I took this picture of a 1933 Plymouth hood ornament during the 2011 Motor Muster held at Greenfield Village. The gentleman who owned the car gave me some information on the history and evolution of Plymouth hood ornaments. The 1933 had the flying figure and by 1934 they had switched to a stylized sailing ship. The key bit of information was that the 1933 ornament actually used gold in the medallion. True or not I thought the ornament was pretty cool. I took the shot with a 105mm macro lens that I had rented. I have a couple other shots which used a more open aperture, but the field of focus was too thin. I closed it down to f16 for this shot and managed to get more of the ornament in focus. Sometimes razor thin DOF looks cool, but for this sort of shot I prefer to see more detail.

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.

This past weekend I attended the 2010 Meadowbrook Concours d’Elegance held at Meadowbrook Hall on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Michigan. The show is never a disappointment, with a large collection of classic automobiles. I really enjoying photographing the details of classic cars. The cars, particularly of the 30’s and 40’s were a wonderful combination of art and engineering. A perfect example is shown above.

This past weekend I attended two car shows, each showcasing vintage automobiles. The first show that I went to was on Saturday and it was the annual ‘Motor Muster’ held at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. The ‘Motor Muster’ is a huge event, with hundreds of cars, motorcycles and bicycles from past to present. While the show has some very nice cars, and the location at Greenfield Village is wonderful, it is disappointing in one regard because the show is laid out in such a way that you really can only see the fronts of most cars. Still, I was surprised that I came away with a large number of good shots this year.

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…

This is a close-up of the hood ornament of a 1952 Pontiac Chieftain automobile. This car was at the Gilmore Car Museum for a car show. I used my 70-300mm (2x crop factor) lens and a small aperture to make sure the background was blurred out. Processing was minimal, although I tried to bring out the head and downplay the color of the car itself.