightened up these engine compartment shots. The suggestion that you position a smooth, bright white shower curtain liner (±$6 at Wal-Mart) on the pavement beneath your engine compartment is right there in Curt's tips!

The 3 most critically important of Curt's
 Cobra Photography Tips:

FLASH: Set your camera for FORCED flash so that it flashes with every single shot you take. Mind you, that piece of advice is not negotiable. I hope to never again hear someone reply to me "Well, I had my camera on 'automatic flash'—so it would work if needed." Read my lips: "Automatic flash" is fundamentally, categorically, unconditionally worthless for outdoor photography. Worthless. One more time: Worthless. 'Automatic flash' does not work outdoors in the daylight... where you need your flash the most. "Automatic flash" is for selling cameras, not for taking photographs... especially motorcar photographs.

PARK YOUR COBRA ON CONCRETE: light concrete works to reflect light up onto the lower parts of your coachwork, helping to illuminate your paint and accentuate the color. If you can park your Cobra (or GT40) on concrete, do it. And unless you want to tint your paint and your chrome butt-ugly GREEN, never park your car on grass for your photography. NEVER.

ENGINE & COCKPIT SHOTS: there has never (repeat: NEVER) been a good engine or open-roadster cockpit shot taken under direct sunlight. NEVER. You MUST park your car outdoors, but completely within the shade on the shaded side of a building, in BRIGHT mid-morning or mid-afternoon shade (repeat: IN THE SHADE!), and with nothing but open sky overhead, so that you've got the maximum amount of ambient light to blend with your flash; for your engine and cockpit shots, there must be no direct sunlight striking anywhere on your car.

Santa Clarita, California
661-251-0806 Pacific Time Zone

frontal shot above is hotlinked to an alternate (blue) Cobra frontal shot.
 1. photo of yellow Cobra by Craig Sklodowski—Florence, New Jersey 
2. photo of blue Cobra by Ray Dilena—Franklin Square, New York    

Prestige Showcase ad

West Coast Cobra photo above is hotlinked to the same shot, MUCH larger size.
photograph by Ryan Parks—Rancho Santa Margarita, California

Superformance #SPF 890 above is hotlinked to the same shot, MUCH larger size.
aerial shot by Lynn Johnson—Green Cove Springs, Florida

Prestige Showcase ad

B&B roadster above is hotlinked to the same shot, MUCH larger size.
shot by Mario Veltri—Geneva, Illinois

Contemporary 289FIA above is hotlinked to the same shot, MUCH larger size.
shot by Scott Richey—Newburgh, Indiana

Backdraft roadster above is hotlinked to the same shot, MUCH larger size.
shot by Backdraft dealer Bill Littleton—Hebron, Kentucky

B&B roadster above is hotlinked to the same shot, MUCH larger size.
shot by Brennan Moore—Santa Barbara, California

Prestige Showcase ad

Backdraft roadster above is hotlinked to the same shot, MUCH larger size.
aerial shot by Tim "Topper" Nelson—Las Vegas, Nevada

Shell Valley roadster above is hotlinked to the same shot, MUCH larger size.
shot by Harold Gumm—Lompoc, California

Prestige Showcase ad

Hunter roadster above is hotlinked to the same shot, MUCH larger size.
shot by Jim Bradford—Tampa, Florida

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