Chevrolet Truck Bob's Christmas Tree Lot At Night

It's the grill that caught my attention from 100 yards away as I pulled into the parking lot. It's the kind of grill you could comb your hair in and if not there definitely in the chrome half moon headlight covers. The next day I worked nearby I had my camera and was ready to shoot this truck. One thing I love about shooting at night is the different color of the light sources. In the second image you can see mostly warm (orange), a few cool (green) and at least one neutral light. If you look close you can see the left front of the truck is bathed in warm light while the right side is more neutral. I also shot some during the day and had a nice surprise when a 1956 Plymouth Safari station wagon pulled in. 

1957 Pontiac Safari

I was shooting a truck at Bob's Christmas tree lot when this car pulled up. I planned to link this to the truck post but I realized I have not posted that yet, I will post the truck soon. When I talked to the owner of the Pontiac Safari he said his wife got angry when he brought this home. The floor boards were rusted out and now that it is restored she loves it. 

UPDATE: I was told by Val Ramsey that this is actually a 1957 Pontiac Safari.

Enchanted Tiki Room Disneyland

Enchanted Tiki Room opened June 23, 1963 and was the first to feature Audio-Animatronics. The show was originally going to be a restaurant featuring Audio-animatronic birds serenading guests as they dined. Since computers have played a central role in the attraction since its inception, Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room was also Disneyland's first fully air-conditioned building. Since ownership of the attraction was separate from the rest of the park originally there was a nominal admission charge of $0.75.

The presentation features a "cast" of over 150 talking, singing and dancing birds, flowers, a magic fountain, tiki drummers and tiki totem poles that perform the attraction's signature tunes, "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room" by the Sherman Brothers and "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing". The finale has every Audio-Animatronics figure performing a rousing version of "Hawaiian War Chant". The choice of exit music is somewhat unusual, namely an arrangement of "Heigh-Ho" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with lyrics thanking guests for watching the show and hurrying them to the exit.

Disney's Haunted Mansion

I planned on posting this in December but time got away from me. During Halloween and Christmas the Haunted Mansion is decorated with the characters from Nightmare Before Christmas. They call it the Haunted Mansion Holiday. I like shooting at night for the different light sources (sodium vapor, incandescent, florescent and in this case the blue and purple laser) and shadows cast from them. I wanted a clean shot (no people passing through or standing in line) I shot quite a few shots before I gave up and sat down and just waited. Once the crowd had died down I was able to re-position my tripod without worrying about creating a trip hazard and got a better composition. I had security guard's slowly following me out of the park but I made friends with two of them and they actually blocked the traffic for me.

   

Photo Supply Co. Disneyland

This is the photo store in Disneyland while shooting the bracketed series I noticed the employees mugging for the camera. I was shooting a wide angle of the building and was hoping they would show up in the final image. I had to composite (pick a images and adjust the exposure, color and saturation to match the HDR image) the employees because they were moving between exposures. To see the employees inside the building the print would have to be pretty large, so I have included a closeup of the inside of the building.

Cars Land California Adventure

This is Cars Land at California Adventure my favorite thing about Cars Land is the details like the flowers that are made out of taillights and the pots are tires in the first image. Disney did a good job making you feel like you are in Cars Land everything down to the traffic light blinking slower every third time.

George Carlin played Fillmore in the Cars movie and I still regret not taking the time to go see his comedy act. 

37 Nash LaFayette

This is a 1937 Nash LaFayette in 1937 Nash acquired LaFayette Motors. I was told about this for about this car for two months and made one prior attempt to photograph it, but there was a car parked right in front of it. I am glad I shot it the day I did the owner moved and covered it with a car cover the day after I shot it. The city told him to move it. It is for sale I forgot the though owners name (I failed to write it down) his phone number is (925) 687-6024. He was out by the time I shot the second series of images and we talked for about half an hour. He has three of the hub caps but removed them after one was stolen. He has owned it for 12 years. If he sold this from this post it would not be the first car I helped sell. I have helped sell some of the cars that were in the wrecking yard just outside Toppenish Washington.

I had planned to put a slight sepia tone on the images because I thought the car and the house look like the are both from the same time period. It is a good thing because of the significant amount of chromatic aberration that HDR Effex Pro 2 produces where the dark foliage meets the sky. I have talked to Nik about size of loupe for chromatic aberration, it is very small I have a 25" screen and 1-2 inch loupe seems ridiculous given the real estate on my screen. I shot the image with a Canon 17-40mm lens at 17mm which creates barrel distortion. This is not the only image I have had trouble with I tried for over an hour to adjust for the chromatic aberration and it seems that when you adjust for one portion of the image another part has a problem. If I wanted to keep this image in color I would have to spend a considerable amount of time removing the fringing. I am going to work this image up in Photomatix and see if I have any better luck with this type of image. I shot the image at ƒ/11 and the article on the link about fringing says you can reduce the chances of fringing by shooting three stops from wide open most often somewhere around ƒ/5.6 or ƒ/8. I will also try adjusting my aperture and see if that remedies the problem although that affects the depth of field and will be a problem especially on landscape images.