Cars & Coffee - December 7, 2014

1:43 PM Events , Photography 0 Comments

We have a small local Cars & Coffee club that meets every 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month. It's nothing like Irvine or even San Francisco, in their enormity, but we have a decent turnout, especially when the weather's nice.

Most of the cars are new. The oldest we usually get is an '80s MR2, but for this one I invited my new friend and vintage Jaguar racer Jim to bring is freshly restored E-Type out.  Here are a few photos from the day:

British Racing Green

The gleaming glory of a English V12.

Jim's Jag and my Lotus having a chat

Car Photography in Verdi - Scion FRS and Lotus Evora

11:17 AM Lotus , Photography 0 Comments

A few of the lads in the Cars & Coffee group are into photography. One of them, Dylan, asked me to cruise over the Verdi to take advantage of the fall color. I took my camera too, and we took turns snapping photos on the idyllic bridges and in front of brightly colored bushes.



Dylan's FRS is a thing of great beauty. It's easy to look down on the FRS/BRZ cars at the moment because they talk the talk but don't walk the walk - they look like super speedy race cars on the outside, but leave much to be desired on the inside. All show, no go.

Unless you're a petrolhead and tweak the noodles out of your FRS, adding a turbo (or two) and all kinds of other gubbins to turn that weak but shiny toy into a freaking beast.  Which is exactly what Dylan did.


I had a hard time photographing Dylan's black n' shiny car, as it reflected absolutely everything. A friend on Instagram recommended polarized filters to knock the reflections back, but I haven't tried it out yet. You can see the mad reflections of the bridge on the photo above.

My car, on the other hand, is weirdly lovely to photography. It's shiny, but it's metallic grey (called "carbon grey" officially), so it doesn't reflect nearly as much as a black car. Here are my snaps from the day. I opted for barn doors and industrial fencing at sundown:



Again with the heightening and brightening in Lightroom, which I maybe did a little *too* much of on the last picture, but I'm still learning. :-)

Photos From the 2014 West Coast Lotus Meet

2:45 PM Events , Lotus , Photography 0 Comments

My favorite time of year, and right in my backyard, 2014's West Coast Lotus Meet was a long-weekend's worth of driving, showing, making friends, looking good, and games.

I went to most of the events, and even won the Funkhana with my partner (we both had grey Evoras, but his was the S). I was disappointed when the autocross was cancelled, as I've (still) never done it and think I could be good at it, but there is autocross here locally, all the time, I just need to get out of bed to go to it early in the morning. :-)

Had some fun with photography at this event, and fiddled a lot in Lightroom to bring up and push back certain areas. Tahoe is high altitude and fierce when it comes to light, with strong shadows and a lot of them. Here's a before and after showing the work I did on the photo of the black Elise above:

The Lotus in Neon

1:57 PM Lotus , Photography 0 Comments

Beautiful things beg to be photographed. Car photography isn't as easy as you might think, though.

I've been having a great time shooting the Lotus, as well as friend's cars, and playing around in Lightroom, particularly with the adjustment brush to bring up or knock back certain areas like the wheels and back splitter.

This shoot might've benefited from an extra light, but as it was I was working with the lights we already had - neon from the casinos.

Not the easiest, but some fun shots resulted.