No one can deny that the immaculately restored antique car, presented with a punk-fetish-gothic look is attention getting. As a poster for a movie, or for a series of model cars ready for Chrismas sales, it could work magnificently. After all, it has a biting edge that says, "Look at me, I have some story to tell from another world!"
at the Warialda honey festival on the 17th nov
Hi Tony,
Obviously this is inquired taste! The car has entered a surreal world as if we're about to be introduced to new characters. If that works for just you then it's worthwhile. I know a lot of folk like this almost quaint metallic presentation. I'm prepared to enter that world if there were characters and ideas in it I could follow, as in a computer game. So that might work for a lot of people.
What's a block is that a lot of us
here is simply an insatiable love antique cars!! I myself am interested in the
actual car show! Seeing your pictures, like travel images from journeys made by Robert Watcher, Fahim Mohammed and others, we get to places and events through their travels! The antique car owners show lavishly-loved cars. Each has a story: snapped up at some lucky meeting or maybe a drive through farm land where a barn door was left open by accident! These cars are all treasures of a bygone age. Folk travel great distances to show them, refresh friendships, and milk nostalgia and to see some of the most beautiful, proud or humble automobiles that were ever produced.
While I am impressed with the technique of HDR, I treat it as I do all post processing techniques and that's gingerly and with minimal use. I ask what I'm trying to do? In this case, to make the car stand out more, one could simply add a contrast curve or some selective sharpening. Even then, always apply it only to certain places in the image, not everywhere. So, I'd challenge you to place the car finished over a second layer, the original before HDR, and then pull back the effect to where it just elevates your cars in attention-getting above the original. More than that focusses attention on the technique and not the car!
Unless of course one wants to enter this alternative world, and that's fine if that is indeed what one desires. But for many of us, we're robbed of the beauty that the car collectors have painstakingly bestowed on their rare cars. I wonder if you have ever tired SNS-HDR? Do a search here and you might very well be impressed. It mighty not give you the same "other" or "gothic" world you like, but it will for sure give you what is considered by some knowledgeable users, perhaps the best HSR software available.
Asher
