Another day, another shot

I'm still working on my 50 shots with a 50mm lens.  Today started with a wonderful cloudless blue sky with the bonus of the moon just above the Institute's Dilworth Building.  This is a single shot image processed in Photomatix Pro in an attempt to get a bit more texture into the building and contrast with the moon.

I felt the image was a tad garish, so, because the other images in this post are monochrome, I took the HDR image into Lightroom.  Here I increased the clarity and decreased the saturation.  You can see the original image here.  There's a bit of a halo effect present in the image, but in some ways I quite like it as it seems to give an extra dimension to the image.

Later in the day a colleague arrived in his Swallow replica.  Gorgeous car.  Looks like a 1930's sports car yet, due to 21st century mechanicals performs rather better than the original!  I only had the 50mm lens, and due to where the car was parked was unable to the whole car into the shot.

The first shot is of the top of the radiator grill.  I've elected to go with a monochrome image for this shot really because of the "age" of the car and because the colourful reflections detract from the shapes and shadows monochrome seems to emphasise.  I think, of the shots I've taken today, this is my favourite.  The image is cropped slightly to get the "Swallow" badge into a powerful place in the image.  Please click on the image and view it large as I think it's worth it :-)

Next shot is of the spare wheel.  I suppose I was looking for details I could capture with my 50mm lens, but the colourful reflections seemed to spoil the effect.  These classic car components cry out for a monochrome treatment, so this third image has been desaturated also in Lightroom.