'63 Thunderbird

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 27mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/500 sec @ f/8.0)

The shot you see above is from a 1963 Thunderbird convertible which was on display as part of the Motor Muster held at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Not much more to say really, I just liked the simple pattern created by the fake vents. Minimal processing to produce the final image.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved

For more automobile detail images, please visit my ImageKind galleries.

Hudson Italia

(Olympus E-3, 70-300mm at 70mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/500 sec @ f/13)

The Motor Muster at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan manages to get a great collection of automobiles. Many cars on display are ones that you would see (or would have seen) driving around your neighborhood. However, the show also gets a few cars which are more unique. One example is the Hudson Italia. This car grew out of a need for Hudson to offer a sporty car to compete with other manufacturers. I personally don't find this particular car attractive when viewed whole, but I love some of the details. This particular shot shows an area just over the passenger side headlight. Looks vaguely like the Star Trek emblem to me! A couple of years ago I saw this car at a different car show and took this shot.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved

Boilerplate

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/500 sec @ f/4.0)

As I've mentioned before in this blog, I recently attended the Motor Muster car show held at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Besides all the cool cars, there were all the interesting historical exhibits. This shot was taken in front of an old mill shop in the same place as my previous post, Discarded #1. I guess I should call this image Discarded #2. This particular piece of rusty metal is part of an old boiler that they have sitting out in front. The sun was rather bright and I liked the hard shadows created by the strong light. I'm also rather fond of old, rusty things.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved

1930 Packard 740 Roadster Mascot

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 54mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/1250 sec @ f/3.5)

This past weekend I attended the 2009 Eyes on Design car show held at the Edsel and Eleanor Mansion in Grosse Point Shores, Michigan. The event is an annual affair and is a fund raiser for the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology. This is the shows 21st year. Each year has a different theme and this year highlighted advertising and cars. Many of the cars on display had a framed advertisement for the vehicle next to it. It was interesting to see the way cars have been marketed through the years.

The image above shows a 'mascot' or hood ornament from a 1930 Packard 740 Roadster. What caught my eye with this particular ornament was the color. Most mascots that you see are chrome or crystal, this one looks to be brass. Whatever the material, it caught my eye. As I framed the shot, I noticed that the next car made an interesting background. I shot this from both sides and I liked the look of this one better. The car in the other angle was a grey/silver and didn't go as well as this one. I did a little tweaking of the contrast, but that was about it. The majority of the work on this image was done in Adobe Lightroom.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved

Please see some other mascot shots in my Hood Ornaments Gallery on ImageKind.

Vintage Schwinn

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 35mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/160 sec @ f/4.5)

At this past weekend's 'Motor Muster' held at Greenfield Village, the show displayed more than just automobiles. They had a nice collection of older scooters and motorcycles, and they had a great collection of bicycles from various decades. The image above is of a Schwinn, most likely from the 50's (I neglected to take a picture of the info card, so I don't have the particulars on this bike.) I did punch up the color a bit in the post.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved

Discarded #1

(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 23mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/125 sec @ f/8.0)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently attended the 2009 Motor Muster held at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Greenfield Village is part of the entire Henry Ford Museum complex, a great place to visit year round. Anyway, the Motor Muster had cars located throughout the village, and behind one group of car was the Armington & Sims Machine Shop. In front of this building sits a variety of discarded bits of boilers, coal and other wonderful rusty objects. The picture above is just one of the many interesting pieces of old 'junk' which is on display. I've always been attracted to mechanical things and I love high contrast, so when I have of a bright sunny day combined with some interesting historic junk, I'm a happy camper.

For the processing of this image, I used a couple filters (Topaz Adjust and Simplify) to help bring out the color and texture in the metal. The bright sunny day sort of washed out the color in the raw image and I wanted to bring back the feeling of rust and contrast that I felt when I took the shot.

The image is named 'Discarded #1' because I took several shots of different items at this location. I'm planning on posting more in the near future.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved

1936 Pontiac Six Hood Ornament

(Olympus E-3, 70-300mm at 114mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/100 sec @ f/10)

This past weekend I attended two car shows, each showcasing vintage automobiles. The first show that I went to was on Saturday and it was the annual 'Motor Muster' held at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. The 'Motor Muster' is a huge event, with hundreds of cars, motorcycles and bicycles from past to present. While the show has some very nice cars, and the location at Greenfield Village is wonderful, it is disappointing in one regard because the show is laid out in such a way that you really can only see the fronts of most cars. Still, I was surprised that I came away with a large number of good shots this year.

What you see above, is the hood ornament of a 1936 Pontiac Master Six 2-Door Touring Sedan. I was able to lean over the rope to get a nice shot of the hood ornament. The yellow/cream color you see in the background is actually the body of a 1935 Cadillac. Sometimes it's hard to get a good shot of a hood ornament in the field because you can't always control the background. In this case, the positioning of the other car resulted in a perfect background to my shot.

Processing of this shot was minimal. There was some lint or other fuzzy things attached to the ornament, probably from a cleaning brush, so I cloned those out. I also darkened the hood of the car in the lower right corner. Other than that, some minor contrast and sharpening was all that was done to create the final image.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved

This image can be purchased.