2026 Washington Auto Show

In 2025 we got to see Buick’s Wildcat EV, and this year brought the new concept car’s roots to the show in the form of the original 1985 futuristic testbed (and legendary Hot Wheels).

First unveiled in 1985, the Buick Wildcat concept was a sleek, forward-looking statement of where General Motors imagined American luxury performance could go: low, wide, unapologetically futuristic, and packed with then-cutting-edge digital instrumentation.  Seeing the original Wildcat on the auto show floor this year made for a striking time-warp moment, especially when viewed through the lens of last year’s Wildcat EV debut.  While the 1985 concept leaned into Bézier curves, aviation influence, and analog futurism, the modern EV reinterpretation carries that same experimental spirit forward with smooth surfaces, bold proportions, and an all-electric ethos.  Nearly four decades apart, both Wildcats serve the same purpose: less about production reality, and more about Buick staking a claim on what its version of the future looks like.

The Washington Auto Show sadly seems to shrink every year these days, and this year felt especially small, with fewer attendees due to the snowstorm still impacting the region, and large swaths of missing attendance - I remember the days when German manufacturers were on display, and luxury marquees such as Lexus, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Lincoln, Cadillac, and Jaguar were all highlights; this year, not even Nissan was included in the Japanese offerings - very disappointing annual downsizing.  Based on this, I was shocked Alfa Romeo and Land Rover both had small displays.
Exotics are always present in some capacity, but these are halo cars for the average attendee; I’m speaking about the missing makes attendees previously would have been able to experience the product.

After the show, a cool scene of chilly, ice covered DC:

2025 Washington Auto Show + HDR Commentary

Today’s post comes with a giant 🤓nerd-alert🤓, as I discuss technical details in an evolving World of imaging, applied to car geekery.

Like most years at the Washington Auto Show, I spent my time at 2025’s expo exploring the show floors with a camera, using the event to casually experiment and hone skills in between exploring the latest automotive offerings.  Practicing upcoming techniques in no-pressure situations is a great risk-free way to keep skills on the cutting edge.

Last year I gathered footage to practice with my HDR video editing workflow.  This year I did the same with some proper 120fps footage, and also edited all still images from the day in HDR, as HDR still formats are upcoming and I like always staying knowledgeable and prepared.

I’ve edited several personal photosets in HDR to practice and learn how the new formats accommodating expanded range of luminance is currently able to be edited and to ensure backward compatibility with SDR displays - for video, HDR is widely available and supported, with practically all new TVs and productions available in HDR formats.  Photos, surprisingly, however, are supporting HDR after video, with the format war still raging on; the predominant image format and paired colorspace has not been determined yet.

HEIF/HEIC seems to be the best choice, closely related to the HEVC video standard most end-user and web HDR video is deployed as: its high efficiency compression and support of gain maps and modern colorspaces like P3, however end-user support is still limited so it has not flourished except for Apple’s usage encouraging support to expand.  AVIF is a similar format that is promising, but even less widely supported than HEIC.  JPEG XL is not new, but is a much modernized expansion of the original staple JPEG format.  Then there is finally standard JPEG, which can be encoded with a gain map to enable HDR on HDR-compatible devices and applications, and is backwards compatible with SDR in the existing standard, however it is the least efficient of these filetypes, and gain maps are something of a tack-on making these files not always interpreted correctly by some applications.

Possibly a larger issue is how HDR stills can currently be edited.  One can edit a RAW file in HDR using the standard color and contrast edits we all know and love, however editing software may also offer SDR compatibility proofing and grading, which I’ve found is not able to exactly match the HDR grade - this is a critical shortcoming in terms of backward compatibility, and ensuring a consistent deliverable to end-users.  Furthermore, editing HDR images in Photoshop and maintaining the correct grading and luminance mapping is spotty, with use of Generative AI tools strangely returning SDR results in Photoshop while the same generative utilities used in Lightroom directly on a RAW file returning HDR results (or a result that is at least properly mapped to the image’s luminance - I must assume it is generating an SDR image and an HDR gain map to pair).

