Elegance on wheels

The key to photographing beautiful cars like this classic 1937 Delage D8 120 SS Aerodynamic coupe is to attend a Concourse d'Elegance. There are many of these car shows throughout the U.S., and they exhibit the best of the best in horseless carriages, antiques, and classics. The cars are displayed on grass, so when you replace the background it's not necessary to cut around the tires and recreate realistic shadows -- which is extremely hard to do. The background I used for this image is a shot from Great Smokies National Park. The car was photographed with diffused light, and the background had to exhibit the same kind of lighting for this to look real. I used the pen tool in Photoshop to precisely select the car. My settings for the original photo of the car were 1/80, f/16, 320 ISO, and I used a 24-105mm lens. Note the small aperture. This insured that the entire car would be tack sharp.