A Rust Safari (Part 1)

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

If I had a dollar for every time somebody suggests that I go to “Old Car City” in Georgia, I could retire as a decay photographer.  I’ll be the first to admit that Old Car City is a really neat place from what I’ve seen and there is a huge collection of old cars out there.  I’ve seen a lot of photographs from different photographers that have gone out there and spent an hour, or a day shooting these old cars.  I really am glad that it exists and is interesting to people.  That gives me hope for my own favorite form of art…the decay photography that I spend so much time doing.  So, why have I not been there yet?

Well, as I have mentioned before here in my Behind the Camera feature, I don’t necessarily like doing what everyone else is doing.  For me, part of the joy of decay photography is finding the subjects in a natural way.  There just isn’t any challenge in pulling up the GPS and getting directions to Old Car City.  I’m also not a big fan of paying an admission to capture my photos.  Both of those aspects tell me that I will just be one of the masses that has been there, done that, and got the picture.  When it comes to Old Car City, I tend to view it like a zoo.  If I want to go and see lots of animals in a controlled environment, I will head to Asheboro to visit the NC Zoo.  Sure, I will get to see the animals and learn about them, but there is something manufactured about the whole environment.  Despite the best efforts by the staff, there is nothing “natural” about the location.  It was built and has been maintained for a purpose.  Yes, we get to see Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, Oh my…but they are all in captivity in spaces designed to be viewed.  For those that really want to experience wildlife, the zoo is just not the destination of choice.  They will typically go on a safari to drive across hundreds of miles of tundra to find the animals in their natural habitat.

When it comes to my decay photography, I would much rather go on a safari and try to locate these subjects in their natural environments where they just happened to be left for one reason or another.  The places I go to are not destinations for photographers, and most of the locations that I shoot haven’t yet found themselves in front of a lens.  I hope that adds to the uniqueness of my work, but if nothing else, I’m not just snapping the same photos that everyone else has.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my thirst for the hunt here lately.  That one aspect of my work is both the most frustrating and most rewarding part of what I do.  I’ve spent hours driving around with nothing to show for it, and then the very next day will find a cornucopia of wonderful subjects just waiting to be photographed a mile away from home.  I’ve gone through dry spells and times when I could barely keep up with the editing of the new images coming in.  When it all boils down though, this type of photography is very much like hunting and fishing.  Going to a stocked pond where everyone fishes just isn’t quite the same as going to your favorite fishing hole that nobody else knows about.

This blog isn’t about hunting, or fishing, and I didn’t go to Old Car City.  This blog entry is about finding a fantastic location very organically which is how I love to work.  It kind of all started a couple of weeks ago when I finally got the chance to shoot the Buick that I had been after for so long.  If you take a minute to read through that last entry, you will see that just getting to that point took a lot of time and attempts, but it was totally worth it in the end.  I believe I mentioned in that last entry about talking to the owner about a Pontiac that he had stored at a local salvage yard.  He had made mention that the car was even better than the Buick for what I was looking for.  To his best recollection, the car was out in a field all alone which would make for a perfect setting for me to work with it.  Since my visit with him, I have been watching the weather and trying to figure out just when it would be best to go and shoot the Pontiac.

As I’ve said many times before, when it comes to asking permission, I don’t want to waste the ask when I’m not going to be able to take full advantage of the opportunity should it be granted.  I had no idea what the scene held for me, so I wanted to pick a time when the lighting was very soft and even which meant heavy clouds.  That would allow me to photograph the car from any direction and pretty much in any way.  As long as the clouds were low and how detail, I could even get a grand view of it that included the sky with these conditions.  The surprising thing was that with all the odd changes in temperatures over the last couple weeks, the sky has remained largely clear for the most part.  As luck would have it, our best cloudy day was in the middle of getting a new roof put on the house which made it difficult to get my mind around being creative.

