Posted on Jun.03, 2011, under Michigan

(Olympus E3, 7-14mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, Exposure 1/6 sec @ f/4)

This picture was taken a couple of years ago at the Gilmore Car Museum near Kalamazoo, Michigan. The museum is a great place to see cars throughout the ages. The museum sits on a large piece of farmland and has several barns which house the cars. They have been adding to the museum over the years. Last year they opened a new building dedicated to Franklin automobiles. The Classic Car Club of America has a barn as well. The museum continues to expand it’s collection and is a great place to visit if you like automobiles and automobile history.

I took this shot when I visited the museum for one of their car shows. The museum has a replica of an old Shell gas station and they’ve stocked it with vintage service station objects. I have a thing for old stuff, so I just had to get some shots from inside the service station. I took this picture with my Olympus E3 and one of my favorite Zuiko lenses, the 7-14mm. I think this shot shows the usefulness of in camera stabilization. I took the shot at 1/6 sec handheld, but the image is still sharp. I don’t shoot much with my Oly any more since I switched to Nikon. Had to sell the 7-14mm as well to help fund other purchases.

Processing was fairly straight-forward. I knew from the start that I wanted to create a black and white image, so I immediately took the image into Silver Efex Pro2. The neutral conversion made areas too dark so I increased the brightness of some of the darker areas. I also wanted to see the fine details in the shot, so I increased the structure as well. I selected the blue filter option to make the reds a bit darker and then I adjusted the strength of the filter. I also selectively tweaked the color sensitivities until things like the red label on the ‘Oilzum’ can came out the way I wanted. I finished the image off with a cyanotype toning.

This weekend the Classic Car Club of America is hosting an event on Sunday and, weather permitting, I plan on heading over to the museum to check out the show and to see what’s new at the museum. I expect that I’ll be posting some shots from that trip next week.

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

Copyright © 2009-2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

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