Photo: The Golden Highway

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The golden highway: International Speedway Boulevard in Daytona Beach, Florida, near the race track. I shot this through the windshield of the car from a few hundred feet away, with my lens at 135mm, the maximum telephoto. Since my camera has a 22.2×14.8mm (cropped) sensor, that’s the 35mm equivalent of 216mm.

The light around the cars struck me immediately. Shooting through a scratched windshield actually makes the scene more beautiful, because you have streaks of light and contrast around the highlights. The downside is that the photo is initially low-contrast. I cranked up the contrast with curves in Photoshop. Even though this is at ISO100, I managed to bring out quite a bit of grain with the editing. Also, I burned in the corners and shifted the colors more toward gold and red. I’m liking this photo quite a bit.

Don’t give up on the golden highway. It’s there, waiting for you to find it. Even if you have to fabricate it.

Canon Rebel XTi [2], EF 28-135mm [3], 1/1600, F5.6, 135mm, ISO100, 2008-11-05T16:54:51-05, 20081105-215451rxt

Download the high-res JPEG [4] or download the source image [5] (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License [6]. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp [7] and link here.