(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 270mm, ISO 250, Exposure 1/2000 sec @f/5.6)

The image above shows a Stover Windmill which is on permanent display at Michigan’s Greenfield Village. The Village was created by Henry Ford as a place to showcase American industrial achievements. I was visiting the Village to attend their annual ‘Motor Muster’. I’ve been to the Village several times and I have always liked the look of this windmill. It is quite large and I think it looks nice against a blue sky.

The windmill itself was manufactured by the Stover Manufacturing & Engine Company. The company was started in the 1860′s by Daniel C. Stover who invented and manufactured machinery of various kinds. At one point the company was a supplier to Sears Roebuck & Company. The company shut down in 1942

Processing of the image was minimal. As you can see from the original image below, the main change was to create a square crop focusing on the blades of the windmill.

I’m always interested in hearing your feedback.

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.

(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 270mm, ISO 2500, Exposure 1/125 sec @f/5.6)

This image was taken at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan during the recent Motor Muster car show. The village has some great exhibits, one of them being a railroad roundhouse. One of the permanent items in the roundhouse is an old steam engine. The engine has wonderful brass detail, particularly in the control area.

Processing was done in Lightroom and included increasing the blacks, reducing the exposure just a bit, an increase in clarity and some noise removal. The noise wasn’t terrible out of camera and Lightroom was able to clean things up nicely. The original capture can be seen below:

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

Machine Shop

(Nikon D700, 70-300mm @ 100mm, ISO 1600, Exposure 1/30 sec @f/5.6)

This past weekend I visited Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan to see the annual ‘Motor Muster’ car show. I got some nice pictures of cars and other items (which I will be posting over time) but I also spent some time in some of the historical buildings which comprise the Village. One of the buildings houses the ‘Armington and Sims’ Machine Shop and Foundry. This building contains a working machine shop with lots of interesting machining tools. When items are needed around the village, they still use this shop to fabricate them. The picture above shows one of the various machining tools found in the building. All of the tools are driven by belts which are hooked up to one driving machine.

The shop is fairly dark and I was using a telephoto lens to get some visual compression. I bumped the ISO of my D700 to 1600 but still ended up shooting at 1/30th of a second. I experimented with adding a bit of flash to the shot, so I set the camera on manual to capture some ambient light and then use the on-camera flash to add a bit of fill. Processing the image included several changes in Lightroom, including warming the image a bit and enhancing the contrast. As I worked with the image I thought that it might look good using a ‘Simplify’ treatment using my Topaz Simplify plug-in. I like the effect it has on metal.

The image below shows the raw, out of camera image for comparison.

Please feel free to leave comments below. I appreciate any feedback you might have.

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

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 50mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/40 sec @ f/8.0)

This is another shot taken of the ‘bone yard’ at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. This is a picture of a part of an old boiler (I think) which sits outside of one of the museum exhibits. This area is ‘littered’ with old boiler parts, coal and other items from an old machine shop. I was visiting the village for their annual Motor Muster event. The day was quite sunny and I liked the strong shadows created by the sun shining on the old boiler parts. Processing consisted mainly of increasing the contrast to make sure I captured the feeling of the scene.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

All of my images are available for purchase. Check out my galleries at jameshowephotography.imagekind.com for additional images.

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 27mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/500 sec @ f/8.0)

The shot you see above is from a 1963 Thunderbird convertible which was on display as part of the Motor Muster held at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Not much more to say really, I just liked the simple pattern created by the fake vents. Minimal processing to produce the final image.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

For more automobile detail images, please visit my ImageKind galleries.

(Olympus E-3, 70-300mm at 70mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/500 sec @ f/13)

The Motor Muster at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan manages to get a great collection of automobiles. Many cars on display are ones that you would see (or would have seen) driving around your neighborhood. However, the show also gets a few cars which are more unique. One example is the Hudson Italia. This car grew out of a need for Hudson to offer a sporty car to compete with other manufacturers. I personally don’t find this particular car attractive when viewed whole, but I love some of the details. This particular shot shows an area just over the passenger side headlight. Looks vaguely like the Star Trek emblem to me! A couple of years ago I saw this car at a different car show and took this shot.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/500 sec @ f/4.0)

As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I recently attended the Motor Muster car show held at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Besides all the cool cars, there were all the interesting historical exhibits. This shot was taken in front of an old mill shop in the same place as my previous post, Discarded #1. I guess I should call this image Discarded #2. This particular piece of rusty metal is part of an old boiler that they have sitting out in front. The sun was rather bright and I liked the hard shadows created by the strong light. I’m also rather fond of old, rusty things.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 35mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/160 sec @ f/4.5)

At this past weekend’s ‘Motor Muster’ held at Greenfield Village, the show displayed more than just automobiles. They had a nice collection of older scooters and motorcycles, and they had a great collection of bicycles from various decades. The image above is of a Schwinn, most likely from the 50′s (I neglected to take a picture of the info card, so I don’t have the particulars on this bike.) I did punch up the color a bit in the post.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 23mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/125 sec @ f/8.0)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently attended the 2009 Motor Muster held at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Greenfield Village is part of the entire Henry Ford Museum complex, a great place to visit year round. Anyway, the Motor Muster had cars located throughout the village, and behind one group of car was the Armington & Sims Machine Shop. In front of this building sits a variety of discarded bits of boilers, coal and other wonderful rusty objects. The picture above is just one of the many interesting pieces of old ‘junk’ which is on display. I’ve always been attracted to mechanical things and I love high contrast, so when I have of a bright sunny day combined with some interesting historic junk, I’m a happy camper.

For the processing of this image, I used a couple filters (Topaz Adjust and Simplify) to help bring out the color and texture in the metal. The bright sunny day sort of washed out the color in the raw image and I wanted to bring back the feeling of rust and contrast that I felt when I took the shot.

The image is named ‘Discarded #1′ because I took several shots of different items at this location. I’m planning on posting more in the near future.

Comments and feedback welcome.

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