(Nikon D700, Nikon 16mm Fisheye, ISO 200, Exposure 1/8000 @ f/2.8)

With fall in the air and lacking something new to post I thought I would post this shot I took last year at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Greenfield Village was created by Henry Ford, so it’s not surprising that the Model T and other old Ford automobiles should be prominently displayed. The museum offers rides in some of the older cars. This visit occurred in mid November on a wonderful Indian summer day. It was getting later in the day and the streets of the village were becoming empty. The less crowded village streets became a nice background to the old Ford automobiles that were still tooling around the village that day.

Processing the image was fairly straight-forward. I wanted to emphasize the car and add a bit of vintage feeling to the shot so I added a fairly strong vignette. I also liked the way the vignette worked with curvature of the image created by the fisheye lens. I used the Shadow/Highlight layer in Photoshop to bring back some details in the sky. The rest of the changes were done in Lightroom and involved mostly adjusting the blacks and adding a bit of fill light in spots.

Please feel free to leave comments and feedback below.

Copyright ©2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

(Olympus E-3, Zuiko 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/160 @ f/5.6)

This Farmall tractor is located at the edge of a local golf course. It was a nice, sunny indian summer kind of day and I decided to take a short drive out in the country at lunch time. I have taken pictures of this tractor before at different times of the year but not in the fall. I was trying out my new Zuiko 7-14 ultra wide angle lens on various subjects just to get a feel for the lens. I’m not entirely happy with the lighting on the back of the tractor. The sun was coming from the left side and it placed the rear of the tractor in shadow. If I would have had a flash or a reflector, I would have tried to direct some light in to the back area. Still, I liked the angle of the shot.

As for processing, I have been experimenting with the Cutout filter in Photoshop. In this image, the Cutout filter softens the image a bit and does a nice abstraction of the scenery in the distance. In the upper left, there is a barn in the distance. I really liked how the Cutout filter made the barn look more like a drawing than a photograph. Another thing I like about the Cutout filter is what it does with metallic objects. I think it creates some interesting color patterns which you can see on various places on the tractor.

Comments and feedback welcome

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