Shots of my new Miata

[astro]

Just picked up this beauty for $4600 :)
I have as much fun taking pictures of it as I do driving it.


Pics taken with the Pentax *ist DS and Zenitar 16mm F/2.8 Fisheye.
http://astroguy.org/miata1a.jpg
http://astroguy.org/miata4a.jpg
http://astroguy.org/miata6.jpg

[astro]

no love for miatas here? :(

[cdifoto]

Nice little car. Sounds like a right price too.

[H2290]

Nice car. I like the Miatas. Nicely priced, rear wheel drive and LIGHT.

There is no replacement for displacement. BULL. Lose some weight!

[Glenn Kennedy]

4,600... How old is it? It looks very clean !

[Esoterra]

Astro I like the car, and I really like the effects you used. mind telling us how you did it?

[astro]

Nice car. I like the Miatas. Nicely priced, rear wheel drive and LIGHT.

There is no replacement for displacement. BULL. Lose some weight!

Yup! The miata makes my daily commute feel like a theme park ride :) It's just so fun to drive.

[astro]

4,600... How old is it? It looks very clean !
Hey Glenn, It's a 99' with 105k miles. The catch is that it's salvaged. But my mazda specialist mechanic told me it runs good! ;)

[astro]

Astro I like the car, and I really like the effects you used. mind telling us how you did it?
Thanks a lot..

Here's a writeup I did when I posted these pics to another forum..

You basically need to look at the image, and determine why that image looks plain and mediocre. Then you can set yourself some goals to fix those problems with photoshop.
Like take this pic for example.. http://astroguy.org/miata5a.jpg
The main subject is dark in general, the bright green grass is distracting, the bright sky seems to be distracting also. A good image needs the subject to be the main focus of the picture. Distractions need to be minimalized. And then after you correct the distractions, you can create some effects to create a mood in the picture.

So here's a list of things I did

1. Used curves to brighten up image.

2. The sky is blown out, in result of the curves, so I use the history brush tool to undo the curves, but only on the sky.

3. I lasso'ed the sky, and I did a curves on it again, but this time to make it darker.

4. The green is very distracting in the image.. so to remedy this, I would select everything but the car(you can select the car, and inverse selection), then I would go to hue/saturation, and pick green from the drop down menu. Use the dropper tool to select the grass, and decrease the saturation to about 3/4th way to 0. You can do this to any other color you find is distracting.

5. I like to use the miniature effect. This is done by making your image look like a macro. Macro's have one distinctive look, which is a small DoF. Thus, you would apply this look to the image by making the DoF look really small. This is done by blurring the foreground and the background.

6. Darken anything that's distracting with the burn tool.

7. Lastly I made the white balance a bit cooler by using the color balance function in photoshop. To make it cooler, you would add a bit of blue and green on the midtones, then select shadows and add a bit of blue and cyan.

8. Stare at your new beautiful masterpiece

[aparmley]

Congrats on the new car.

Those images are outstanding - Framers! especially number 3!