Cruising the hood

Attending a car show can be an overload of makes , models, beautiful paint , wheels and engines. It's pretty easy when you get home and down load your photos you have a lot of front 3/4 views from about 10 feet back. To me it's often the smaller details that tells the story of the vehicle more than the overview . Car people are all about the details.

One of my favorite details are the hood ornaments that are the symbol and often the history of the brand.   

When you see an interesting hood ornament, resist the urge to take a quick picture. I like to walk around the car to  find a simple uncluttered background to isolate the ornament. Sometimes this is best accomplished by shooting upward to use the sky as a background as shown with the purple  Pontiac.

The lead photo of a 1932 Pontiac emblem was parked next to a black car giving me a perfect black background.

The Jaguar is a busier background, but I felt having the curve of the fender echoed the curve of the cat and tells you it is a Jaguar show.

 It's good to look at the reflections in the hood. You don't want to see yourself and your camera staring back at you. Often if it's a nice sky with clouds as shown in the Plymouth Mayflower, it adds interest to the photograph.

Another approach I take is to shoot a range of exposures. This allows me to use these later in Light Room to pick the best overall shot to work with. Not every shot will work, but the main idea is to experiment and see what works for you.

Hood ornaments are a great conversation starter with the owner of the car. This is when you will really enjoy the show by connecting with the car owners and hearing the story of their car. That's often when you really get to know the story the hood ornament tells.

Check out other hood ornaments on my web site www.stillslife.net  or StillsLife on Facebook.

Regards

Michael 

 

                                                                                                                                                                            

Cruising the hood.

Wrecking yard beauty

Have you ever driven past an old wrecking yard in pursuit that beautiful sunset or landscape? Many of these yards are scattered along many forgotten two lanes. I find , being a automotive photographer attending typical car shows, that a visit to the local wrecking yard or swap meet early in the morning presents a creative recharge from the flawless beauty of the six figure hot rods and custom cars.  Out here you don't find the smell of carnuba wax and Armour All smothered over perfect billet parts and fine leather. Out here the cars and their owners are long forgotten, somehow they've escaped the crusher, resting quietly letting the patina of age tell stories of long ago travels. The smells are of old oil and cracked rubber.  Although I have large files of some of the most beautiful hot rods and custom cars, it's often the wrecking yard images that I return to. These are the images that tell stories of the owners and their vehicles.                                   I hope you will take a short wrecking yard tour to find the unique beauty of these forgotten  cars.                                                                 

Have a great day.  Michael

The secret of great vacation photos? Just relax....



Chapter 88

 In the spirit of summer vacations, I've posted a photo from a few summers ago titled, "Chapter 88" The location is a beach in a little town about 30 miles north of Puerta Vallarta Mexico.
I attempted to capture the feel of the most relaxed place I've ever visited.
Initially I noticed the book open to Chapter 88, and then the natural triangular composition from book, to bottles, vendor and back.
I shot about six variations of this picture, made easy since my wife was asleep, the book would stay open to Chapter 88. Sometimes, my best photos come when I relax and let the picture emerge as the scene changes. At the worst, I spent an afternoon relaxing in paradise. This image was my favorite of the six.  
I find I don't revisit this photo often, except in the middle of the winter for some tropical inspiration.
I hope you enjoy this photo. Now get out there and relax!
Michael

I've added this image to my web site  http://www.stillslife.com/

200 Motels - One day too many on the road

I always loved Frank Zappa's album title 200 Motels. It captures in a very simple phrase, the grind of traveling for a living.  It doesn't matter if your a musician, salesman or circus performer, the travel can be great, but at the same time a lot of down time between performances. Like the title 200 Motels, I have tried in this photograph to capture the essence of that one day too many in a tired motel. I saw this one morning in my room in a old motel in Galt California. It is the morning light just starting to peak around the curtain in the room. I thought the tear in the fabric was a lot like that one day too many. I'm tired and torn and just want to make my way home. It's a bit of a risky shot in that it is simple in composition and hopefully conveys the end of a long trip out. 

If you have followed my other posts, you probably see that in many of my photos, I try for a very simple strong graphic to represent a place and a feeling. This type of photograph seems to generate either a strong positive or negative response. It's a healthy visual exercise to try to reduce what you want to convey in a simple way. If you have some similar photos with this type of simple graphic, I'd  love to see them or hear your thoughts. .

Have a great day.

Tuesday Morning - Galt

Mike

I will be adding this photo to my web site.  www.stillslife.com

Revisiting old photographs to find a hidden image

Northern Hotel - Original

This image of the metal strap on the Northern Hotel wall was one of those things that worked out of finding a strong graphic image shooting at mid day with very bright sunlight. This photo is for all intents and purposes a black and white photo due to the white wall and strap with its shadows. I really was pleased with this version, but did experiment with  Corel Paint Shop Pro water color effect this week.  
This worked out well adding slight color to give more of a wall with old paint layers. It's not as strong a contrast as the original, but works pretty well.  I think it is equally effective but in a softer way. 
This is another revisiting of an old image shot in 2004 to come up with a different effect. The Corel Paint Shop Pro software is pretty easy to use and can add very strong effects to quite subtle changes. 
Hope you like these two versions of the same picture. 
Regards
Mike

These images are on my web site  http://www.stillslife.com/

Northern Hotel - Water Color

StillsLife: New Car Show Abstract photo subjects

StillsLife: New Car Show Abstract photo subjects: "Open Road Cadillac - Mountain Ave. The car show season is finally underway and I love to look for nontraditional more abstract shots t..."

New Car Show Abstract photo subjects

Open Road

Cadillac - Mountain Ave.

The car show season is finally underway and I love to look for nontraditional more abstract shots that make you ask, "Just what is going on here?"
The Cadillac - Mountain Ave is fairly recognizable but bends and twists the reflected images in the gorgeous 50's chrome.

In the "Open Road" photo I was drawn to the exhaust pipes exiting through the holes in the hood sides of this beautiful black hot rod.  I realized as I was looking for the shot that if I stood on a sharp angle to the hood and the street, I got an entirely different view. Are the pipes coming out of holes in the asphalt? Is this some strange Government experiment? I really enjoy the bending of reality in this photo.

I hope you enjoy these.  They are both on my website:  http://www.stillslife.com/

Thanks for looking
Mike