Pismo Car Show

A couple weekends ago, I took my dad to the Pismo Beach car show. It’s been a tradition for us since the family moved to the central coast. I didn’t think I was going to make it this year, since I no longer live down there, but it happened to be going on the weekend I was visiting.

If you’ve never been, Pismo is flooded with a lot of cars and people. They shut down a few parking lots, and streets, just so theres room for all the cars. This year, there weren’t as many cars as in previous years, and the quality of them seemed to have slipped. There were still some beauties. I always like seeing the Bel Air’s and the VW buses.

I couldn’t decide which edit I liked better for this Bel Air. The first one was with TangledFX, and it is very bright and shiny, which is what the conditions were. The second edit is done with Mextures. Its got a darker, and kind of depressing vibe to it. The car looks like its being dismantled or something haha.

These old guys like to stand by their cars and watch people stare at it all day. I imagine its like showing off your first born.

Insert your favorite quote from back to the future here.

A Golden Gate

As I think I said in the last post, it was really foggy on my last visit to SF. It’s not what I had envisioned when I left the house, so I was a little disappointed, but I went with it when I got there.

While I was walking along the Golden Gate Bridge, I was drawn to the way the cables just disappeared into the fog. I tried a few different compositions to get an interesting shot. I ended up leaning over the railing a bit to get this one. I don’t recommend trying that because the traffic really flies by.

The original image was a bit flat and muted because of the fog. I felt like this shot was a good candidate for something a little surreal, so I used NIR Color for the dreamy/surreal effect. I liked how it created some gold light where the cables disappear. It felt appropriate for the Golden Gate.

McLaren 12C @ Club Sportiva

The photo on top is edited with just Snapseed. The one below is Snapseed and Tadaa. I used the tilt shift feature in tadaa and also used their masks to mask some of the tilt shift off of the car. It was my first time using the mask, and it was pretty easy with the edge detection. It’s not perfect, but good enough to get the desired effect for this image.

My first friday night back here involved free drinks and appetizers surrounded by exotic cars and people with too much money. It was a grand opening for a new Club Sportiva location. They rent exotic cars, like this McLaren, to people that would rather pay a fraction of the $240,000 price tag to drive it. They even do drives together along the Big Sur coast. Must be nice!

One thing I didn’t understand was how they could afford the Ferrari, Lamborghini, Viper, Porsche, Shelby, and so on, but the models they hired weren’t very attractive. Honestly, there really wasn’t any reason to have models there. This crowd was there for the cars and booze.

Wind Turbines

When I look at this photo, I remember the crazy gusts of wind blowing through this valley. You can’t really tell just by looking at these turbines though. I should have had the girls that were with me posing as turbines too. Then you could see their hair blowing all over the place. This one was actually taken from the passenger seat of a moving car.

Shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed. The drama filter made for a dramatic sky, once again.

Free App: FilterMania 2

There’s a really cool app that was just released called FilterMania 2. It’s free this weekend and I recommend snagging it now. There are so many cool filters that you won’t find anywhere else. It’s got a lot to offer. The only thing I’m not crazy about is being forced to do the square crop.

These are examples of using just one filter at 100% opacity. Nothing fancy.

Old Truck and A Haiku

Going back to the vehicle theme today.

There is a house across highway 1 that seems to always have busted up, old trucks for sale. They make great subjects for HDR, but this was shot with camera+, so its not really an HDR pic. I added drama and a vignette with snapseed, then used Tadaa for some clarity and a little bit of a filter.

I even wrote a quick haiku to go with this one because, for whatever reason, girls tend to challenge me to write haikus. My favorite one was a haiku making fun of haikus. =)

A broken down pile,
You throw rocks at me for fun,
Please love me again.

Porsche

One thing I like about Tadaa is they have challenges to give their users ideas of what to shoot. Recently it was doors, so the app was flooded with door pics. Most were snapshots, but some were quite good. Before doors was animals. Like there weren’t enough people only posting pics of their pets already!

This week’s challenge is vehicles. I’m sure the men are going to be all over this one. I took a few detail pics of my old man’s Carrera 2s to throw into the mix. Yes, its very fun to drive, but cops will hassle you for being in a red Porsche.

I shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed and Tadaa. Using the campfire filter at around 50% in Tadaa really made the first image pop. I may have to actually print that one out for my dad.