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.

Chop, Chop, Till Ya Drop

I'm guessing those hands on the trunk are praying that this bad ass chopped 1951 Chevy Deluxe doesn't encounter any speed bumps.

The Taming of the Photons

Kathy had planned to attend the St. Hilary Car Show this year after we stopped by last year on our way to San Diego to start our California coast vacation. On that day she told me she was just going to take a quick look around but wasn't going to take any pictures. Uh huh. While she was looking around, I parked my van in a shady spot in front of the church and started cleaning my windows. Kathy returned after about 5 minutes, slid open the van's side door and grabbed her camera bag and tripod. She told me "I'm gonna take a few pictures, but I'll be back in about 10 minutes". Uh huh. I think she was gone for about 30 minutes before she returned to check on me. I gave her some water and she went back into the show again to shoot even more pictures. By this time my van's windows were spotless. Anyway, based on her experience last year, she knew this show had the potential to be good. We both got up early even though we wanted to sleep in and headed over. We arrived at the car show around 7:30. It wasn't supposed to start until around 10 but there were already 20 cars there and the weather was perfect for outdoor car photography. It was really foggy which means we had the advantage of very even lighting and no harsh shadows or blown highlights. It was as if we had purchased a mile wide softbox and were using it to beat those photons into submission, bending them to our will as we threw our heads back and laughed triumphantly. Revenge of the photo nerds. By the time the fog burned off and the sun came out of hiding, we had each shot more than 1,000 images, had our ear drums blasted by the live band (vocals were ok but distorted - get a sound board and someone to run it) and were trying to decide where to have lunch. I'll be posting some shots from this show in the next few weeks. I already reviewed them and I have some real keepers.

Fleeting Fleetline Sunset

Kathy reminded me that there was a Halloween car show being held at the Bob's Big Boy Broiler in Downey tonight. I had to work a little late so traffic was pretty heavy by the time I headed over to the show. I had just parked my van when Kathy arrived. The sun was getting ready to make its departure for the day and the light was already looking nice so we got right to shooting some of the classic ars that had already arrived. It was a good sized show with lots of cars and people. I was talking to a nice guy with an Australian accent who was also taking photos, and was telling him how I like to shoot during sunset at car shows. Just then the sky lit up with the most amazing orange color. I stopped talking and took a bunch of HDR sequences in the fading light. The sky went from what you see in this photo  to completely black in about 10 minutes. This Chevy Fleetline looked to be completely stock. The paint was very reflective and nicely done. Hope I see this car again soon.

Dia De Los Muertos

I shot this at the Uptown Whittier day of the dead celebration. While walking around, Kathy and I came across about 10 ladies all made up beautifully with face paint and I took a few images of each of them once Kathy pointed them out to me. I'm never comfortable photographing people I don't know but it's good to stretch my capabilities once in a while.

Fly On Little Wing

Really felt like the end of summer today. As evening closed in the temperature actually felt brisk and then cold for the first time in recent memory. I saw this '59 Chevy parked facing the heavy clouds which were rolling overhead and decided to make this image.

Golden Hour

I had walked by this car earlier in the day and I liked the light then but now the sun was quickly giving way to evening and the light was very difussed and full of color so I decided to walk back to see if the owner had left yet. This is what I saw. So glad I went back.

Is This Room Stretching?

This is the Los Angeles Natural History Museum's Rotunda built in 1913. The statue in the center, "The Three Muses" was the museum's first exhibit. For those who are wondering, this was taken hand held, and consists of 3 vertically stitched shots, each being a HDR image derived from 3 additional exposures. This location has been used in films and TV shows quite a bit.