(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

(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 250, Exposure 1/8 sec @ f/7.1)

One of my favorite automobiles is the Auburn Boattail Speedster manufactured by the Auburn Automobile Company of Auburn, Indiana. The Auburn company was sold to E.L. Cord who merged it with Duesenberg to create a company which manufactured Auburns, Cords and Duesenbergs. Their main facility was housed in an Art Deco building in Auburn, Indiana which now houses the Auburn-Cord-Dusesenberg museum. This shot shows the showroom of the Museum, displaying an array of vintage Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg automobiles (big surprise). The showroom has some great Art Deco touches such as the chandeliers, and detail work in the ceiling, flooring and main staircase. The museum is a great place to visit if you love vintage automobiles or enjoy Deco design.

This image comes from a series of three that I had originally taken with the thought that I might use for an HDR shot. I didn’t have a tripod with me so this was shot using the railing of the staircase for support. I did run the images through Photomatix, but I didn’t like the look. Instead, I use a couple of Photoshop plug-ins to get a look I liked. The first thing I did was crop the image down to eliminate some useless elements from the bottom. I then ran the image through a noise-reduction process because I the 250 ISO on my Olympus E-3 introduced a little bit of noise, and I knew that subsequent processing would probably increase that noise so I wanted to have as clean of an image as I could to start with. I then used Topaz Adjust to bring out some of the details in the floor and decorative elements. In Silver Efex Pro I increased the structure of the entire image and selected the Panatomic X ISO 32 film preset to get a conversion that I liked. I added a bit of tinting as well. Finally, in Lightroom, I applied a different tint as well as added a slight vignette. Compare the finished image to the image I started with below.

Comments or thoughts?

Copyright © 2008-2010 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 1/320 sec @ f/9.0)

This shot shows the drivers side engine ports of a 1937 Cord Beverly Sedan. The car was part of the Classic Car Club of American (CCCA) automobile show held at the Gilmore Car Museum near Kalamazoo, Michigan. I’ve always been a big fan of Cord automobiles. They have wonderful interior and exterior details that are fun to explore, but sometimes difficult to capture in a photograph. When shooting at car shows, it is sometimes difficult to get a good shot without annoying reflections, harsh lighting, etc.

The day I took this the sky was mostly cloudy, but bright. The image had some reflections on the fender that I didn’t car for, so I tried to find some way to tone them down. I ended up doing several things. I used the Topaz Adjust filter to bring out a bit more color in the image. I had contemplated trying the Topaz Simplify filter and I wanted more color variation. Instead of Simplify, I decided to see what the image would look like in black & white. By playing with the color sliders in Photoshop CS4, I was able to reduce the reflection to something you could barely see. I didn’t want black & white as my end result so I created a toning layer using curves. I played with the Red, Green and Blue curves until I got a color which was similar to the color of the car. Some tweaking of the color balance helped as well. I masked out the exhaust pipes to keep them chrome color. Overall I like the way the image came out, particularly the ‘soft’ look of the paint job with minimal reflections.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

Visit my Automobile Details gallery at ImageKind. I have other vintage car shots available as well at www.vintagecarimages.com.

(Olympus E-3, 70-300mm at 179mm (2x crop factor), ISO 320, exposure 1/200 sec @ f/5.6)

I took this shot of a classic automobile dashboard at a car show held at the Gilmore Car Musuem in Hickory Corners, MichiganThe museum has a terrific collection of cars spanning the decades, and they also have some nice special events. I’m attracted to older cars, particularly those of the 30′s, because they have such wonderful design elements. This dashboard to me just oozes craftsmanship and design.

Note: I originally thought this was from a Cord, but as one commenter notes below this is more likely from a Packard. I’ll keep my eyes peeled to see if I can fully identify this vehicle.

Update: I can definitely confirm that this is from a Packard but I’m not sure the exact vintage or model. My guess is that it is mid 1930′s. I recently went to a show which had a few 1932/33 Packards and the dashboard’s were very similar but not exact.

This shot was taken with my 70-300 telephoto because I wanted to get a shallower DOF on the image. I converted the image to black and white, but in reality the color image isn’t that much different, just a bit more color in the gauges. There was minimal post processing work, mostly curves adjustments. I posted an alternative version of this image with a square crop to Flickr. I found that this image makes a great little avatar and I also use it as my background on my Twitter page.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

This image can be purchased. Other vintage car images available at ImageKind in my Automobile Details gallery.

I also have some vintage car photography products on sale at www.vintagecarimages.com

A few month ago I took a trip to the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. The museum has a great collection of vintage automobiles, not surprisingly Auburns, Cords and Duesenbergs. I love these cars for their interesting details. This particular image was created from a digital photograph of a 1931 Cord convertible. This is a detail shot of the front fender area. I liked the various shapes in the image and I wanted to make the image less about the car and more about the shapes so I did some tweaking of the image in Photoshop. I played with the colors and used some artistic filters to create the image you see above.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

This image can be purchased.