The title of this print that won a LexJet Sunset Award at the Florida PPA conference this past year likely caught your attention. Sometimes a title gives you an impression that’s different than your expectation before you actually see the image, which can boost the impact it makes.
It fits the image here, captured by Peter Burg, Burg Photographix, Maitland, Fla., but it also caught the judges by surprise when they saw it.
“It’s impact. You get a mental image from the title, and then, boom, the judges come around to it and while it might not be what’s expected, it still fits,” says Burg.
Burg is a car aficionado. “That’s my thing,” as he puts it. He captured this image in early morning light at the Amelia Island Concours D’Elegance car show.
“I usually photograph cars early in the morning with the light coming behind them and using the sky as an open reflector. If you wait too long to shoot cars you get too many specular highlights,” he explains. “I masked out the entire background after I captured the image, and then created the background. It had more of the appearance that it was shot in a studio, but the giveaway is the reflection of the trees. I do quite a bit of post-production, taking out unwanted glare and smoothing reflections.”
Burg adds that he went back and forth about whether or not to keep the reflection of the trees in the image, but liked the effect and kept the reflection. By the way, the headlights are actually that color and you may notice what appear to be horns made by the windshield frame.
The image was printed with a Canon iPF6100 on KODAK PROFESSSIONAL Inkjet Photo Paper, Luster Finish. Besides the quality of the paper, Burg chose the Kodak paper since he was aiming for his ninth Kodak Gallery Elite Award.