It wasn’t until a week later that there was a full day of low and mid-level clouds forecasted with rain in the midafternoon.  This was also going to be on a weekday which was beneficial since I was going to have to access a business lot to get to the car.  My plan was to get out to the location around 11am when the clouds started to then and separate to the different layers so that I would have about four to five hours to work the yard because I was hoping to find some other subjects out there as well.  It has been a while since I’ve visited a junk yard for photos, and I remembered well that there are usually some pretty good subjects to be had if you look close enough.  Giving myself extra time would ensure that I wasn’t rushed through the experience.

When Tuesday morning rolled around, I looked at the weather and saw that the rain was coming in a bit earlier, potentially as early as 1pm.  That shifted my starting time a bit earlier and I ended up leaving around 9:30am.  The yard wasn’t too far away from home and I had seen it from the street several times before but had no idea that it was as big as it turned out to be.  I know that some of you are going to want to know where this location is, but since it is a small operation, I don’t want to cause a flock of photographers to line up requesting access.  I’m not being a gate keeper by doing this, I’m just respecting his property and showing my appreciation for allowing me the opportunity to spend some time with the cars.

The owner was quite nice and after I introduced myself and explained how I came to be there, he stopped what he was doing and walked me out to the overview of the yard to show me where the Pontiac was sitting.  The cars seemed to go on for days with several sections of the property over the ridges where I couldn’t see any further.  This was one of the most organized salvage yards I’ve ever seen with each car parked a suitable distance from the next with lots of room between rows.  It was easy for him to spot the Pontiac, and I had even laid eyes on it before he started to point.  It was a beautiful car with a light orange rust finish to it with much of the trim still present which was just how it was advertised to me a couple of weeks before.

As I was starting to ask about the possibility of walking through the rest of the property when I was done with the Pontiac, the owner volunteered some other locations of cars that might be of interest to me.  He seemed happy to have me explore and get whatever photos I wanted.  He had mentioned an old Biscayne as well as some ’50’s model trucks scattered around.  I could already feel the excitement building up with each car he told me about.  I was actually starting to wonder if I had allotted enough time to get it all done before the rain came in.  It was going to be tough, but I was up to the challenge.  He told me where I could safely park out of the way in the yard and sent me on my way.

Once I got parked, I grabbed the camera and walked back to the Pontiac near the front of the yard.  I was lucky that it was on the last row of cars in that section because there was nothing behind it.  It was parked between two later model cars, and behind another row of cars.  None of these surrounding cars did anything to add to the story that I was wanting to tell, so I had to focus on shooting from one of the front quarters.  On the driver’s side, I saw that the bulk of the yard was in view in the background, so I moved to the passenger side which had the wood line and a bit of open sky visible.  There was just enough room between the neighboring cars to get a composition that I liked.

I started out with my standard lens that pretty much stayed on for the rest of the day until the last hour or so when I swapped to my telephoto lens for a few final images.  I had my trusty Color Combo Polarizer attached to my 24-70mm lens but realized that the sky was a bit too bright in the composition that I had chosen.  That was an easy fix to deal with and only required a single Galen Rowell 3-stop soft edge ND Grad to take the bite out of the sky leaving the car and landscape perfectly exposed.

I shot just a handful of this composition because there wasn’t much changing in terms of lighting since the clouds were very uniform throughout the sky.  There was no wind, so I just had to work the slight variations on the composition before I was satisfied.  I did shoot both vertical and horizontal, but it was the latter that won out for the keeper of the bunch.  There was just enough of the sky to give a sense of scale to the image, and I had a tree in Spring colors situated in the background which matched quite nicely with the rust on the car.

Since this was the car that I had come out to capture, I wanted to spend some more time with it.  There really wasn’t much else for me to shoot as an overall composition since I only had a single angle that worked.  I knew that there would be several isolations that I could work as well which was what I moved to next.  Not too long ago, I had found a great composition with the chrome trim on a Chevrolet of this vintage and found the side where the rust colors were just right for the photo.  That happened to be the passenger side which had the best colors as well as the more interesting broken glass.  I set up the first shot vertically which I really liked, but after flipping to the horizontal, I found that the longer version showed more of the elegance of the shape which is why that became my keeper of this particular composition.

