Cruisin' Classics of Paradise Antique Car Show

For a bit of change of pace, I went to the Paradise antique car show last Saturday. I enjoy old cars, but I'm not a fanatic in any way.

What I like best about old cars are the fascinating little details that can make very interesting abstract images. I like to shoot antique cars very close up, either with a macro lens or a wide angle zoom in order to focus on and isolate some of the interesting abstract shapes.

This particular sky was brutally hot and sunny. I spent about an hour photographing the cars and was exhausted! Sunny conditions are particularly difficult for shooting cars due to the harsh shadows, specular highlights, and bright reflections. Focusing on small details is one way to work around the difficulties of the conditions.

1957 Packard Hawk

1956 Corvette

1940 Ford

Paint Detail - 1940 Ford

1956 Ford Victoria

1939 Chevrolette

Hood - 1957 Thunderbird

Grand Island Cemetery

Scattered in lonely corners across the valley floor one occasionally comes across old cemeteries, established by pioneering farmers in the 1850's or 1860's.

The Grand Island Cemetery near Grimes is one such cemetery.

I spent the afternoon of a wonderful spring day (while waiting for the sunset) photographing the beautiful tombstones in the cemetery.

Grand Island Cemetery entrance

Tombstone - Grand Island Cemetery

Farnsworth familt plot - Grand Island Cemetery

Sun against a statue - Grand Island Cemetery

 At the end of the day, I was rewarded with an incredible sweeping sunset (click on the image to view larger).

Sunset panorama, near Grimes

Rice Fields in Spring

It's that time of year, when the rice fields get flooded for planting after being drained in mid-February. On a calm day, the reflections of clouds in the flooded fields is incredible, but unfortunately, on the day I went out, the wind was gusting at about 35 MPH. I got some nice images of the clouds over the rice fields anyway.

I did take one of the images from the shoot and manipulate it in Photoshop to make it LOOK like it was taken on a day when the wind wasn't constantly blowing my ball cap off my head into the water (I've gotten pretty good at using my tripod to fish my cap out of the water).

Here's what the rice field really looked like:

And here's what it looked like after I had my way with it in Photoshop:

I don't normally manipulate my images like this, but I was curious to see how difficult it was to create those reflections.

Lenticular Clouds over the Coast Range

Taken on the same day as the images in last week's post, these images show dramatic lenticular clouds forming over the Coast Range right at sunset.

These cloud formations are fairly rare over the Coast Range. The most dramatic occurrence of lenticular clouds over the Coast Ranges that I ever witnessed was on June 17, 2002, when I took the images below: