Seeing by Touch
by James Howe on Jun.22, 2011, under black and white
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 170mm, ISO 250, Exposure 1/2000 sec @ f/5.6)
The annual Eyes on Design car show is part of a fund raiser for the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology. The show isn’t quite as big as some of the larger Concours d’Elegance shows held around the nation, but it generally as a couple hundred cars of various vintages, with the focus on automobile design. The show is held at the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Point Shores, Michigan. The house is located next to Lake St. Clair and has wonderful grounds for a car exhibition.
Because of the connection with the DIO, one of the nice things they do is let individuals who have sight issues view and judge the cars by touch. It’s fascinating to watch the reactions to these people as they feel their way around an automobile, asking the owner for specific information such as what the color of the car is, for example. I thought this was really fascinating and I tried to capture some images of this process at work. I liked the image above the best because I think it demonstrates the light touch that is used to really ‘see’ by feeling.
Processing was fairly straight forward. I debated about color vs. black and white and went with black and white, although I think both images work. In the conversion, I tried to keep the glove brighter because I wanted to focus the eye on the action of the hand.
Love to hear your thoughts and comments.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Gears
by James Howe on Jun.21, 2011, under Greenfield Village
(Nikon D700, 105mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/30 sec @ f/3.0)
I have this thing for anything old, mechanical or metal. When I was at Greenfield Village this past weekend for their annual Motor Muster, I had the pleasure of seeing many things which fit that description. One of the coolest places in the museum (in my opinion) is the Armington & Sims machine shop. The shop has a great collection of original machine shop tools and is actually a functioning job shop for items needed at the museum. I was using a Nikon 105mm Macro lens that I had rented from LensPro To Go and I made a pass through the shop to see if I could get some interesting images. One of my favorites from this trip is this shot of some tool which had a great collection of gears. I didn’t have my tripod with me that day, but if I did I would have taken some brackets for an HDR image. The shop is too dark to take handheld exposures.
Processing of the image involved using a square crop to focus more on the machine itself. I didn’t like the really bright area at the top of the original image and I liked the combination of the curved gears inside of the square frame. The remainder of processing was done in Silver Efex Pro2 where I tried to bring out the detail in the metal.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Silvertone
by James Howe on Jun.20, 2011, under Greenfield Village
(Nikon D700, Nikon 105mm f2.3 Macro, ISO 200, Exposure 1/30 sec @ f/16)
So, I went to the annual Motor Muster at Greenfield Village and came back with a shot of a … radio. Actually I do have some pictures of cars, but I think I’m hitting a block on my car photography. At this show I saw many of the same cars I saw last year (and the year before), and while I enjoy looking at them, I’m finding it harder to come up with interesting ways to shoot them. It’s hard to get a good shot of the entire car because there are generally people in the way so I tend to focus on details. However, after shooting details for so long I find myself mentally rejecting shots before I even take them because I remember taking something similar in the past. Anyway, the show was fun even if I didn’t get a large number of ‘keeper’ shots.
This image shows a 1937 Silvertone Console Radio. The radio was purchased in 1937 at a Sears in Highland Park, Michigan. The radio accompanied a 1937 car (whose make and model I don’t recall). I took this shot because I really liked the Art Deco style of the radio.
Processing was done in two stages. I did some initial work in Lightroom to increase the blacks and overall exposure and some minor cropping. The rest was done with Silver Efex Pro2 in Photoshop.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Private Coach
by James Howe on Jun.17, 2011, under HDR
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 70mm, ISO 200, 5 exposures @ f/8.0)
This is another shot of the abandoned (?) bus I found parked in a junkyard just outside of Defiance, Ohio. The image was created from 5 handheld exposures and which were merged together in Photomatix (see below) and then given additional processing using PhotoTools.
As always, would love to hear your thoughts on this one.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Challenger (outside Defiance)
by James Howe on Jun.15, 2011, under HDR, Uncategorized
(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 70mm, ISO 200, 5 exposures @ f/8.0
As I was driving to Defiance, Ohio, I saw a sign for ‘Independence Dam’. I thought that might be interesting so I took a short trip on a side road which ran along the Maumee (I think) river. I didn’t make it to the dam because it was in a state park and I didn’t want to pay an admission fee. However, along the way I noticed this junk/repair yard which had this bus sitting out front. I just had to stop and take some pictures.
This image started out from 5 hand held exposures processed initially in Photomatix (seen below). After Photomatix, I used PhotoTools to do some additional processing to come up with the finished image seen above.
I also played around with various black and white versions. My favorite is this toned image that was created from the HDR image, using Silver Efex Pro 2.
I like them both. Feel free to leave your opinion or any other comments below.
Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.