I would like to say that I was on a roll at this point and the photos were just streaming effortlessly, but that really wasn’t the case.  It had been a couple of weeks since I had done this type of photography and I could tell that I needed to get warmed up.  I wasn’t making a lot of exposures, and it seemed like it was taking me a long time to work through the compositions and get to the point where I was ready to press the button.  It was this one composition that kind of flipped that switch, and it was the first one that I really felt good about.  In all honesty, even though I had a really good situation for the overall photo, I wasn’t feeling all that excited about it and wasn’t sure if it would make it through the culling process.  This one, on the other hand I was pretty confident about.  That did more to fuel my creativity than anything else.  I was in a great spot and there was a lot here to shoot which almost intimidated me.  I much prefer to get used to a location before I start shooting it, but I didn’t think I had the time to explore with the rain coming in later in the day.  I was just going to have to take it as I came upon it which I can do…but only when my creativity is fully unleashed.  I wasn’t quite there yet.

I worked a few more compositions on the Pontiac before I landed on the rear quarter panel.  There was an interesting V8 emblem back there that I had not seen before.  I wanted to figure out a way to capture that before I moved onto something else.  All of the trim was still around the emblem, but the taillight was missing which just added to the mystery of the scene.  I saw this as kind of an abstract composition with the trim framing the emblem.  For those familiar with the Pontiac waterfall trim, this will be easy enough to recognize, but if you don’t recognize that one feature, you might find yourself searching for clues as to what this photo has captured.  At any rate, it was an interesting composition and I think it showed off the V8 emblem quite well.

I had been working this car for about 30 minutes at this point and decided that I had shot all that I wanted to at this point.  I was more interested in seeing what else was around to shoot.  I grabbed my camera and started to take a walk through all of the late model cars that were lined up broken and battered.  This was not unlike most junk yards I have been through in the past.  Most of the vehicles here were ones that the parts were still in high demand.  These were not the cars that I was interested in though.  I kept my eye out for the surface rust of age.  The first real rust that I saw was on a full-sized van near the trees which I worked my way over to hoping to find something good.  The van wasn’t all that interesting, but next to it was the remnants of a Chevy Nomad nosed into the trees.

This Nomad was in both good and bad shape.  It was missing its entire front clip which was propped against the side, yet the rust wasn’t all that bad on it.  There really wasn’t much there to photograph, but there was something about the way that the vegetation was overgrowing the car that interested me.  I started to look for a composition around that aspect because there were no emblems, and no visual anchors on the car to form a composition around.  What I landed on was the driver’s side taillight which was missing the lens and the bulb. The bare metal was a wonderful contrast to the reddened patina of the car and the Spring greenery contrasted even further.  I formed up a composition around that corner and found the right diagonal lines to make it work.

This was a very easy composition to get right and didn’t take more than four exposures to get it all dialed in and wait for the leaves to stop blowing in the breeze.  This was one of those silly shots that I make from time to time because something interested me, not because I saw an award-winning photo.  However, when I started the editing process on this one, the colors were amazing, and the composition really told a story.  The edit went very quick, and in the end, this happened to be one of my favorite photos from the day.  It is still a scene that interests me, but the execution of it actually excites me which I didn’t expect to happen.

I might have spent five minutes with the Nomad which seemed like a drop in the bucket.  Maybe I was getting into the groove and was going to start moving through this location quicker than I had started out.  Maybe I had just gotten lucky with that one.  I got put back in my place when I arrived at the next subject which was a matter of 50 feet from the Nomad.  I had seen this beautiful blue Chevelle parked right in the middle of all of the other cars in the area.  There was still room around it, but there was not a single angle where I could get an overall view of the car without including a bunch of extraneous elements to the composition.  The car was too good to pass up because of the colors which meant that I was going to have to work it a bit.

I looked at this car from every direction to try and get a line on a composition.  Nothing was going to work.  My best chance was from the rear of the car, but that was ruined by a GMC door laying on top of the caved in trunk of the car.  There were no lines to be had from the rear.  That meant that even though I could create a composition where the surrounding cars would vanish, the angle was wrong on the car.  I started back over from the beginning to try and get something worked out.  I played my game of asking “what do I like” and “what do I not like” which really helped matters.  I was able to dial myself into a small corner of the car.  In this corner, I had the colors of the car that I loved, one headlight which was in place with another that was missing.  There was the engine emblem on the fender and the Chevelle emblem on the upper body panel.  You could see enough of the grill to get the model year, and you could make out the general condition of the entire car from this corner.

