Here’s another shot taken at the 2011 Concours d’Elegance of America held in Plymouth, Michigan. This one shows a detail of the engine cowling of a 1940 Packard 180 Convertible Victoria. The Packard Motor Car Company started life in 1899 as the Ohio Automobile Company. Packard started the company after accepting a challenge from Alexander Winton to build a better car than was being produced by the Winton Motor Carriage Company. The Winton company was one of the first companies to sell motor cars and Packard had complained to Winton about the quality of his car. Packard changed the name of his company to the Packard Motor Car Company in 1902 and moved to Detroit in 1903.

I went to the Concours d’Elegance of America car show today. The event used to be known as the Meadowbrook Concours, but for a variety of reasons the show had to move to a new location. This year the event was held at St. Johns near Plymouth, Michigan. I believe the show had over 300 cars of various vintages and styles. My favorites tend to be the cars of the 30’s but there are interesting aspects to most cars displayed at this event.

I took this shot of an old gas pump when I visited the Gilmore Car Museum a few weeks ago. Out in front of their vintage Shell gas station they have 3 or 4 vintage gas pumps. I was using my Olympus E-3 with an old Zuiko 50mm macro lens at the time which helped get a nice crisp close up. I especially like the pile of dead bugs at the bottom.

On a recent trip to Marquette, Michigan I had an opportunity to walk around the lower harbor early one morning. It was the 5th of July and the Marquette had hosted a 4th of July party down in the harbor area. It was interesting wandering around as volunteers were cleaning up and packing things up from the night before. As I wandered around I walked down one of the roads leading out to the docks. As I walked out I passed a metal building which had these interesting devices attached. They were several feet wide and looked like they would be used to spool something, but I have no idea what. I just liked the way they looked in the morning light.

Today’s image is a close-up of some of the details that made St. Peter’s Cathedral so interesting. If you saw yesterday’s post, you know this picture is of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Marquette, Michigan. When I first saw this church my eyes were immediately drawn to all the neat details. The building has lots of carved stone and a variety of colors, mostly in the domes. The HDR image I posted yesterday tried to convey the colors and today’s image is focused on the details.

One of the things which surprised me on my family’s visit to Marquette, Michigan was the interesting older architecture of many of the buildings. I was also surprised at the number and variety of churches for a town of approximately 20,000. It wasn’t too surprising to see a Catholic church, however, since the city was named after Father Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit missionary. What I love about this church is all the detail work, especially the tile work on the domed towers. I took several pictures, both of the entire structure as well as some of the detail work.

I was spending some time going through my Lightroom catalog looking for some interesting images to post to my Google+ profile when I came across this image that I took in 2008. The car is a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham and it was on display at the annual Eyes on Design car show held in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan. I don’t think I ever posted this image anywhere before, so here it is now!

Over the 4th of July weekend, I spent a couple of days in Marquette, Michigan. We were in Marquette to check out the campus of Northern Michigan University as a possible university for our youngest son. The town is quite interesting and has a number of interesting older buildings with some terrific architecture. When we got there, I took a short walk around the town. As I was wandering around town I saw this cool sign for Ringside Fitness, a local fitness facility and thought it would make a nice image. For processing I started with one of the darker presets from Silver Efex Pro 2 and gave the image a rough border. I wanted to give the image a bit of an old time grungy feeling.

The ore dock in Marquette, Michigan is a pretty imposing structure. It’s probably at least two freighters in length and is this lovely mass of repeating concrete and metal elements. I took several shots, some wide, and some close-up. For this image, I shot 5 exposures to use for an HDR image since I thought that the HDR might really bring out the character in the concrete and metal. When processing, I also worked on a black and white version which I might post either here or on my 500px page. I think black and white works really well with this shot to give it an industrial look, but I like the look and color of the rusty concrete in the color version.

This past weekend my wife and youngest son took a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to visit the campus of Northern Michigan University. NMU is located in Marquette, Michigan, which is a terrific little town. The town is located on the shores of Lake Superior and has a wonderful collection of historic buildings and interesting sights. This shot was taken down in what is known as the lower harbor. The lower harbor has an old ‘ore dock’ which is a large structure used to load taconite pellets on to large ships. Marquette has two of these docks, one is still in use. The image shows a tug boat parked in front of the dock.