Tag: arts

Buick Fireball Eight

Posted on by Nick Roberts

At the NSRA Streetrod Nationals you will see many creative uses for vintage engines. This Buick Dyna Flash Fireball Eight is one such engine. It was installed in a Reo roadster which made it a very unique combination. The car itself was a faint pastel green and the engine was this fantastic deep jade green with white lettering. I wanted to capture the paint job on the engine because it was as finely detailed as the overall car. All the raised lettering that was stamped into the spark plug cover really caught my eye because it had all been perfectly hand painted.

Once again I am trying to show how by taking an entirely different approach to a subject, that I have been photographing for over 40 years, I was able to come up with a unique image that I hope will resonate not only with car people but with anyone who appreciates streamline influenced art deco design.

I chose to frame it diagonally to move the viewer’s eye through the frame from left to right. I used Aperture 3 and NIK HDR EFex Pro to saturate and intensify the color in the image.

Reflected Beauties

Posted on by Nick Roberts

As I posted yesterday sometimes a photographer needs to try a different approach to a familiar subject. I attend several car shows every year in search of memorable images of automotive art. Given that there literally thousands of photographers who share my passion for early automobiles it is a daunting task to find a fresh way to showcase these vehicles. For this particular photo shoot I decided to focus on using reflections to capture the essence of the Streetrod Nationals.

This image shows the beauty of a traditional 1940 Ford coupe and a 1938 Chevrolet reflected in the side of a 1940 Graham sedan. The Graham is a nontraditional vehicle for the streetrod scene which is the reason I chose it as the main subject for this image. I found the juxtaposition of the reflected cars with the beauty of the lines of the Graham to be compelling enough to warrant exploring using the reflections as the main theme of the image.

I processed the image in Aperture 3 and Topaz Adjust to saturate and intensify the colors and details in the scene. The composition is another case of using the rule of thirds to balance the image. The strong foreground elements of the Graham fender and the reflections in it help to draw the eye into the image while the repetition of the Ford and Chevy in so many surfaces unifies the composition as well. As you view the image try to see how many times the Ford and Chevy are represented in the image.

Reflections of a 1946 Mercury

Posted on by Nick Roberts

Last year I decided to shoot reflections at the Streetrod Nationals here in Louisville. As I worked that weekend I noticed that many times I was a part of the scene before my camera. I started playing with the idea of producing a self portrait within the reflections on the cars. This particular car caught my eye because when I was a kid in high school I owned a 1946 Mercury Coupe. My car was a deep green color but before it was painted green it had been maroon in color. I thought it would be fun to see what possibilities this particular car offered for utilizing the reflection to create a self portrait. I settled on this image as the best of the lot with this car.

My point with this post is that when I take my camera in the field I like to have some concept or theme when I’m shooting a subject that I’ve photographed literally thousands of times. By making reflections the overall concept of that weekend’s shooting I was able to take a cliched subject and give it new life. So the next time you are stumped about shooting something that you love, and have photographed many times, try thinking about another way to interpret the scene; you just may surprise yourself and walk away with an image that you really enjoy

 

Self Portrait with the Devilhog

Posted on by Nick Roberts

This self portrait was taken a couple of years ago at the entrance to the Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway. I used Topaz Adjust bring out the details and colors in the scene.

I’m still feeling my way through this startup of the Speeddemon2 blog and trying to wrap my head around the WordPress analytics that show how many visitors the blog gets each day. There have been days where over 200 people viewed the blog and there have been days when as few as 30 people have stopped by. I’m trying to correlate those numbers with the posts from those days to better understand how I can deliver photos and information that will lead people to return each day or each week. I truly want to be a resource for photographers and ordinary folks to learn more about the work I produce and to find help, or inspiration, to further their artistic vision.

I would really appreciate hearing from you, the visitors, about what worked over the past few weeks and what didn’t. I studied fine art in a school that valued critiques as a way to grow and expand an artist’s thinking and inform his or her work. I’m asking anyone who has something constructive to say to post it in the comment section. I’m sitting here writing these word though and I’m wondering how I’ll deal with the possibility that no one will say anything. Oh well I can’t control the universe so I’ll take my chances with this post.

Great Basin Vista

Posted on by Nick Roberts

Today’s image is once again from the Great Basin along US 50. In this image I was trying to capture the vastness of the Great Basin as well as the clouds that had been gathering all day. As I rode along US 50 this particular day I was treated to seeing a thunderstorm develop. During the day I watched as a large mass of clouds in the southern sky coalesced  into a thunderstorm. As the day went on I noticed how every cloud in the sky moved over to become part of the storm. It was fascinating to see that even small clouds that were miles away from the main body would quickly move toward the growing mass until by the end of the day the entire sky had become part of the storm.

Compositionally I used the large boulder in the foreground as a way to bring the viewer into the scene. The triangles formed by the foreground element and the sloping terrain on the left side help to direct the viewer’s eyes down the highway and into the Great Basin while the clouds themselves frame the distant horizon. I used Topaz Adjust to process this image before applying some final tweaks in Aperture 3.