Red, white, and blue!

Now that I see it here it looks a little too blue. I'll work on

that. In the meantime let me know what you think.

That's better now that I toned the blue down.

I'm curious as to why you've gone with a super-saturated look for some of your shots. Can you tell me what you're trying to do here? It's an interesting look and I like the spots of light on the track surface, but I'd like to know what you're after here. Thanks.

I came across the idea by accident 6 years ago at the first ALMS event at Mosport. I had never shot race cars with headlights before and did not realize that even in broad daylight the headlights cause a 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 stop underexposure in auto mode. I have shot in manual mode ever since. I had set aside all the underexposed slides for 4 years and then came across them and decided I liked the impact that they provided, but recognized the inferior image quality from a softer lens.

 

 

Now with a good lens, I can achieve the kind of results I was looking for. In the images from 2004 in my folder that are like this they are only underexposed by 1/2 to 1 stop. Unfortunately by the time I scan them I lose at least another 1/2 stop and even more with the Kodachromes. So I decided to post them in a slightly contrastier form to find out what others thought. The saturation comes from the original slide, the slight underexposure, the contrast adjustment and the exposure time being within 2 hours of sunrise. I had to back off the original scanned saturation because the pavement was quite red and then I had to back off the blue to counteract the results. Personally I like the differentiation from the usual racing images and I am interested to know if others think there is a place for them. Many studio images of cars are shot against black backgrounds for high impact and this outdoor technique perhaps captures some of that appeal.

 

 

This particular image appears softer than some of the others because I used a 2x converter and 100 asa film.

 

 

I'm not into Corvette's but I quickly recognized the cultural significance of the front and centre Chevrolet logo, the automobile brand, and the colours of the American flag, all in a racing environment.