In short, I had been spending a lot of time looking for ways to capture the entire car when the story I wanted to tell was right here in this small corner.  It also allowed me the ability to forego including the chrome bumper which was partially separated from the car leaving just the color tones that I wanted to capture.  I worked out a few variations of the composition just to make sure that I had the right balance for the image.  Again, there was no wind, and the lighting was very stable which meant that after three frames I was ready to move on.

I looked around the car for any other isolations that I might want to try but didn’t find anything else that interested me.  I really hated to let this car go because there was so much that I loved about it.  This was just one of those times when there wasn’t a shot to be had other than the one that I had found.  I’ll talk more about this concept in a couple of days with my next Behind the Camera, but essentially, I had exhausted my options for a meaningful composition with this amazing subject and it was time to move on to the next subject.  The next subject was nothing short of a gimme when it came to compositions which was a welcome change to how the day had been going.

About 75 feet further into the yard was this really nice Chevy sedan situated beside a little pond.  This car was all by itself with nothing around it, and it was even parked in a different direction than the other cars that were in this section of the yard.  It was almost as if it was waiting for me.  I didn’t’ have to really think about the composition much at all because I knew that I wanted the pond in the upper left corner and the car down in the lower right.  All that was left to figure out was what focal length to use and where to stand.  I fiddled with that until I had a workable composition that matched with what I had seen in my mind.  There was a bit of a breeze which caused the vegetation to move occasionally.  This meant that I made multiple exposures to ensure that I had one where everything was still.  As I was doing that I decided to move in a bit closer to make the car larger in the frame relative to the pond.  I liked this better, and I was able to get the large tree away from the roof of the car where it had been.  That was a minor detail, but I wanted this composition to be absolutely right since I had a feeling that I was looking at my favorite image of the day.

There are times when I come across a scene like this, and I just know how it is going to turn out.  I was truly excited about this one and knew that it was worth spending the time on to get absolutely right.  Each little change that I made, and each exposure I shot to keep the vegetation calm seemed like the best circumstance.  Looking through the nine frames I shot of this composition, I steadily improved on things up until frame number six and then the changes started to be counterproductive.  That is usually a good indicator that you have gotten the best of the best because usually after you achieve that, you keep trying with lesser degrees of success.  I wasn’t sure which of the nine was going to make it, but I was sure that I had a winner after this subject.  I was actually starting to feel pretty confident about the day which was a nice change of pace for me.  I took a quick look around at the car to see if there were any isolations that I might want to include, but there weren’t.

My next step was to look around to see what else I might want to shoot in this area.  There was still another Chevy that I hadn’t really messed with yet.  It was pretty much all rusted uniformly and it was surrounded by other vehicles in all directions.  The blue Chevelle was in one of the directions, but it didn’t have a part to play in this story thanks to the GMC door laying on the trunk.  As I was looking around the car to figure out what the best shot was going to be, I started to realize that an overall just wasn’t going to happen, and there wasn’t really much here for an isolation.  The only part that provided any interest to me was the front end with the big fenders and the mismatched headlights.  The grill trim was peeling away which added to the appeal.

It was that area that I chose to make my photo of.  I had to keep a close crop on this one because of the neighboring cars, and wanted to keep the frame tight on all sides since I was cropping the car at an odd place.  Had I given too much room on the remaining three sides, the photo would have looked very awkward without a balancing element which I didn’t have.  There were essentially two colors present here with the reddish/brown rust tones and the vibrant grass.  The colors worked well together, but I didn’t think that they told much of the story.  I shot this with the intention of going black and white which I did.  The variation in texture was greater than the variation in tone of the rust which showed up much better in black and white.  This gave extra interest to the car, and it just seemed to stand out as a stronger element when the color was removed.  I only needed to shoot two frames of this composition before I was satisfied that I had what I needed.  The only reason that I shot two was that I wanted a safety frame just in case I missed some motion in the grasses.

