I've Got Me Surrounded

So this is where I spend my workdays. When working, I do best if my surroundings are creative and familiar. So here I have hung some of my photography on the walls along with some of my favorite skateboards and a few pieces of art that reflect my interest in aviation.  Although this panorama makes my office appear well lit, in reality I usually work in near darkness to eliminate glare and to minimize eye strain. I also like the uncluttered, quiet serene feel of this office. It allows me to focus, be more productive, minimize stress, and maximize energy. My job often involves responding to multiple and often changing deadlines so a Zen attitude and environment are big advantages. This 11 shot panorama was taken with my really right stuff, BH-55 ball head's precision panning base which is laser engraved at 2.5 degree intervals and allows me to perfectly align my camera's sensor to the nodal rotation point. This ensures that my panoramas are rotationally symmetric and are not affected by parallax errors.

Classic Fractures

Yesterdays post was of a perfect Pontiac Indian head hood ornament. This one, which was taken at the same show may be old and fractured but has a lot of character. I like it.

Top Notch Pontiac

Kathy and I went to the Majestic Car Club's New Years Day car show at the Santa Fe Dam in Irwindale. Having never been to the show or location before, we didn't know what to expect. The show was huge with what must have been a thousand cars on display in the various parking lots that surround the lake, which itself is encompassed by the dam. We were getting ready to leave when Kathy spotted this Pontiac from across the street. It was parked near the base of the dam's tall rock wall embankment. Regular readers of my blog and/or photostream know how much I love to photograph these iconic Pontiac hood ornaments. This one really stood out with the late afternoon sun streaming through it.  While many original Pontiac hood ornaments are lined with a multitude of internal cracks, this one looked factory fresh. I guess it's a reproduction. The owner mentioned that at night you can flip a switch inside the car and the amber colored Indian head glows. This was shot with a Minolta 100mm macro lens at f2.8 for a very shallow depth-of-field and enhanced bokeh.

Now Hear This

Fisheye went vertical! I've been working more and more with video and audio recording. I expect to post some videos on my blog in 2014.

The Toys Are Back in Town

We're ready for Christmas. Everyone's on the lookout for the man with the bag!

If ever a truck was designed with the driver in mind...

"With scores of new time saving features, the new Ford Trucks are made-to-order for economical operations in today's traffic stream. New "DRIVERIZED" Cabs provide living room comfort and cut driver fatigue. They help save time by making driving easier. Both the Standard and Deluxe Cab have a new curved one-piece windshield, 55% bigger for more visibility."

I met the owner of this cool Ford truck at Bob Big Boy Broiler in Downey tonight. It was supposed to be the Broiler's Christmas show but only a few cars showed up. Anyway the owner of this truck came up and we chatted a bit about my photography and what I did with the photos I took. I mentioned I almost never photographed cars (or trucks for that matter) that have their hoods up. He said he would lower his hood and turned on the driving lights which looked cool in the glow of all the drive-in's neon. I had to re-shoot a few of the bracketed shots when people walked through my shot to look over the truck during some long exposures. Well I can't blame them for being impressed. It is a very cool vehicle.

Power Glide

I saw this cool old Chevy at the Dia Del Los Muertos event in Uptown Whittier. Everything about it seemed to be distressed and in my eyes all the more interesting for it. It still runs. I've seen it parked around town in various places. I really liked the look of this classic emblem.

Red Pinstriped '39 Master Deluxe

Kathy and I decided to go to the Viejitos Halloween car show in Fullerton. We got there a little early in the day. It's pretty rare to find a great looking car at a show without another couple of cars parked closely on either side, which kind of divides the viewer's attention and clutters up the picture. Do I wish those chairs on the right were out of the picture? Sure I do but not enough to spend the time it would take to convincingly clone them out in Photoshop. This 1939 Chevy Master Deluxe was pretty clean. The paint was great and I liked the subtle use of pin-striping. I took a bunch of HDR sequences of it from several viewpoints.

1957 Chevy Hood Rocket

An extremely shallow depth of field captures one hood rocket while blurring the other into a hazy outline and a few bokeh dots.

Low Down on a '48 Fleetline

Kathy and I met at the Broiler for a Halloween car show. After a beautiful sunset the sky turned purple before fading to black. To try to get this 1948 Fleetline and that beautiful sky into the same shot, I collapsed my tripod down so my camera was no more than 6" above the pavement. To shoot at F11 I ended up not using my camera's Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) function and instead manually adjusted the exposure compensation value for each shot. AEB supports a maximum exposure time of 30 seconds which wasn't enough to capture the range of light I wanted for this image.