Packard 8
by James Howe on Aug.02, 2011, under Automobiles
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 98mm, ISO 200, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6)
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.
Not much to say in the way of processing. The main changes were to reduce the vibrance a bit to eliminate some of the blue sky which was reflecting in the chrome and to make some minor tweaks in contrast.
Here’s a quick shot of the full car:
Thoughts?
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Custom Royal
by James Howe on Aug.01, 2011, under Automotive
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 28mm, ISO 200, 1/125 sec @ f/22)
I went to the Concours d’Elegance of America car show this past weekend. The event used to be known as the Meadowbrook Concours and was held at Meadowbrook Hall in Rochester Hills, Michigan, 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.
This particular shot is of a 1957 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer. This car had just completed a full restoration and was refinished in the original colors of ‘Tropical Coral and Glacier White’. No special processing was done on this image apart from some sharpening and the cloning out of two small pieces of grass on the tire.
Thoughts?
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Gas Pump
by James Howe on Jul.25, 2011, under Michigan
(Olympus E3, 50mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, Exposure 1/2000 sec @ f/2.8)
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.
Processing was pretty minimal so the end shot looked pretty much like the out of camera shot.
Thoughts or comments? Leave them below!
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Morning at the Harbor
by James Howe on Jul.19, 2011, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 145mm, ISO 200, 1/30 sec @ f/16)
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.
When I shot the picture I was thinking about creating a black and white image. I liked the shadows created by the hard light and thought a high contrast image might look nice. I processed the image with Silver Efex Pro 2 which also imparted the ragged border. About the only other thing I did to the image was to crop it to make the curve of the geared wheel more of the subject. I also like the color version of the image and I might do something with it as well.
Feel free to leave comments or constructive feedback below.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
St. Peter’s Cathedral – Variations
by James Howe on Jul.16, 2011, under Architecture
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 70mm, ISO 250, 1/250 sec @ f/11)
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.
In processing today’s image, I tried a couple of things that I haven’t done before. I had recently watched a Kelby Training course with Moose Peterson where he did some processing on a landscape image using Photomatix to generate a single image HDR. His goal was to use Photomatix to bring out detail in a flat sky. I haven’t really used the single image HDR ability of Photomatix before, so I thought I would give it a try with this image. I didn’t have a flat sky to contend with, but I was curious to see if the processing would bring out more detail. I was pretty pleased with what I got, although there were probably other techniques/tools that I could have used to accomplish the same thing.
After I had my basic color image, I decided that I wanted a high contrast black and white. I had the image in Lightroom, so I did the black and white conversion there. I wanted to have a dark sky, so I slid the blue slider all the way to the left to completely blacken the blues in the image. However, in doing so I also blackened some blue elements in the building which I didn’t want to do. So, I created a virtual copy of the color image and did a second black and white conversion. This time I made the blue elements almost white. I selected both images and opened them as layers in Photoshop. The bright blue version was on top, but I wanted the dark sky, so I added a layer mask and filled it with black. I then selectively painted white to bring back the ‘white’ blue areas that I wanted from the brighter image. A bit of sharpening and the finished image is what you see above.
Most of the time when I do black and white processing I use Silver Efex Pro 2 from Nik Software. I decided to see how that would work on my color image. One of the things which surprised me was that I couldn’t get a really black sky by reducing the blue. No matter, I decided to go in a different direction for this version anyway. I used the structure capability to bring out some of the fine detail and I played with the contrast. I like how the wispy clouds came out and I like the overall crispness of the image. I think I still prefer the first image just for the dramatic contrast, but I like this one as well. With either image, I think you can see that it is possible to create a dramatic image out of a fairly flat looking raw image.
Comments and constructive feedback are more than welcome.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.