I shot this image on 6/24/22 at the weekly car show in Webster (Where Life is Worth Living). It was a perfect evening for most folks that like these shows. The temperature was around 80° F and the sun shined bright. But the bright sun and the shiny cars are a bad combination for photos. There are a lot of cars at the show so they tend to park very close to each other. Getting a full profile of a car is practically impossible. The owner of this car asked me what I was shooting. I said “details”. I think he was amused by that answer but it does sum up what most of these photos are.
WARNING: TECHNICAL STUFF BELOW!!! READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
With these limitations in mind, I take one camera (Olympus) and one lens with me and leave the camera bag and tripod in the car. I have the camera set to f5.6 or f8 and shoot 3 (bracketed) frames of each shot. I prefer to shoot if the subject is in the shadows rather than in direct sunlight but sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way. All the files are shot in the RAW format and converted to dng on import into Lightroom. This is what the shot looks like before processing:
I have a standard editing routine and use the same routine on almost all the photos. I have presets for sharpening and noise reduction and apply that as a first step, Second step is what I call spotting or the removal of bugs, dirt, small scratches, and specular highlights. This is done at 100% magnification with the spot removal tool.
The new masking tools in LR have made the rest of the editing procedure much easier. Just about every photo has several masks which are unique to each photo.
The last editing step is usually cropping the image, but I seldom use it. I almost never bring a (car) photo into PS for more editing.
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