In yesterday’s image, I showed an old railroad building in Defiance, Ohio. Just a short distance away was this abandoned grain elevator. I thought the elevator would make for a nice HDR, so I fired off 7 exposures in various locations, this one being my favorite. Even though this is an HDR image, most of the look comes from work I did with OnOne’s Photo Tools. I was trying for a grungy image which would highlight the textures of the building, so I used a variety of layers, mostly from the HDR section, to give the image some more life.

On a recent Saturday I decided to take a short day trip into northern Ohio. I wanted to drive on some back roads to see if I could find anything interesting to shoot. For this trip I decided that my destination would be Defiance, Ohio. I thought Defiance looked interesting because it is located at the intersection of three rivers. I found a couple of interesting things to shoot on the way as well as a few interesting things in Defiance itself. One of those was this old railroad building. It was hard to tell if the building was still in use, but I liked its simple character.

One of the things that I like to do when I go out shooting is focus in on the details of some object. In this case it was an old vintage Shell gas station sign on display at the Gilmore Car Museum. I was using my Olympus E3 with a manual 50mm Zuiko macro lens and I took several shots of the sign in an attempt to capture some interesting shapes and patterns. What I should have done (but didn’t) was close down my aperture to make sure I could get the sign in focus. At f2, this lens has a razor thin field of focus. I think this shot is mostly crisp, but I think it would have been better if I had closed things down a bit. Of course, since I was using a manual lens, stopping down would have meant making the image darker in the viewfinder making things harder to focus. Oh well, I did what I did.

At the Gilmore Car Museum they’ve built a replica of an early 30’s vintage Shell gas station. Many of the items inside and outside of the museum came from a Shell station which was located in Hickory Corners, just a couple miles away from the museum. More information about the building itself can be found here

When I think of a ‘Studebaker’, I think of the funky looking cars that were made in the 50’s and 60’s not a stately automobile on par with Duesenberg, Packard, etc., so I was somewhat surprised to find that the car belonging to this hood ornament was a Studebaker. I took this shot at the Classic Car Collectors of America show at the Gilmore Car Museum. When I go to these shows, I generally find some aspect of the car that looks interesting and I might not even know who made the car. As a way of keeping a record of what shots belong to what cars, I’ll take a picture of the identification sign that is usually posted in front of the car. So with this one, I saw the hood ornament and thought it look interesting, and after I took a few shots, I took a picture of the identification sign and at that point found out that it was a Studebaker. This years show had a special emphasis on cars manufactured in Indiana. Studebakers were manufactured in South Bend.

No moody black and white image today, just a simple color shot of a wonderful automobile. This shot shows the exhaust pipes of a 1935 Auburn Speedster. The Auburn was manufactured in Auburn, Indiana and was noted in its day for being a high performance automobile. Before a customer received their automobile, it was certified to have been tested to 100.8 Miles Per Hour by Ab Jenkins a professional race car driver known for setting speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. I’ve always liked the look of the Auburn Speedster. There is something about the chrome pipes coming out of the engine that just looks cool and exudes speed.

When I went to the Classic Car Club of American car show at the Gilmore Car Museum I took both of my camera bodies. I’ve been using primarily my Nikon D700, but I still use my Olympus E3 on occasion. I had equipped the E3 with my 50mm F2 Zuiko Macro lens, an old manual lens that I used to use with my Olympus OM4 back in my film days. It was a nice change to use a completely manual set up. Focusing was manual, as was setting the aperture. When I changed aperture, the lens closed down and made the viewfinder darker, which made focusing a little more challenging. I like this 50 macro on the E3 because at the 2x crop factor its like using a 100mm lens. This lens also takes really nice images.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit the Gilmore Car Museum for the annual Classic Car Club of America show. This year the show highlighted cars manufactured in Indiana. One of the key companies in Indiana was the Auburn Cord Duesenberg automobile company which manufactured cars in Auburn, Indiana. These cars are some of my favorite because they had such interesting designs. I particularly like Auburns and Cords. At the show, this car was referred to as a ‘1937 Auburn Phaeton’, but the car is actually a Cord, probably a model 812 (although I suppose it is possible that it was marketed as an ‘Auburn’, some car buff will certainly correct me if I’m wrong) Late model Cords have a distinctive design created by legendary automobile designer Gordon Buehrig. The front end has a shape somewhat like that of a coffin so these cars are sometimes referred to as ‘coffin nosed Cords’. Anyway, I love the design and I love to take pictures of this line of cars.

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.

A couple of weeks ago Mike Olbinski, a photographer I follow, posted this shot of a grain elevator that he found while driving through Kansas. This got me in the mood to find some interesting elevators in Michigan, since Kansas is quite a ways away for me. I did some scouting on Flickr and managed to find a couple of good possibilities. One was a local elevator in Ypsilanti, Michigan which I posted last week. The other one was this old elevator in Henderson, Michigan. What I liked about this one was the decay and faded paint job. If you look carefully, you can see old signage for ‘Purina Chows’ and other products that were available at this location.