Digital Photography Composition of the Week

Vintage Mercedes Benz

From a car museum with countless photography
composition opportunities

INDEX - PREVIOUS COMPOSITION - NEXT COMPOSITION

Digital Photography Composition #3 - 22 April 2009 Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR @ 52mm, ISO 1600, 1/200s, f/8. Color image of a nearly black and white subject.

INDEX - PREVIOUS COMPOSITION - NEXT COMPOSITION

On a recent European business trip, a colleague suggested that we visit the Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart, Germany. He is an avid Mercedes fan, while I know little about the cars. Naturally, I was more interested in taking pictures.

It turned out to be a perfect combination - he spent lots of time looking at the cars from his car-affecianado point of view, giving me more than adequate time to take several hundred photographs of the history of Mercedes vehicles.

The musuem also provided the opportunity (requirement, really) to test out the Nikon D300's high ISO performance. The resulting noise isn't apparent in the photo above, since the image is reduced from 12 megapixels to about 150 kilopixels, about 1/100 of the original image area. Resizing an image smaller smooths out the noisy areas.

Below are two 100% size examples (150 x 150 pixels) that show the effect of high-ISO noise - the ISO setting was 1600. This is from the bottom of the louver.

The left version is from the original .jpg file and clearly shows some noise, although it is not too overwhelming. The D300 did pretty well at ISO 1600. While I prefer not to have this level of noise, it is comforting to know that I can get passable pictures in light this low.

The right version, taken from the full resolution version of the image at the top of this page, shows the file after some brightening, contrast adjustment, noise removal, and sharpening.

Photo Critique

	The dominant compositional aspect of this image is the directionality from bottom left to top right, moving your eye through the details of the louver and the progressively shorter chrome exhaust pipes. The exposure of a white and chrome car in a dark room created a very nearly black and white photograph, although you can still see traces of warmth from the incandescent lighting in the room. Had the room not been dark, you would have seen many stronger color reflections from both the white side panels and the chrome. (It is a coincidence that both this week's and last week's photograph are monochromatic. But, they achieve the effect in very different ways - the Oslo sculpture draws upon strong, direct sunlight, while the Mercedes relies on its dark surroundings. And, for one more example, look at this snow photo taken at midnight).
	From the exposure point of view, this has been a difficult photography composition. In post-processing, it was difficult to tune the correct amount of contrast. This is close, but it might tolerate even more contrast.
	Next time around, I might present this as purely black and white. I would also spend even more time perfecting the contrast. One other opportunity would be to get closer, focusing on the chrome more and bringing out the reflections on the corrugated exhaust pipes.