(Nikon D700, 28-80 at 56mm, ISO 250, Exposure 1/125 sec @f/11)

It’s almost summer so that must mean its time for classic car shows! I recently attended the Classic Car Club of America Museum ‘Experience’ show, held annually at the Gilmore Car Museum in Western Michigan. The show always has a great collection of classic automobiles, all of which have been beautifully maintained and/or restored.

The image above shows some of the spare tire detail from a 1929 Sport Phaeton Cadillac which was on display. For some reason, I found the combination of the leather straps against the black and white of the tire to be visually appealing and I tried to capture that feeling in this shot. The original shot was just a little bit larger, but I decided to crop it down to focus on the elements which caught my eye originally.

Processing was fairly minimal. Aside from a minor crop, I used an Hue-Saturation layer to remove a blue cast which came from the overcast skies. I also increased the contrast and bumped the saturation of the reds to bring back some color to the leather which I felt was lacking in the raw image. Some final sharpening and you have the final image.

I took several shots at this show and I suspect they will be appearing in this blog over the next few days!

Comments?

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

Mercedes 540K Sport Tourer

(Nikon D700, 35mm, ISO 500, Exposure 1/125 sec @f/8.0)

This image shows a portion a 1938 Mercedes 540K Sport Tourer automobile. This particularl automobile is on display at the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan. If you love cars, the Gilmore Car Museum is a great place to visit. They have a couple hundred classic automobiles on display in various barns located on the premises.

The car itself has a very interesting story. According to the information displayed at the museum the car was stored by an enthusiast in Dresden after WWII to hide it from Soviet officials. The man’s house had a basement garage and after securing the car in it, he bricked up the entrance and filled the driveway with topsoil, planting a rose garden above it. With the fall of the Berlin wall, he felt it was safe to bring the car out and sell it to earn badly needed retirement funds. At the time, the car was highly original, but significantly deteriorated by age. The restoration of the car was completed in 2005. Some other images of the car (not taken by me) can be seen here.

The image took a bit of work to create. The car is on display in an old barn. The lighting is typical museum lighting, mostly dark. The front of the car was primarily lit from light from the open barn door which is near where the car is parked. The side of the car that I was shooting was mostly in shade. I had a flash with me and I experimented with hand holding the flash in various positions to put light on the car.

I was using a higher ISO and although the grain wasn’t really a problem, I didn’t like the overall sharpness of the image. I did like the basic lighting and shapes created by the lines and the shadows, however. I decided to use Topaz Simplify to create something which looks like it belongs on a poster. I used that filter and some curves to darken some areas. I also used the new Content Aware feature of the healing brush in Photoshop CS5 to eliminate some of the lights which were reflecting in the car.

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

(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 120mm (2x crop factor), ISO 320, exposure 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6)

I love taking pictures of classic automobiles and so I took a short road trip to the Gilmore Car Museum to attend one of their outdoor classic car shows. This shot shows the hood ornament, or ‘mascot’, of a Pierce Arrow automobile. I was lucky that the car was parked next to another car with such an interesting color, since it gave me a nice background. I think the blue goes quite well with the chrome of the figure and the gold of the arrow. I used a long lens to get a very narrow field of focus, but my preference would be for more of the figure to be in sharp focus. Maybe this year…

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

This image can be purchased.

www.jameshowephotography.com

(Olympus E-3, 70-300mm at 70mm (2x crop factor), ISO 200, exposure 1/320 sec @ f/8.0)

I took this shot of a classic diner at the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan. The museum is a great place to view classic automobiles and if you like cars from almost any era, I highly recommend making a visit. The image itself was created from a digital photograph that I took while I was there. I modified the image to black out the sky and then I applied a Cutout filter in Photoshop to give the image a posterized look. I really liked how these changes brought out the color and design character of the building.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

This image can be purchased.

Please check out some of my other images for purchase at www.vintagecarimages.com and Allen Creek Designs