Tag: transportation

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.

Color In Composition

Posted on by Nick Roberts

Sometimes color is all you need to create a memorable image. By using complimentary color this image is balanced and moves the viewer’s eyes into the frame. This image is pretty much straight out of the camera. I used a polarizer to avoid glare from the sun’s rays in this image which I shot during the middle of the day at the NSRA Street Rod Nationals. Since I took care to make a good image in camera the only thing I needed to do was to sharpen it in Aperture 3.

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.

A Storm Was Brewing on the Horizon

Posted on by Nick Roberts

When the destination for my ride requires me to be on a tight schedule the Interstate Highway System is my only choice. While I prefer to use the older US Highway system to travel across the country, the pace is different and I don’t mind slowing down as I pass through small towns, I sometimes need to cover a lot of distance in a day.

I often hear from people that the Interstate Highways are boring roads but I don’t always find them that boring. For one thing these highways often pass through beautiful country and since the right of way is so wide there are sections where the only sign of man’s hand is the highway itself.

This is a photo of one such stretch of interstate. I don’t recall where I was when I took this photo but I do remember vividly how quickly the rain moved in my direction! I saw this storm on the horizon and pulled to the side of the road to put on my rain gear. Before donning my rain gear I grabbed my camera from my saddlebag and took a few shots of the approaching rain storm. I love seeing the rain falling as a storm moves in the distance and the way the rain makes patterns uniting the clouds and the earth. In a matter of minutes the storm was on top of me and I stashed my camera back in the saddlebag.

I grabbed my rain gear and was just getting it unrolled when the wind and rain were upon me; the wind was blowing full force and the rain drops were as big as grapes. I was standing there in the middle of nowhere trying to put on my rain jacket as the wind was doing it’s best to tun it into a sail! I had only managed to get one arm in the jacket when the storm got to me. As I stood there in the pouring rain, battling the wind and trying to get the rain pants and jacket fastened I was drenched with rain. Once I finished I was almost as wet as I would have been had I simply left the rain gear in the saddlebag.

I climbed back on the bike and headed into the storm fully expecting to ride the rest of the afternoon in rain but less that five miles down the road the storm was gone and the sky was clear again. I was still wet and cold but I had another great experience to remember and savor for years to come. These types of things are among the reasons I love motorcycling and exploring America by motorcycle; if I had been in a car that afternoon I wouldn’t have tasted and felt the the forces of nature that form our world.

As for the composition, once again the highway leads the viewer’s eye into the scene, dominates the foreground and reinforces the rule of thirds as it moves into the frame.  The colors and textures of the clouds add interest to the upper part of the image while the horizon gives a sense of depth. I used Topaz Adjust on this image which accounts for the enhanced contrast of the road surface and the saturation of the colors.

 

Using Texture as the Main Subject

Posted on by Nick Roberts

Today I’d like to show some shots that rely on texture for their impact. I really like the way this first image came out after processing it in Topaz Adjust using the Spicify preset. The peeling paint and pitted chrome really jump out and the DeSoto badge adds a nice hit of color to balance with the rusted grill bars. I look at images such as this as studies in using texture as the focus of the image.

Here is another texture shot from the same DeSoto. I really like the way the crazed paint conveys a feeling of age and shows it’s inherent beauty. For me this image has an almost topographical feel as if we are looking at a surreal landscape. Topaz Adjust does a great job here of intensifying the colors and showing the texture in the subject.

This detail shot of the door on an old truck shows how isolating a section of one of these old cars can create an interesting image. I usually try to spend some time exploring the surface of these cars and searching for interesting compositions that isolate the texture and patina of time.

This last image is one of my favorite shots of a Buick I located in northern Alabama a few years back. I was drawn to the contrast of the chrome against the pitted and rusted surface of the metal. The many colors that were present in the paint and rust were brought out by processing this shot in Topaz Adjust using the Spicify preset. When I use these presets they are simply starting points for me and I usually spend a great deal of time playing with the various sliders to find the right combination for a given image.