(Nikon D700 28-300mm at 28mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/2000 sec @ f/5.6)

Yesterday I posted a detail shot from this 1957 Buick Century Wagon which I saw at the 2011 Concours d’Elegance of America show at St. Johns. It seemed to be popular so I’m posting a couple more shots today. The shot above shows another detail element of the car and the picture below gives you a look at the entire car. Processing on the first image was similar to yesterday’s shot. I used Topaz Detail on ‘Abstraction’ to smooth out some of the details, mostly in the paint, and then masked out the key elements such as the chrome ‘Caballero’ badge. For the bottom image, I used Topaz Simplify to make the background more abstract and painterly, but I masked out the car itself.

Your comments are welcome and much appreciated!

Copyright ©2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

(Nikon D-700, 28-300mm at 180mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/2000th sec @ f/5.6)

I’m slowly going back over some images that I shot over the summer to find ones that I either overlooked or never got a chance to work with. This image comes from the 2011 Concours d’Elegance of America show held at St. John’s near Plymouth, Michigan. The car is a 1957 Buick Century Caballero Estate Wagon. What caught my eye when I saw it was the interesting “Mint Green and Dover White” color scheme and interesting styling. As I was processing the image, the thought crossed my mind that the image sort of looks like the Eye of Horus with the exhaust ports being the eyebrow and the tire being the eye.

For processing I did two main things. The first was to correct some of the lens vignetting created by the 28-300mm lens. As convenient as this lens is with it’s wide focal range, it does exhibit vignetting and several focal lengths. Fortunately this was pretty easy to correct using the lens correction feature of Lightroom. The other thing I did was to use the Topaz Detail filter on ‘Abstraction’ to smooth out the image. This eliminated some reflections that I didn’t care for and made the image more about the lines and curves of the shot. I did mask over the effect on the faux exhaust ports and the tire.

Comments and feedback always appreciated!

Copyright © 2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 200, Exposure 1/350 sec @ f/3.5)

Yesterday I posted an image of a 1935 Duesenberg taken at the 2008 Concours d’Elegance held at Meadowbrook Hall. This image was taken from the 2007 Concours and was my first time visiting the show. The car in this image is a 1933 Packard V-12 Convertible Coupe, and is just one of fifty that were ever built. When new, the car sold for $4,000, which in 1933 was a great deal of money.

For processing, I chose a similar approach to yesterday’s Duesenberg image. I was experimenting with the Cutout filter in Photoshop and I liked the posterization effect it gave to the image. In addition to the filter, I also blacked out some areas in the corners to bring more attention to the details of the car.

I’d be happy to know your thoughts on this one.

Copyright ©2007-2022 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 200, Exposure 1/60 sec @ f/10)

The Deusenberg is one of my favorite classic automobiles. The car just exudes power and class, and the companies that did the coachwork created automobiles with wonderful details. I took this shot at the 2008 Concours d’Elegance held at Meadowbrook Hall in Rochester Hills, Michigan. The car is a 1935 Duesenberg Model JN Roadster with coachwork by Bohman and Schwartz. The car has an interesting history. According to information displayed with the car, the automobile was purchased for Clark Gable from his wife, Carole Lombard. Gable owned the car until 1942 until his wife’s death at which time it was given away with instructions that it never be seen in California while he was still alive.

When I took the shot, I was trying to capture the interesting lines of the wheel covers, the pin striping, the lights, etc. The raw image, with the grass and reflections of the people sort of distracted from the design elements. I could have blacked out the grass, but I still would have had to deal with the reflections. I decided to try something a bit more ‘artistic’ and experimented with using the Photoshop Cutout filter. The Cutout filter does a nice job of dramatically simplifying color gradations but it kept the key elements of the car intact. Compare the finished image above with the raw image below.

Finally, here is a full body shot. I used Topaz simplify to create more of a painted background look.

Got comments or questions? Feel free to leave them below.

Copyright ©2008-2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 122mm, ISO 200, 1/500 sec @ f/11)

The mid 30′s Cord automobile has long been a favorite of mine. The distinctive feature being the ‘coffin’ nose and on some models, exposed chrome exhausts. My favorite Cord designs are the model 810 and later. The 810 was introduced at the 1936 New York, Los Angeles and Chicago auto shows. The show car was unique in that it had copper accents. The show car is on display at the Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg museum in Auburn, Indiana. The 810 was designed by noted car designer Gordon Buehrig. The 810 was originally going to be a 1935 Duesenberg but after incorporating a front wheel drive design, the vehicle was renamed the Cord 810.