Once I was finished with the Chevy, I moved on to another section of the lot and found an old heavy duty Chevy truck with a Chevy sedan parked on the bed.  Both were very rusted and full of interest.  I knew that I wanted to do something with both of them individually as well as together, but there were a ton of issues that had to be dealt with.  On one side of the truck, almost touching, was a red full sized pickup, and on the other side was a motorcycle laying down with a bunch of other debris.  There were yellow shielded support cables for a power pole and a van filling the background on the other side.  I couldn’t get anything to work with the truck at all, so I came back to the car to see if I could shoot any isolations.

The points of interest for the car happened to be the trim on the side of the hood and the grill.  The Master Deluxe emblem was still affixed to the hood which was partially blocked by one of three metal donuts mounted to the trim.  I wasn’t sure what these were all about, but they did give another point of interest for the composition.  I like things in threes and here I had three elements that were in a repeating pattern along a line.  They helped to draw attention to the diagonal created by the fender, and in typical fashion, I also included the body line for the cowl like I would do with the pickups from the early 50’s.  What I liked about this was as much the textures that were present as the lines created by the body panels.  I felt that it was just interesting enough to make for a good photograph so I gave it a shot.  Well, I gave it three shots as I played with depth of field to get the right look for what I was after.

As I continued to look for compositions on the car, my attention moved to the front of that same fender where the missing headlight had left a rusted pedestal in close proximity to the grill that I found interesting.  I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to turn out, but I framed up a shot and made three slightly different exposures.  As with the one before, it was the textures that really captivated me, and in a big change from the expected, the missing headlight was also an element that I liked.  I’m sure that everyone knows by now that I love the headlights of these old cars and equate them to the eyes of a person sitting for a portrait.  This is usually the focal point for my isolations, but the absence of the light here added interest to the scene.  At least in my mind, I struggle to fill the void with an object, but that just makes me enjoy the surrounding details that much more.  It is hard to explain, but I hope that you have a similar reaction to this one.

At this point, I was starting to think that I was running out of subjects.  I was walking through the various offshoots of the property looking at the other cars sitting around.  They were all much too new for me to mess with and I was thinking that I was all but done with the day.  I managed to make it back to the truck with the Chevy on the rear and looked at it one more time without any new ideas for a composition.  I even started to feel a rain drop or two which made me think that this day was just about to wrap up.  It wouldn’t have been the end of the world by any means if it had been because I was pretty happy with a few of the photos that I had shot thus far.  The one of the Chevy in front of the pond was a standout in my mind, and I was really hoping that the Chevelle photo was going to turn out because I just loved the colors that were represented in that frame as well as the story that I managed to capture with such a small portion of the car.  Thinking back to the Pontiac that I had started with, I was pretty sure that isolation that I had shot of the C pillar trim was going to come out really nice.  There was a fair possibility that the overall shot that I had made of the car was going to be decent as well.  It had been a successful day with 48 frames shot.  Yep, I would have been fine to pack it in and head home…

But wait….

There’s still more to come.  I found a few more subjects on the way back to the truck and ended up spending a good bit more time out here before I left.  The rain held off for another couple of hours which was great.  Looking at the images, we are only at the midway point of the trek.  Not wanting to overburden you with an excruciatingly long entry, I have decided to break this up into two parts.  This is the logical intermission because this was where I thought I was going to be finishing up for the day.  When I am done with the second part, I’ll come back and add a link to this one so you can continue reading.  In the meantime, I invite you consider purchasing a print from today’s adventure.  There is truly no better way to enjoy a photograph than in a physical form.  There is just no comparison to holding a print in your hand and seeing it on your wall.  I know that the gallery store has been down for a couple of weeks, but I believe that everything is back up and running again.  This is where you can order the fast-moving sizes and print material.  These are the sizes that I stock and can print inhouse.  For larger prints, or specialty media, we would need to discuss a special order.  No matter what you choose, I’m sure that you will be impressed and happy with your purchase.

I’ll see you back here shortly with some more new images from the day.

Until then….