(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 170mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/2000 sec @f/5.0)

This past weekend I attended the 2010 Meadowbrook Concours d’Elegance held at Meadowbrook Hall on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Michigan. The show is never a disappointment, with a large collection of classic automobiles. I really enjoying photographing the details of classic cars. The cars, particularly of the 30′s and 40′s were a wonderful combination of art and engineering. A perfect example is shown above.

This image shows the mascot, or hood ornament of a 1935 Packard Model 1405 Phaeton by Dietrich. The ornament is by Lalique, called ‘Chrysis’. I don’t know if it is original to the car or a replacement. The car itself has an interesting history. It is one of only three of this model ever made, and only two remain. The car was part of the inaugural parade for FDR’s second term. It was owned for a time by Domino’s Pizza founder, Tom Monahan. In 1986, it competed in the Great American Car Race. It is a wonderful example of 1930′s automobile coachwork.

Processing of the mascot image primarily involved cropping from the 35mm format and converting to black & white. When I took the shot, I tried to get a background which wouldn’t distract from the hood ornament. In a car show, it is sometimes difficult because they have the cars packed so closely together. I was lucky with this one. I was able to get an angle on the shot which put a patch of grass behind the mascot. When I converted the image to black & white, I toned down the green until it become a soft back light. The raw, out of camera image is shown below.

I’m not sure this is going to be the final version of this image. I think I might crop just a bit more to create a square image. I might also eliminate the bit of the car hood that you see on the left, leaving just the mascot on the pedestal. I played around with that a bit and I haven’t decided whether I like it better or not. I took a few other angles of the same subject. I like the one below because of the bright spot in the upper left but would also look nice cropped down from the top as well.

As always, please feel free to leave your comments, suggestions and opinions.

I’d like to thank Steve Brown for information on the name of the hood ornament. If you like cars, check out his Flickr gallery. Wonderful stuff.

Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 95mm, ISO 1600, Exposure 1/250 sec @f/5.6)

The image above was taken on a recent visit to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. I went for the annual Motor Muster, but spent some time touring the various exhibits. I’ve previously posted images from the Machine Shop, and this is another one from the same shop. My goal in this shot was to try and capture the feeling of the machine, gritty and oily. You can see metal shavings from the cutter, but what I really liked was the can of oil. The title of the image comes from the writing on the can ‘Dark Cutting Oil’.

As you can see below, the raw image was in color, but I converted it to black & white in Lightroom. Along the way I added a bit of vignette and did some toning of the black & white image itself. I will say that I really like in the color version is the look of the oil can itself. I like the brown, oily patina on the can and I don’t think the black & white has the same feeling. I’m also debating about cropping some from the top to eliminate some of the bright window and focus the eye more on what I think is the subject of the image.

Interested in hearing what you think.

Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

(Olympus E-3 D700, 150-300mm at 190mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, Exposure 1/640 sec @f/5.6)

It’s hot here in Michigan, and elsewhere throughout the US, so I thought it appropriate to post this image of a child cooling off in a fountain. The picture was taken in 2008 during Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk held in Detroit, Michigan. The fountain is located along the Detroit riverwalk, just behind the Renaissance Center.

As a point of reference, here is the image as it came out of the camera. I cropped to put more focus on the child and converted to black & white. Most operations were done using Adobe Lightroom.

Comments cheerfully accepted!

Copyright © 2008-2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

Ponce Cathedral

(Nikon D700, 16-35mm at 17mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/1000 sec @f/8.0)

My family and I just returned from a short vacation in Puerto Rico. We stayed in the San Juan area, but we took a trip to the south side of the island where we visited the city of Ponce. Ponce was an interesting experience because non of my family speaks Spanish (we can read some) and there was very little English spoken in Ponce. We didn’t have a good map of Ponce and the city has very tight streets. We spent some time in the town square where I took this picture of the Ponce Cathedral. The church itself is on the National Register of Historic Places as “Cathedral Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe of Ponce”.

Processing consisted of conversion to black & white with some perspective correction. The sky was quite blue so I darkened it during the conversion. The building was a light grey color although in this shot it looks more white. I might try some curves work to bring down the brightness of the building a bit to see what it looks like.

Comments welcome!

Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), ISO 400, exposure 1/20 sec @ f/5.0)

This image comes from the old wing of the University of Michigan Museum of Art. I was visiting the museum to see the Lens of Impressionism exhibit and managed to take several interior shots of the museum while I was waiting for other people in my party to arrive. This image shows the main staircase in the old wing of the museum. I shot this from the bottom floor looking up toward the top of the building.

This was a difficult shot to take. The light in the museum is fairly dark, like most museums. The wood of the staircase is also dark. At the same time, there is a big window as well as lights to contend with, creating a large dynamic range. The museum doesn’t allow tripods so trying some sort of HDR would be difficult (but not impossible). To avoid seriously blown highlights, most of the image is dark.

In processing, I wanted to bring out a little more detail in the staircase. The raw image was primarily monochromatic so conversion to black & white wasn’t an big deal, and I had figured this would be a black & white image when I took it. Processing mostly consisted of applying some different curves to bring out some of the staircase while limiting the blown out look from the lights and window. I converted to black & white and applied a platinum toning curve at about 50% opacity to give the image a bit of color.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2009-2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved