RKPhotography - Motorsport Ranch 2013

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Fantastic photos 👍 I'd forgotten how great your detail shots are, especially with the cars - but the can of Duff and the Hard Rock cafe sign really stand out too.
 
Thanks, mate. 👍

Also just realized none of my Vegas shots were posted here. Lots of photos below mainly because I never actually got around to making a thread about the trip.
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The Bellagio Fountains dancing to "Your Song" by Elton John. This where a tripod & a wider angle would have come in handy. However, near impossible with the sheer amount of people that stop to watch.
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Awesome pics of Vegas McLaren 👍 The fountain pics turned out very nice.
 
A few from our show yesterday. Played with a couple effects to mix up the angles I usually take for some of these cars. :)
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The shots from the Italian Car Festival as well as shots from the XDC drifting competition this past Saturday. Lots of photos ahead.
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And XDC.
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I've looked through these latest shots a few times now and I keep going back to the Maserati. The striking difference between the black of the grille and the overexposed outside is perfect. 👍

Word of criticism on the Aventador shot - perhaps not so steep an angle? Something along the lined of / instead of | ?
 
You are right. Originally, the shot was actually horizontal & after I had got done editing it, I thought it looked better vertically. I may remove my logo & rotate it back and see how it looks then.
Edit* Better TB?
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^ Definitely looks better horizontal :)👍 Nice shots once again in your last update. The black and white Lambo interior is a cool shot with the colored emblem. Nice work!
 
These are around a month old, but I thought I'd finally share them after an owner wanted a couple pics from the set. Not one of my best efforts (& hence I cropped many of them), but they seemed to satisfy our local club. That is also my buddy's Elise in the shots as well. :)
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If you leveled that 2nd to last shot a bit and did some fill light and adjustments on the car, it would be golden I feel. Right now it just doesn't have those finishing touches needed, but the idea behind it solid along with how its framed.
 
If you leveled that 2nd to last shot a bit and did some fill light and adjustments on the car, it would be golden I feel. Right now it just doesn't have those finishing touches needed, but the idea behind it solid along with how its framed.
I definitely had a bunch of ideas of how I would like the shot to look. But unfortunately, I don't believe I have the right programs or enough editing skill to get it there. Learning, though. :dunce:
 
Oh wow, the contrast is so completely different initially. I'd say you are crushing too many details in the shadows out while smashing some whites around as well. I did two separate crops, and if I was doing something with this for print, I'd probably remove that white water tower in the background. The exposure is quite nice initially, so working with this from a jpeg wasn't bad at all.

Crop1, a bit wider
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And a tighter crop, which I felt was nice because it removed the somewhat distracting Best Western logo from the background.

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The dodging and burning is a touch rough, but you can see how a nice contrast can be maintained while preserving detail and tone.
 
Ok, so I most definitely need to dive deeper into learning about editing. Those look fantastic compared to mine. The blue on the RS just stands out more & everything just looks better without my usual tactic of darkening the shadows to get said colors to "pop".

I have much to learn.
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Generally, when editing, I start with color balance, then adjust the exposure/fill light a bit to see what I want in the shadows. Then I change the curve a bit to crush the blacks if needed. After that, burning in areas, generally some shadows and mids if they are too distracting, then dodge some bits that should be more white or could benefit from a touch of contrast, such as the details on the 911 above. After that, some selective sharpening in areas, usually though a high pass filter and layer masking with opacity changes to keep the strength in check.

If there are spots, dirt, or other things that have to be cleaned up, I'll usually do that before all the other processing, as I work in layers for many steps so I can compare what I am doing and recover it later if needed for some reason. I also save the full size PSD files whenever I finish editing, so I can go back for cropping at various print sizes. Which is why I have 600 or gigs of images and related work in my photo folders. From this year.
 
It feels like you are crushing out the blacks far too much, thus losing a lot of detail in shadows. The histograms on a few of those tends to agree, along with clipping out highlights a bit in some cases, such as the orange R8.
 
It feels like you are crushing out the blacks far too much, thus losing a lot of detail in shadows. The histograms on a few of those tends to agree, along with clipping out highlights a bit in some cases, such as the orange R8.
In the case of the R8, you're right. I tried experimenting with a way to bring out more detail in the tree & the wheels, but it didn't come out very well, so I went back to what I had. As far as the auto show pics go, I did do that intentionally to bring out the brighter colors more. I did it on a few to minimize the appearance of the other rude guests as well.

I haven't started working on my Boardwalk or Uptown pictures yet, so I'll try to take heed on it.
 
Try selectively burning and dodging. The issue I have is detail is being lost in the grills, tires, and so on that could add to the texture of the image.
 

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