Now Hear This

Fisheye went vertical! I've been working more and more with video and audio recording. I expect to post some videos on my blog in 2014.

The Toys Are Back in Town

We're ready for Christmas. Everyone's on the lookout for the man with the bag!

If ever a truck was designed with the driver in mind...

"With scores of new time saving features, the new Ford Trucks are made-to-order for economical operations in today's traffic stream. New "DRIVERIZED" Cabs provide living room comfort and cut driver fatigue. They help save time by making driving easier. Both the Standard and Deluxe Cab have a new curved one-piece windshield, 55% bigger for more visibility."

I met the owner of this cool Ford truck at Bob Big Boy Broiler in Downey tonight. It was supposed to be the Broiler's Christmas show but only a few cars showed up. Anyway the owner of this truck came up and we chatted a bit about my photography and what I did with the photos I took. I mentioned I almost never photographed cars (or trucks for that matter) that have their hoods up. He said he would lower his hood and turned on the driving lights which looked cool in the glow of all the drive-in's neon. I had to re-shoot a few of the bracketed shots when people walked through my shot to look over the truck during some long exposures. Well I can't blame them for being impressed. It is a very cool vehicle.

Power Glide

I saw this cool old Chevy at the Dia Del Los Muertos event in Uptown Whittier. Everything about it seemed to be distressed and in my eyes all the more interesting for it. It still runs. I've seen it parked around town in various places. I really liked the look of this classic emblem.

The View From Here

This is the Great Hall inside the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, Washington DC. It's a pretty impressive space. Kathy and I visited it on a whim, walking over from the US Capitol Building after taking the tour there. As you can see it was packed with tourists. Next time I want to be there when they open. No tripods allowed so this was taken by balancing the camera on the marble railing that surrounds the perimeter of the hall. Built in 1890, this building is one of the most beautiful places I've seen in DC.

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.