Inspired by Rev Sam - I took the Jag on a mini roadtrip from Austin to Corpus Christi - driving on US or TX highway rather than the interstate. I tried to take pictures of some historical courthouses along the way, some ghost signs and other sights - incorporating the car into the scenes as much as possible.

These are the 2 ghost signs - one in Luling, TX, the other in Gonzales, TX.







More to come ....

Note: I did the embedding URL thing - but the images still don't show up ..... head scratching ....

 

Hey rom,
The thumbnail images can be shown , just bring the arrow ( the mouse's ) and wait a few secs images to appear .Alternatively, you can click on the thumbnail and see the image view and right click on the image and choose Properties for URL or image address .
That's it , if it's a bit tough then let's know our team will pleasedly be help of you
Thanks

 

Nice Bob

 

Here are a few additional ones.

I call the New Sweden Lutheran church shot 'The Divine Feline' .... it's cheesy I know .... . The church setting is unbelievable though, it's in the middle of corn fields, and nothing around it ... I am thinking of taking silhouette shot, just showing the outline of the church and the car. Maybe this weekend ....

The county courthouse buildings at Lockhart and Hallettsville kinda give the idea. They're the grandest building around - I call the one in Hallettsville 'The Last Castle' since it reminds me of the movie. Compare the size of it with the car - and this is on a town of about maybe 2500 people .....

The last shot is taken in front of USS Lexington aircraft carrier museum. I think next time I would take off the polarizing and neutral density - they both make it harder to focus for night shot.

I also plan to repeat the trip during fall. It's so hot down here this time of the year. The Hallettsville shot was taken around 830pm but I was sweating like crazy in 100% humidity and 90F temperature, and that's about 5 min after the sunset.

 

I always love to see ghost signs from by-gone era's.

That church is different. The spire seems to be way too tall compared with the rest of the building. It would be interesting to know some of its history.

(I seem to remember h20boy said that if you now right click on your thumb and copy image location then insert that into the img tag then the pic will appear large in your body post. Don't want to muck up your thread, so will try this with one of my own).

 

A few additions from the USS Lexington museum.

I always messed up the close up shot - the intent is to have a sharp picture overall or have the focus on the sight and have the background a bit blurred - this iron sight shot for the quad 40 AA gun is kinda the other way around .... Any tips?

The ship steering instrument reminds me of the 3 center gauges on XK8 with no nav - except there's no burled walnut panel.

I never noted how beefy an naval aircraft landing gears are until I took the Hornet shot .... I guess they have to be like that to withstand the carrier landing.

Also - does anybody know of a lens that can help correct perspective?

@Translator: thks for the tip - will try that as soon as I get the image hosted online properly.

 

Autofocus on such a small subject w/o contrast on its surface is almost impossible to achieve using the camera's AF. On something like this, I'd use manual focus to ge the correct range, and also spot meter on the sight so it is exposed correct, but then the background will be much brighter, possible overexposed unless you used a flash for your subject, the sight. Good idea though, I like that!

Perspective correction can be achieved two ways, the more expensive one - lenses, like canon's tilt-shift lenses will leave you lighter in the bank account by $1000-2000. My recommendation is to learn a program that has perspective correction built into the software features. I use Paintshop Pro X2 Ultimate and like everything about it, except its HDR functions. The new version of the program has advanced the HDR features, so I'll be trying that the next couple months. Its a relatively cheap program compared to Photoshop or Aperture.