Automotive Type, Part Seven

My seventh post in my series on automotive badges takes a graphic turn. During the musclecar era, there was a shift from “speaking” of horsepower in chrome to shouting about it in vinyl—lots of it. The shift in material and attitude made for some seriously fun graphics with plenty of swagger and wit. There were even pop culture references, like Plymouth licensing of the Road Runner character from Warner Brothers, and Pontiac borrowing from a character on TV’s “Laugh In” for the special edition of its GTO.

If you’re interested in digging deeper into badge type design, check out writer and type expert Steven Coles’ excellent Tumblr page, Chromeography.

Interested in a print of one of my badge photos? Visit my store and place an order.

Top row, left to right: 1969 Plymouth Road Runner, 1969 Mercury Cyclone, 1969 Chevrolet Nova. Second row, left to right: 1969 AMC SC/Rambler, 1970 Dodge Super Bee, 1970 Ford Mustang. Third row, left to right: 1970 Pontiac GTO, 1970 Plymouth Road Runner, 1970 Plymouth ’Cuda. Bottom row, left to right: 1971 Plymouth Duster, 1971 Ford Mustang, 1973 Pontiac Trans Am.

Shooting Neon

Photography is all about capturing light, so shooting Neon signs should be easy, right? Well, not so much. When the light source is the subject, they way your eye sees the subject, and the way your camera sees it are very different. The light meter in your camera is essentially looking for mid-tones. When what you're shooting is so high contrast with lots of shadows, most of the time, the camera will blow out the neon tubes and render the shadows a grainy dark gray. The following is my approach. YMMV, depending on the look you're going for. 

Underexposing is what you want. It keeps the shadows nice and black, but holds the detail in the neon tubes. I stick with manual exposure and usually ignore the meter. My method started with a lot of trial and error, but after enough practice, I've narrowed my settings to an ISO of 400 or 800, a shutter speed range of 1/90 to 1/180, and an aperture of f4.5 to f8. I usually start with ISO 400 and 1/125 at f5.6, then adjust to taste. 

For post-processing, My goal is to hold the highlights of the neon tubes, and correctly represent the colors as I saw them. First off, I always shoot in Raw format, and process using the Photoshop Camera Raw module. If it's true neon (orange-red with yellow highlights), my goal is to hold the yellow highlights, and the detail of the surface directly behind the tubes. Adjustments to contrast, clarity, and color hue adjustments to reds and oranges, but go easy with the hues, or things get out of whack quickly. Lowering the highlights a bit can also help. These adjustments are to taste and can vary depending on the shot, so plan on doing a bit of tinkering, and save those settings once you get the results you want.