British Car Show

British Car Show

One part of the Greenville Scottish Games that I enjoy is the British Car Show. It is held on Furman University's shaded mall in front of the main gate to the games. There always seems to be a slightly different mix of cars in the show each year. Many of the cars are older restorations, but there are sometimes new British branded automobiles as well. The new Lotus sports cars are almost always a crowd pleaser.

The car show is now kind of a sentimental favorite of mine since it was some of my photographs of cars from a couple of years ago that got me invited to be a photographer for the games last year and now this year. I wasn't able to get many photographs from the car show last year due to the VIP's schedule. However, I did make it a point to get some shots from there this year.

This particular photograph shows that the cars are lined up for quite a long ways down the mall. In fact, they are lined up down both sides of the mall. Quite an impressive collection of classic British automobiles. The photograph is also a handheld, three-shot HDR composite so that the shadows are not blocked out to complete black. I tried to process the image so that it would look fairly natural without the over exaggerated colors that HDR can sometime cause. It's not perfect, but I think it gets close to it.

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Corvette

Corvette

Lighting at the Carolina Auto Show is a strange, fickle thing. It is held in a big, dark expo building. There are low power fluorescent lights for general lighting so visitors can see where they are going. The cars themselves are light by multiple, bright spotlights, plus they are polished to be as reflective as possible.

All of this means that you just can't count on the lighting, but you have to work with it. Add in the people around the cars and it can be a challenge to photograph stuff. How I handle it is by looking for particular details that stand out to me. Rather than photographing the entire car which likely has people inside and all around it, I will photograph the hood ornament, or the name badge, or some unusual set of lines. Basically, I abstract it I suppose.

This photograph is of the hood of one the more popular cars at the show. I helped that it was the first thing you saw when you came through the entrance. The 2010 Corvette had people around it and inside it constantly while I was there. However, I really liked the hood detail and the car's identifiable badge. It is red like a 'Vette should be. It looks like the hood of a fast car. It says to me everything that a Corvette is supposed to be. I didn't really need a picture of the entire car. This one said it all.

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Belated Happy New Year

Hood Art

Well, it is 2010. Time really seems to be speeding by me. It doesn't seem like very long ago we were worrying about the Y2K bug yet it has been ten years since Y2K became a memory. It still feels like I graduated from college just a couple of years ago rather than twenty. *Sigh*


We haven't been out much lately so there haven't been a lot of new photographs to post about. However, this past weekend I went to the Carolina Auto Show in Greenville. This was the third year that I went to the show. It was the first year that I went by myself though. I wanted some time to wander around alone and my wife was gracious enough to watch our son. There had been some things that had been getting me down and I really felt that I needed to get out by myself. I'm glad that I was able to. Walking around the car show with the freedom to photograph at my own pace helped to get me out of my little funk. I've said before that the camera has kept me sane these past couple of years, and this was another time that it was as much therapy as expression.

The car show itself was good, if a bit smaller than previous years. Most of the major manufacturers were represented. However, there were a couple of brands that I wanted to look at that were not at the show. Some of the local car clubs were present showing their Mustangs and Exotic sports cars. There was even a Tesla all-electric sports car. It was the first Tesla that I've seen first hand. I didn't know there was even one in the area until now. Plus, a there were a few after market vendors and organizations with displays as well.

The photograph above is of the work of an after market customization artist. It is the raised hood of a Toyota model that has been completely customized from the paint job, to the engine, to the interior. It was a beautiful car. You can see more of this shop's work at The Artwork of Richard Markham.

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Graphic Design

Graphic Design

The colors, pattern, and play of light on the metal's curves caught me eye at the recent auto show. This is part of a custom detailing on a "monster" truck. There really was no way to get the entire detailing so I settled on isolating this one prominent portion of it.

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By the Dashboard Lights

By the Dashboard Lights
We went to the South Carolina Auto Show this weekend. It was in the same venue which is a huge, dark hall with the cars lit by harsh spot lights. There were even more people there than last year, probably because it wasn't snowing this year. It was kind of hard to get good shots of the cars so I settled with photographing interesting details. Still, there were some nice exotic cars (Lotuses, Mazaratis, Aston Martins, Ferraris, etc.), cool customized cars, and memorable classics as well as the new models that the manufacturers had on display.

The photograph above was taken as I sat in a really nice Lexus. I liked the graphic qualities of the dashboard. Very clean yet striking. I used my flash mounted to the camera but angled it away from the dash and used it's small integrated bounce card. I think it gives just enough highlights to give some nice definition to the curves in the instrumentation. I cropped it a tad and boosted the color just a smidge.

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All in the Details

Z

It is very easy to get caught up in trying to get "the BIG picture" when we are out with our cameras. However, sometimes situations are conducive to getting everything in the shot. At times like that, sometimes zeroing in on distinctive details can make for a more interesting image. The shot above was taken at an automobile show this past January. The show was held in one of the local convention centers. The lighting wasn't very good for photography as you can imagine, plus there were lots of people in the venue admiring the cars. They were also trying to stay inside and out of one of the only days of snow we had last winter. I got several wide shots that I liked of various cars, However, I think some of the better images from that day were details of the cars. Those shots tended to encompass some important design element, or the car's badge, or other identifying feature. This made them easier to frame, easier to control the lighting, and easier to remove the background crowds from the composition.

Next time you are out with your camera, look for interesting details that can fill the frame. A potter's hands as he turns his clay might be more interesting and tell a better visual story than then a long shot of the potter stooped over his wheel. The colors in a subject might be visually more intriguing than the subject itself. Or you might find an exceptionally intricate texture that just demands some attention. Shooting details can begin to introduce you to abstract images and see things in ways that you didn't before. Plus, it can be a lot of fun to turn a blah "big picture" into a series of "Wow!" detail images.



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