Tag: Keeneland

Big Eye

Stutz Bearcat at Keeneland

This image is from my trip to Keeneland’s 2012 Concours de’Elegance last Saturday. I am fascinated by the size and detail of the early automobiles I see at these events such as this headlight on a Stutz Bearcat. According to the owner this car is one of only three known to still exist.

Due to the size of the crowd it was nearly impossible to photograph the cars without someone stepping into the shot so I decided to shoot details of the cars instead. I was able to keep the crowd out of these shots because I moved in close to the cars and got down low in front of them. Sometimes I was even laying on the ground to get an angle that allowed for an interesting composition; the people around me must have thought I was having a stroke when they saw an old man prostrate on the ground. At any rate it helped to keep them out of my camera’s line of sight.

I first processed this image in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 as an HDR from a single image and then saved it back into Aperture 3. I then took it into NIK Silver Efex Pro where I converted it to black and white. I made a few adjustment while in there and then back to Aperture 3 for my final processing. There were some branches intruding on the left side that I cloned out using the retouch feature in Aperture 3. I then made a few contrast adjustments and some minor sharpening before saving the image.

Keeneland Concours de’Elegance

HDR Efex Pro 2 Packard image
Blue Packard

I took a trip down to Lexington, Kentucky this past weekend to the Keeneland Concours de’Elegance auto show. I have always been interested in automotive design and an event such as this one allows me to see firsthand the craftsmanship and beauty of our automotive heritage.

This Packard caught my eye with it’s massive headlights and brilliant grillwork. I decided to shoot this image as a bracketed series of images in order to overcome the wide range of light that the dark car and the brilliant chrome created. I knew that I was going to finish this image as an HDR image when I shot it. I monitored my histogram which showed me that I had the full range of tones in four exposures which would result in a good HDR image once merged and tone mapped.

Back home in the studio I merged the four exposures in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and applied the Structurized 2 preset as my base image. I adjusted the structure, black point and white point sliders very slightly before saving the image back into Aperture 3. I had to place a control point on the building in the lower right side of the frame and increase the exposure on the stonework to keep it from being a dark distraction in the composition. Once the image was back in Aperture 3 I cleaned up some sensor spots that had been emphasized by the tone mapping and hdr conversion before adjusting the vibrancy and sharpening the image for final output.

The composition is a pretty straight forward rule of thirds and uses the repetition of form to unify it. That along with the complimentary color scheme of blue and gold makes this image work for me.