In short, despite HDR video being widely supported, support of HDR still images is still extremely limited, and is not currently ready for widespread use: compatibility is king, and SDR still images are still the standard one should be using for anything mission-critical, ie client deliverables.

NOTE: The images in this post are NOT HDR; they are SDR-only; my hosting provider currently does not support HDR filetypes, as it converts all uploaded media to standard SDR JPEGs for web efficiency - hopefully some day in the future HDR data will not be stripped, and modern filetypes will be supported.  These images were natively tone-mapped on export for viewing in SDR as close as possible to their HDR versions.

2008 Hummer H2

Winter isn’t generally the most friendly time of year to photograph your vehicle, but snow makes things pretty as long as you can keep it off your paint!

This excellent condition Hummer in the final year of the H2’s production run is going up for sale soon, and I captured an exhaustive set of photos for its sale on auction platforms like Bring A Trailer.  It’s been a very long time since I was last in a Hummer, and capturing this example reminded me of why people love them so much - very comfy in any seat, and spacious with room for all your stuff to spare.

Do not contact J. David Buerk - Photography for sale inquiries.

Kaiser Permanente: Building Support for Public Health

On March 29th, 2023, Kaiser Permanente underscored the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasizes the need to address gaps in the U.S. public health infrastructure. It introduced three multi-sector initiatives to improve public health.

1. Health Care Industry Coalition: Leading healthcare organizations, including AHIP, Alliance of Community Health Plans, American Hospital Association, American Medical Association, and Kaiser Permanente, are forming a coalition to enhance connectivity between public health agencies and the healthcare system. The focus includes building connectivity, ensuring emergency preparedness, establishing interoperable public health standards, and modernizing public health data systems.

2. Partnerships Between Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) and Public Health Agencies: The CDC Foundation, along with Kaiser Permanente and various CBOs, aims to optimize relationships between public health agencies and CBOs. This involves developing recommendations and roadmaps to strengthen partnerships, especially during public health emergencies.

3. Public Health Services Research Agenda: AcademyHealth, with support from Kaiser Permanente, will engage stakeholders to set a research agenda. The goal is to create a robust evidence base informing interventions, models, and partnerships to improve the public health system.

The overall goal is to reimagine and strengthen the public health system, involving various sectors in addressing urgent challenges identified during the pandemic.

Speakers included Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator, Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rick Pollack, President & CEO, American Hospital Association (AHA), Judy Monroe, President & CEO, CDC Foundation, among others.

Museum of Failure: Washington, DC Launch Party

I attended the Museum of Failure's launch party in September, 2023, anticipating an exciting experience, however, The Museum of Failure, located in a failed gym within a failed shopping mall, left me disappointed.  The layout was haphazard, and the artifacts, while featuring memorable failures, often took shortcuts, with some using replicas instead of authentic items.  Some of the captions had errors, including misplaced apostrophes and unexplained references.

One of my suggestions for improvement is to look to the Museum of Sex in Manhattan as a model for a more immersive experience.  Despite the drawbacks of the hastily assembled traveling exhibit, it showcased interesting products, such as a controversial sex doll rental service and an array of failed toys and ill-timed electronics.  Sections devoted to Donald Trump and Elon Musk were also present.  The food section included familiar brands and products, but I questioned the inclusion of Starbucks' Oleato, which has since expanded to nationwide availability.

The controversial inclusion of the Colgate Lasagna, a viral meme product that never actually existed, raised doubts about the museum's seriousness.  The Museum of Failure, in my opinion in order to be taken more seriously, needs to reassess their focus on accuracy rather than entertaining at the expense of facts.  Overall, it was a small, quirky collection with room for improvement, and I suggest the permanent location being built in Malaga, Spain should be larger and more consistently factual.