The main road between civilization and Boulder often sports an informal parade of vintage vehicles. Usually when I snap a picture of a car I take care to blur the license, but my instinct is that such an effort misses the point of vanity plates. For that matter, I do not hold with street photography in the conventional sense because I consider that people do have a right to privacy in public places, even if the letter of the laws might disagree. But in this case my further instinct is that this fellow does not take to the open road with the intention of not being seen.
The original photograph with its flat overhead daylight cleans up impressively using auto levels and auto color correction in PhotoShop. The paint job shows up as a glossy maroon that would be the envy of any automobile showroom. Why take it further? I did not, actually. I threw things into reverse to return to the original and then sailed on to saturation adjustment and the channel mixer where, to my surprise, a candy apple red sports car jumped off the monitor at me. The driver and I both lost more than thirty years, catapulted back to the days of candy red sports cars (and, lamentably, to days of women sitting only and always in the passenger’s seat, pace Lichtenstein).
Given that the photo was taken at about 60 miles per hour, I cut myself a little slack about the cropping. Although the top and bottom edges work all right, things are a few degrees off at both sides
Below, using auto levels and auto color as the basis for going further:
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