Just A Girl and Her Car

It's not easy finding locations for car photos. Magical photographers seem to be able to see gorgeous shots in the most mundane settings, but when I roll around my fairly scrubby brown town, I just don't see those images pop to mind.

I suppose it's learning to see or know what will work in post, or to take the Winslow Homer approach to the art, and find the beauty in the mundane. I keep those thoughts in mind when out looking for locations, and feel damn lucky when an obvious one appears.

...like this historic bridge at Bartley Ranch, Reno, on an overcast Sunday afternoon. Dramatic in its structure, but not in the lighting (soft light is great for flattering portraits, but maybe not so much for gritty automotive subjects?), I thought I'd give it a go anyway. Here's the original photo:

Original photo straight out of the camera

Now to the fun parts.

I had a ton of chromic abberation all around the backlit subjects - the bridge, car, and even the trees. Chromic Abberation is a halo effect in a strong color like blue, magenta, or green, that makes the subject a bit weird and pulsey, and just generally makes your photo look bad.

Lightroom has a nice tool for reducing chromic abberation, but because I was combining bits of photos with varying exposure levels together, I still had a bit of work to do with cleaning up the weirdness here and there.

Coming out of Lightroom with basic edits - looks pretty good

The trickiest parts were removing the background trash - reflective stakes, bits of green metal gate, a road, barrier, and cars. It amazes me how much ugly junk is put *everywhere* around us, even in "natural" settings like this one. It's not surprisingy that most settings where you can get a sportscar are littered with so much crap. Thank goodness for the band aid, clone, and mask tools in Photoshop!

I did my favorite Soft Light tints and highlights on the Lotus, color corrected the greeny-yellow headlight, sharpened up some edges, burned the background a bit to make the car stand out more, some color adjustment layers, and re-cropped for a more pleasing composition. Still not perfect, but I feel like I'm improving!

The final photo with all the retouching in the background, pushing and pulling, and color work.

I've been working more on my automotive photography, studying the masters like Ryan Jouhari, and Retutpro on Youtube.

I would say "it's complicated," and it is, but it's also fun. I don't know what it is about car photos that are more fulfilling to me than fashion - maybe it's the ability to pump the clarity up to stupid levels and still have it look amazing. Just like fashion, though, you can easily over-do the editing, so I have to find that balance.

Here are a couple recent edits. I went back through my Lightroom archive for photos I thought I could do better on. Most of my previous photos need to come up in the shadows *so* much, and are way too yellow (not purposefully, though, like the "vintage" one below).

Before is on the left (after Lightroom edits). After is on the right. Here's the out-of-camera:

Yikes.

For this one I cleaned up the background a lot, enlarged and straightened the car, picked out the highlights and darkened the glass with a Soft Light layer, and did some colorwork for that vintagy feel (along with some knicks, scratches, and splotches for an old-photo look). Here's the final:

--------------------------------------------
Second experiment, using many of the same techniques. Starting off with this photo after Lightroom edits:

Then cleaning up the background to remove the power poles, fence, red curb, road dirt, and all those construction stakes. I also used the Soft Light layer to darken the glass and pick out the highlights on the body and wheel. This makes a surprisingly big difference:

Last bit - colorwork with a Color Dodge layer in brown, and the tiniest bit of cross processing with a Curves adjustment layer. I had some hotspots from my Lightroom edit I went back to fix. Here's the final:

Getting there...

This past weekend a friend and I bimbled over to Lake Hav for Rockabilly Reunion.

There were a lot of great cars. I wish I could've taken pictures of them all, and better pictures than just these from my phone. It was an eclectic mix of hot rods, rat rods, and the usual classics - Camaros, Bel Airs, Cadillacs, the occasional T-Bird or Corvette.

I've always loved the late '60s Camaros, and will someday add one to my stable

Some friends of mine have a Nash Metropolitan, but not like this one! This was just mad!

The artistic detailing on the chopped rat rads is really amazing. I love that they embrace the patina and go all out with leatherwork and pinstriping. The interior of this one was upholstered with tooled leather, like a western belt. It's the very embodiment of our modern "vintage" style.

Got a shirt from BoMonster. I was hoping to meet the real Grease Girl but she couldn't attend.

The sunset on Lake Havasu was amazing. I love the desert.

A few photos from the event today. I played with colored gradient filters to give a little artistic drama to a couple of these - just trying some new things.

One of the things I bemoaned some months ago was that there weren't any adult/post-education "shop" classes for basic automobile maintenance and repair available in my area. The only thing I could find was a full 2 year certification course at the local community college, designed specifically for training professionals to go into auto repair shops and dealer facilities...not quite my aim.

So my second thought was, "wouldn't it be great if I could help out at a shop, or maybe find somebody who would let me observe?" But I didn't know anybody...

Radiator, beautiful rusty headlights, and drum brakes.

...then suddenly I did. Several somebodies.

What's nice about the car culture is that people really want to tell you about their cars. There are myriad knowledgeable people, and lots of very generous people who like to get greasy and be social about it. Thank goodness!

Last weekend I met an inspiring fellow who is an entrepreneur (like me, but way more successful) and also a petrolhead. He has a private workshop where he stores all kinds of tasty meatballs - a 1952 Chevy pickup, a 2009 Lamborghini Gallardo, and a god damn DeLorean...among other things. He invited me to check it out and wrench on his project cars, one of which is a gorgeous Ford Model A which apparently has hill climb and, uh, rally history.

Carburetors sticking out the side of the *straight four. Radiator standing tall at the front. And check out those headlights. Those headers shoot right out the side of the frame, too, with no twists, turns, or muffling. This thing must sound insane.

The body's off and everything is on display. This is the first time I've been able to have a clean view of the gubbins in their elegant, stripped-back states since learning all the basic bits and pieces. It's one thing to study diagrams and another to see it all put together and filthy.

Jim says I can come hang out and crawl under cars whenever. Yes please! I have so much to learn, and I am thankful that somebody is generous enough to let me sponge up some of his knowledge.