The car above is a 1937 Cord 812 Sportsman Convertible automobile, on display at the 2011 Concours d’Elegance of America show held in Plymouth, Michigan. The 812 grew out of the 810 and was introduced in 1937. The 812 included a supercharger to increase horsepower, and featured the distinctive chrome exhaust pipes.

My main goal in processing this image was to draw attention to the two key details of the Cord, the exhaust pipes and the coffin nose. The original color shot (seen below) was a bit too bright, so I reduced the exposure in lightroom to bring back some details. The D-700 raw file is pretty forgiving of slightly overexposed images, you can generally reduce the exposure and have a nice shot, a benefit of ‘exposing to the right’. After some other minor cleanup in Lightroom, I used Silver Efex Pro 2 to convert the black and white. I think the end result sort of looks like an alien being, or the sort of car that an Imperial Stormtrooper might drive.

Here’s a final shot to give you an idea of what the full car looks like. I used Topaz Simplify to rework the background and used a layer mask to bring the car back to ‘normal’.

Please feel free to leave your thoughts, comments or questions.

Copyright ©2011 James W Howe – All rights reserved

(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.

(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.

(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.

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 23mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/320 sec @ f/8.0)

This shot shows a 1936 Cord 810 S/C Phaeton which was on display at the 2009 Concours d’Elegance car show held at Meadowbrook Hall in Rochester Hills, Michigan. I’ve always been attracted to the Cord, particularly those from the mid 1930′s. I love the design elements, particularly the ‘coffin’ nose and the exposed exhaust pipes. The car just has great lines and exudes class.

I originally posted this image on Flickr shortly after the event. A couple weeks later I was surprised to receive an e-mail from the owner! His daughter had seen the picture on Flickr and had told her dad. One of the highlights for me about this car was the unique color. Most Cords that I have seen are black, brown, cream, but this one had a very interesting green metallic color, very sharp. He gave me some additional backstory on the color used for the car:

I picked up this Cord as a severely butchered rear-drive hot rod in 1959. It took me until 1967 to get it all back to original and I enjoyed driving it almost daily until 2005. By then it was a very tired dark green driver with many scratches, mis-matched paint repairs etc A close friend offered to spend the weekend painting it all one colour so it would be a bit closer to presentable. The weekend turned into three years and a month with both of us working every spare moment on it. The colour was being considered by a self appointed committee of about six. I wanted a lime green like Duesenberg engines are, they were coming up with black cherry, copper, multi colour chamelion, and then we hit upon the pearlessence type light green. A very possible but unknown original colour! Without the experimental pearlessence it would be “Ganges Green” I believe, it is the fish scales that make it “glow”.

Another interesting bit of information that I learned from the owner was that this car was the inspiration for a painting by noted automobile artist Tom Hale. The rights to the painting were purchased by Kruse and used on a poster promoting a show at the Auburn Cord Duesenberg museum in 2008, seen here:

I’ve always admired the work of Tom Hale, even though I didn’t really know much about the artist. I really like the strong graphical quality of his work.

My finished image is a combination of the raw image with a contrast adjustment combined with some ‘simplification and blurring’ over the front fender. It was a bright, sunny day and it was hard to control reflections. I first used the Topaz Simplify filter in Photoshop CS4 to de-emphasize the people in the reflection. I masked out the parts of the car that I wanted to remain sharp. I then used the blur tool to smooth out the image a bit more.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

This image, and others, can be purchased from my gallery at jameshowephotography.imagekind.com.

(Olympus E-3, 70-300mm at 70mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/1000 sec @ f/8.0)

Every year I look forward to the Concours d’Elegance car show held at Meadowbrook Hall in Rochester Hills, Michigan. Each year this car show brings in over 200 classic cars, many of which are rarely seen in public. This year was the 30th year the event had been held at Meadowbrook. For those unfamiliar with automobile history, Meadowbrook Hall was built by Matilda Dodge Wilson and her second husband Alfred Wilson. Matilda was the widow of John Dodge, one of the founders of the Dodge Brothers Company which was later sold to Chrysler. Hence, this location is a very appropriate place to hold a car show.

This particular image shows the grillwork of a 1934 DeSoto Airflow automobile. DeSoto was a Chrysler brand from 1928 until 1961. The Airflow was a unique vehicle for the time. It used unibody construction, which was a new concept at the time. The car also was one of the first to use a streamlined design. Unfortunately the American public wasn’t ready for this new styling and coupled with some notable mechanical problems, the car was a failure.

This image has had only minor processing done to it. Contrast was increased and converted to black and white. I masked the nameplate to bring back its color. The color of the car was a gray, and the color in this image is almost exactly what the color looked like in the color version. Converting to black and white also removed a blueish cast from sunny sky.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

This image, and others, can be purchased from my gallery at jameshowephotography.imagekind.com.