Old Car City USA – HDR Photography Workshop

On October 10th and 11th, Randy and I attended a fun and educational photo workshop led by Denise Ippolito at Old Car City in White Georgia with an add-on bonus shoot at the Southeastern Railway Museum nearby.

In 1931, the father of the current owner of Old Car City USA opened Walt Lewis General Store, a small car dealership and salvage yard. Most people couldn’t afford to buy cars in the depressed economy, but they were always looking for parts to keep their cars running and cars to swap. The cars and parts that didn’t sell eventually piled up and started what is now over 34 acres with more than 4000 cars. The current owner, Dean Lewis, is always looking for more classic cars to add to the collection, but as per Dean, it is getting hard to find them. Since the price of scrap metal has soared, old vintage cars are being crushed and sold to the scrap metal dealers. Sad…

We were welcomed with loads of good old southern hospitality and enjoyed visiting with Dean and hearing some of his stories.

As for the photography, Denise recommended Old Car City USA as a great place for HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, and she was right! The lighting changed constantly with the thunderstorms moving through and with the light dappling through the thick vegetation growing over and through the cars. I shot most of my images with HDR processing in mind – many images of the same scene, varying the shutter speed to try to capture the wide range of highlights and shadows.

I processed most of my images using Google’s NIK HDR EFEX Pro with touch ups using Photoshop’s ACR and NIK Color EFEX Pro. While I usually try to keep my HDR processing as real as possible, Old Car City just screamed wild and crazy processing to me, so I did!

I took lots of close-ups so piled most of them in this collage – most from Old Car City, but the upper left one from the Southeastern Railway Museum.

My favorite image from the trip was at the train museum in the dining car – lots of colorful tables and chairs!

The mail car was a fun one too.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be any fun without the silliness, right?