Some people wrote me they liked my last photo and this made working on another one from yesterday's car event. This 1959 Chevrolet Corvette is a beauty and was parked in front of a bar, which made for a better background than many of the other buildings in East Dubuque. I gave it a different vintage look, like Grandpa took it just out of the dusty shoe box with the old pictures in it... ;-) Have a wonderful weekend!
What have wildlife photography and shooting at a car show in common? Well, I don't really know but in both instances dealing with background issues would be on top of my list. But let me start with the event first. During the summer the owners of vintage cars meet ones a week over in East Dubuque across the Mississippi to show their cars and socialize with their friends and other car enthusiasts. The road going through the little downtown area is blocked for any other traffic and the cars are lined up on both sides of the street.
I have been there before and always wander slowly along the cars, look for the light, and for cars that are parked in front of buildings that make for a more natural setting and background. Quite often the car owners sit in their lawn chairs right behind the cars and this is usually a NO-NO for me. If the sun is out, the West side of the road is almost completely in the shade of the buildings and this is usually my preferred side to look for car details. For understandable reasons this is also the side where most people sit behind their cars.
All of the cars displayed in East Dubuque have probably been photographed to death and I'm sure many pictures are technically perfect and good for any catalog, book, or brochure about vintage cars. That's good, because I don't have to walk in the same foot steps and ad another technically perfect image to the bunch out there ;-) .
Seriously, I thought giving the image of this old Plymouth a little bit of a vintage look would be worth the effort. I used NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 to produce a high dynamic range image, made from four exposures. As always with HDR images I'm staying on the more subtle side, keeping in mind the vintage look. The image got finished with a slight vignette and the usual spot cleaning and sharpening. I hope you like it. I may show a couple more sometimes soon, so please stay tuned...
Tomorrow is Independence Day here in the US and most people will enjoy a four day holiday weekend. Reason enough to post something different as usual and that's why I show a few car details that I shot last night at the Hot Summer Nights Cruise-in at one of the casinos in Dubuque, Iowa. The owners of vintage cars meet there ones a month during the summer to socialize and show their cars off. I like the beauty of some of the old cars and enjoy pointing my camera at car details if the existing light emphasizes them nicely. Nothing spectacular but it is fun to do different things ones in a while... ;-)
I wish all my friends and family here in the US a wonderful holiday weekend!
Are you tired of seeing wildlife photos? Well, I'll never be but I still like to work other subjects in my photography ones in a while. Yesterday I crossed the bridge over the Mississippi into Illinois. During the summer every Thursday the owners and drivers of cars, built before 1972, meet in East Dubuque and enjoy to display their cars and socialize with each other.
I have a strong technical background and may understand most of the technical talk I heard yesterday but the reason I'm drawn into an event like this is the sheer beauty of some of the old cars on display. I enjoy watching people that have passion for the things they do and that was definitely the case yesterday evening.
Nobody complained about the bare blue sky and sun, except for the photographer. ;-) Our vision can differentiate, according to a Stanford study, up to 15 stops of light in one glance but most digital cameras are only able to handle a five-stop-range. My friend Dave Updegraff has a Nikon D4 and this great camera is able to handle six f-stops. Well, no matter what digital camera you hold in your hands, it doesn't solve the light challenge we were facing yesterday evening. How can we handle it and bring some images home that look halfway decent? I looked for the cars that were parked on the westside of Main Street in the shade of the buildings and just tried to keep the sky out of the frame for my detail shots. The third image is an HDR, made from five different exposures that were merged in NIK HDR Efex Pro. Two different ways to go but even if I'm not a big fan of HDR processing, (mostly useless in wildlife photography), I do not exclude it from my tool box and see it as a valid tool for light situations that are hard to overcome.
As I said, I do stuff like this only occasionally, ones in a while, but my photography friend Brian over in Germany has a "led sled" that would be allowed to park in an event like yesterday without any doubt. In addition he is a very talented photographer who has some great car images in his blog. Check it out HERE!
Another quick post from my short trip into RedRock Country. Yesterday I went from Flagstaff to Jerome. Jerome is an old miner town tucked to the slope of a mountain. Lots of tourists and bikers, and there is always something interesting to see. The harsh light during the day made me keep the camera in the bag for landscape photography most of the time but some of the fun stuff I saw in Jerome needed to be captured. On my way back to Flagstaff some clouds developed over the desert and I gave it a trial.
I still don't really know. I have asked myself this question last weekend. Joan and I were in Marcus, a small town in Northwest Iowa, for a school reunion. Another reason to be there was the 75th annual Marcus Community Fair. The city had a lot going on last weekend and one of the events was of course a parade. Fire engines, old-timer cars, people on horses, tractors, and many more colorful things were moving through the streets of Marcus. I have been at heir parade before four years ago, took a lot of pictures and didn't really like any of them. Why? Busy backgrounds, harsh light with high contrast, and making too many mistakes were the main reasons. I wanted to do much better this time.
The parade started at 4 PM and there was still plenty of light available. First we chose a street with some big trees that covered the sky in the background and would minimize so the high contrast in the frame. I believe that worked well for most of the pictures.
How about the background? There were cars parked along the streets, people in lawn chairs had lined up along the route of the parade, with other words it was hard to find a spot without a busy background. I tried to solve the problem by zooming in and leave as much as possible of the distracting parts out of the frame. It didn't always work, but like in this image of happy girls on horses I was able to keep the "dudes with their beer coolers" out of the frame. A little crop was necessary in some instances.
I still don't feel comfortable about shooting an event like the Marcus parade, but this time I had some keepers that, I believe, reflect the spirit of the event and tell the story about the fun everybody had.
As everybody knows who stops by at this blog regularly, I focus on wildlife and landscape photography. But sometimes I like to do something totally different. Last weekend I brought some good friends from Germany back to Chicago. Despite the awful heat here in the Midwest we stopped in Galena, Illinois for some sightseeing. I didn't know that Galena had their 34th Annual Pre-49er Car Show and Rod Run this weekend. The cars were parked along the Galena River. Many had a lot of distracting "junk", like coolers, lawn chairs, and all kinds of signs around, but a few were in a nice setting with just the beautiful city in the background. I hope you enjoy!
