A new Focus and a photo op

Last night I attended an event at the Petersen Museum. Ford and Jay Leno donated the Ford Focus Electric Vehicle he had used in his show last season. Link to the post about the event itself HERE.

It should be no secret by now that I love to shoot cars about as much as I love to drive them. These events are terrific for shooting cars but the lighting isn't always ideal, and I dislike the harsh look of flash preferring the available lighting any day.

The problem with last nights shoot was multiple. First the car I wanted to feature was white, under spotlights that created too harsh a contrast and zero highlight detail. That was fixed by shooting with HDR post processing in mind. Second was that because of the different light sources there was different colors of light coming into play that makes accurate color balancing by the camera difficult...shooting RAW and using Adobe's CS5 helps with the color correcting.

Of course Photoshop helps with the final processing, in this case using some filters to make the 2012 Focus Electric the center of attention by using some spotlight action to darken other areas of the frame so the key car pops out from the back ground.

In terms of HDR processing I shot this bracked +/- 2 EV. The HDR file generation used those 3 files to create the file I worked from for color correcting and filter application. Tone mapping was done via Adobe's CS5. The final image used here was then dumbed down in size and dpi so it would be fast loading without sacrifice of detail .

The final image gets bigger with a click.

Just a new little adventure...

I was asking for a new adventure. I got one, well made it happen. My friend Dave Share from metblogs/blogging.la have been talking for a while about doing a car blog. We made it happen over the last few weeks.

You can visit So Cal Auto Blog and leave comments or whatever. I'd really like it if you'd click on the ads from time to time as it helps us build credibility with them beyond content.

The banner was made by me from an image of a Mustang Bullitt I shot a while back. Cropped it down and added text with Photoshop...and then sized to fit within the spot allotted in word press. Stupid easy and nice results.

Stuff

I worked this image from 3 bracketed images into an HDR file then took it a step further and ortonized it. In short I needed a dreamy looking image for a post I was working on for blogging.la that ran today. I was pleased with the outcome.

I'm hanging in Monrovia City Hall through March 31st. I was hung (figuratively, not literally but am sure there are a few that would like to blur that line) this past Wednesday. I need to get a shot in of my work hanging in the "City Lights" gallery as it is called in city hall. When that has been accomplished will post it here too. A little bragging, but what good is a blog if you can't do your own self serving post every now and then.