The Blue Beetle

At the tender age of 14, I made my last and favorite plastic model car, the "Blue Beetle", knowing that some day soon I'd have my own real hotrod. Alas, that day never came -- at least not yet. The Blue Beetle survived Hurricane Camille and quite a few years tucked away in a shoe box before being displayed in my study.

With the new G9 in hand and looking for a subject, the ol' Beetle caught my eye and I grabbed a few shots. Those shots were OK -- the G9 worked -- but the Beetle deserved more. A few days later with a bag of sand spread on a worktable, a diffuser made from a frosted light panel and two strobes gelled with CTO filters, the Blue Beetle is preserved for posterity.

The G9 settings were ISO 80, 1/250 sec, F8, shot in RAW mode. The image file was processed in Adobe Camera Raw, then Photoshop CS3 with no noise reduction. Sharpening was done using PK Sharpener. The Blue Beetle was then slightly cropped to fit into a 12x18 inch print and printed on an Epson 2200 printer on Innova F Type Gloss paper.

I like the result.