For me it was a special Tour d’Elegance. With over 180 entrants for the tour there were a large number of priceless Ferrari, a half-dozen Maserati A6Gs, basically something for everyone. Add to this the Pebble Beach Weekend exotica cruising the streets and you have a really fantastic setting for a classic automobile lover. Everyone is in a great mood, enjoying the world’s finest automobiles gathered on the Monterey Peninsula and watching them drive down Pacific Coast Highway to Big Sur. What could be better?
I’ve shot the tour many times from many different vantage points and this year wanted to try something different. Paul and I scouted locations the day before and settled on a section of the Pacific Coast Highway with an embankment with eroding rivulets to be the background about 15-miles south of Carmel. The plan was that the morning marine layer would hold and I’d be shooting in God’s own light box. It did and I was. We were there an hour before the first participants drove through on their way south. During that time I got to drink coffee, do some test shots on local traffic and compare notes with a Knight-Ridder staff shooter that stopped to check out my spot before heading on down to the Bixby Bridge.
Anyway because of the optimum conditions we got some great images. I’m posting more than I usually put up because it was so hard to choose. Technically they are good pictures and how do you not include a ’57 Ferrari 625 TRC Scaglietti Spyder? Believe me there are hundreds of shots, many as good as these that are still on my hard drive, these are just my favorites.
All images were taken with Nikon D7000 using prime lenses: Nikkor NC 24mm 1:2.8 manual focus lens and AF Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8 D auto focus lens. All images taken in A-mode 400-ISO, f5.6, +.3 exposure compensation, no-post processing, only crop.