1941 Cadillac Series 62

1941 Cadillac Series 62, Antique Car Show, Sully Historic Site, Chantilly, Virginia

1941 Cadillac Series 62, Antique Car Show, Sully Historic Site, Chantilly, Virginia

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1941 Cadillac Series 62

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, being that I am not into Black Friday sales, I had some time to experiment with some different finishes for my images.  This shot of two 1941 Cadillac Series 62 sedans was captured at the Antique Car Show at Sully Historic Site in Chantilly, Virginia this past Father’s Day.  This is a single RAW capture which I processed three times (-2, 0, & +2EV).  I then combined these in Nik Software HDR Efex Pro (If you have not seen the announcement from Google regarding on-going technical support and upgrades please see my previous post – Four Model A Fords).

As with many car shows, it was very difficult to capture any nice images without including some of the other people who were admiring the wonderfully restored vehicles.  I decided the easiest way to reduce the pull of the bright clothes and other distractions in the background was to combine the resultant image from HDR Efex Pro with the -2EV version of the original Raw file to darken the background by masking in that section of the image from the dark copy.  I also combined the 0EV file masking in the two cars to lessen the effects of the HDR processing and help restore the shine to the beautiful chrome and the black paintwork.

Next, I used the Topaz Simplify Plug-in to further smooth the HDR effects in the paintwork as well as produce the interesting look to the grass in the foreground.  I am still trying to understand how this plug-in works but fortunately the presets, with some minor tweaks to the sliders, produced the look I was after.

On returning the image to Lightroom, I added a vignette but this still was not quite enough, so I returned the image to Photoshop and applied the Monday Morning filter from Nik Softwares Color Efex Pro, turning down the layer opacity to about 50% and adding some additional masking using a very light touch with the brush set to 20% opacity.

Summary
Article Name
1941 Cadillac Series 62
Description
Two 1941 Cadillac Series 62 sedans were at the Antique Car Show at Sully Historic Site in Chantilly, Virginia this past Fathers Day
Author
Publisher Name
Mark Summerfield
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2 Comments

  1. Another cracking image Mark.

    This has an old movie poster feel about it. Nice!

  2. Nice idea using the -2 exposure for background masking. That really tones down the ever-present distractions at these events where it is always a tough shoot.

    I really like how you processed these, Mark. Those cars are awesome and you have them standing out nicely.

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