Thursday, September 21, 2023
There are days that I just want to go out and shoot, and then there are days when I want to shoot something specific. The former can be much easier because I can pick what I shoot based on the weather at hand. The latter is usually much more difficult because I get this uncontrollable urge to photograph a certain subject and I might not be able to wait for the weather to be exactly what I was hoping for. From experience, I know that if I wait too long to go out and shoot the subject, the mood will likely pass, and I’ll lose interest. That was certainly a risk with this subject because I’ve passed by and taken mental notes of the location for the last few years without ever really wanting to stop and pull the camera out. I’ve seen it a good half dozen times just this year alone but haven’t been moved to stop and check it out any closer.
As luck would have it, Toni and I were coming back from Hickory yesterday, where we had done some shopping, and we passed this same location twice for the day. On that second time, something clicked in my mind, and I started to really work on putting together some potential compositions with the car I was seeing. Now, I couldn’t make out much about the area because it was elevated a good deal from the street. I could see that there was a light-colored Ford coupe which looked to be a Fairlane or Galaxie. It was parked near what looked like a shed or maybe a barn. I had no idea what angles would work with the car, but for the first time in three years I started to get excited about the possibilities. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t shake the thought of that car and started to really put together a plan on returning to it.
I knew that it was under some trees which would make a cloudy day very helpful for the lighting end of things. I checked the forecast and there were clouds for the next few days. As I pulled up the cloud forecaster, it looked like the clouds were all going to be rather thin through the remainder of the week. My best chance would probably be the middle of the day on Thursday when about 70% cloud cover was expected. It was still not ideal, but if I didn’t go on Thursday, there was a good chance that it would be pushed off till next week. If that happened, history has told me that I will move onto other subjects and forget about this car until the next time I drive past. I needed to strike while the creative iron was hot.
I had an appointment for blood work Thursday morning, and I figured that when that was done, I could make my way South and check the car out. It would probably be a little early for the clouds, so I started to consider coming back home for a bit and waiting to see what the sky did. This would work out well and give me a chance to drive the Miata to the doctor’s appointment for a bit of fun.
That was what I did, and when I got to the appointment, I had to wait for a few minutes, so I was checking social media. I saw a post from Carolina Treasures, here in North Wilkesboro that caught my eye. I have been looking for a couple of props for an upcoming portrait shoot and there were two tall candle holders that I thought I could make work. They didn’t open until 10 which would help me pass some time before the clouds hit which would be a good thing.
I got home shortly after 8:30 and just chilled for a bit until one of my mentorship clients had a question about an edit they were doing. I went downstairs to the studio, and we did a quick virtual session as I helped them work through the issue. When that was done, I checked the weather, and the clouds were appearing to be holding off until later in the afternoon. Instead of getting good around noon, it was looking like as late as 3pm. That was still workable though, and I decided to hang out at the house for a bit longer. Shortly after noon, I checked the weather again and the clouds were still getting pushed further out. They were going to be there, but it was looking doubtful that they were going to block the sun like I was wanting. Because I needed to check on the props, I went ahead and loaded the camera in the truck and headed back into town to make sure that they didn’t get sold out from under me.
I was lucky that they were still there, but really unlucky at the price tag that was attached to them. It was more than I could justify for a prop, and I just started looking around the store. After going through all three levels, I found a ceramic column that I thought would work very nicely for the concept that I was working on for the set. I added a couple of baskets that would go with my vision and checked out for a tenth of the price of the candle holders that I had come for. That got me just about ready for the session and I was feeling pretty accomplished at that point. When I went outside to load the truck, I looked up at the sky. The clouds were starting to look good, and I figured that I might get lucky if I headed towards Taylorsville now.
The entire way to the Brushy Mountains was looking promising, but the minute that I crested the mountain, the sky was quite a bit less cloudy. I turned around because I felt that it just wasn’t going to work out with the weather. When I got to the other side, I started to feel guilty. I was still wanting to shoot this car, and there was no guarantee that anyone would even be home. I had come this far, I figured I owned it to myself to at least go and check it out and see if I could get permission to shoot it. If I were lucky, I would get some periods where the clouds would cover the sun and diffuse the light a bit. There was just this feeling in my gut that I needed to work with this car, and I felt some sense of urgency to that feeling.
I got turned back around and went back over the mountain once more. My destination wasn’t far beyond the mountain, and I started looking off to the left knowing that every time I pass this way, I could see the car sitting atop that hill. Sure enough, I could make it out in the shadows of the trees. The light was a bit brighter than I would have wanted, but there were some clouds overhead that might help me with the lighting. I didn’t even do my normal drive-by to consider the compositions and I just clicked on the turn signal and turned into the driveway. I passed a “No Trespassing” sign that I wondered would mean a cold reception when I knocked on the door. I was actually surprised to see somebody out in the yard as it was not normally that easy for me. I stopped at the top of the driveway and started walking towards her. There was actually a very pleasant conversation that developed once she confirmed that I was there about the car and assured me that it was not for sale. Once I let her know that I wasn’t interested in buying it, only photographing it, we got along great. She was happy to let me photograph it and told me that it was her grandmother’s car which made it very special in the family. I love hearing stories like this because it helps me to tell the story of the car as I am photographing it.
Now that I had permission to work the car, I parked the truck out of the way and grabbed my camera bag and tripod. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to be photographing this car and even though I was parked close, I didn’t want to keep going back and forth to the truck. This way, I would have everything close by. I sat everything out of the way and started to walk around the car to see what interested me. I loved that all the emblems and trim were in place. The patina was quite nice with minimal rust, but lots of character to the paint. It was obvious that the car had been here for a while as the dirt had coated the tires which only added to my enjoyment of the scene. There was a flower garden on the driver’s side that I didn’t want to both with, and it would have forced a less than fitting background for the car anyway. Further out on the driver’s side was the highway that I wanted to avoid, and to the rear of the car was the house and several other cars, my truck included. On the passenger side was an open shelter with different things inside of it which didn’t really help to tell the story of the Fairlane. To the front of the car was the edge of the property and the easier direction to work with.
The most dramatic angle for the car was from the front though, and that was what I started out with. I set the camera up really low to the ground so that the car would block some of the distractions behind it like a blue tarp. I set the angle so that the house was out of the frame to the left, and all I had was the car. I liked the composition and felt that it would work very well as a black and white. The only issue that I was having was that the sun was still a little too harsh. Ideally, I would have done this on a different day, but I was glad that I had picked now to come because I felt that this was when I needed to be here.
I shot about six frames as the clouds moved over the sun. It wasn’t looking quite like I wanted so I decided to move onto something else until the light simplified a bit more. It felt like a good time for an establishing photograph of the particular car, so I went to the rear quarter where all the emblems were located. I got the camera into position so that I had some nice diagonals to keep the composition interesting and I set the exposure so that I had plenty of detail in the highlights and shadows. I only shot a few of these as the shadows moved around the car. I didn’t feel any need to linger here, and since I had said that I would only be 30 minutes to an hour, I wanted to keep moving around the car so I didn’t hold her up from anything that she needed to do.
When I started to look for the next composition, I just backed up a bit to get a different perspective on the car which brought about the next composition quite nicely. From this angle, I was able to get the entire car framed by the tree overhead showing the clouds in the sky. Of course, I still had the all important emblems that helped to identify the car which I had just shot. I didn’t like the perspective of the car from the elevated position that I had shot the isolation from. There was a tree branch in the way and the angle didn’t show off the lines of the car. The fix was pretty easy, and I just dropped the camera down to the ground for a nice dog’s eye view. As I was fine tuning the composition, I realized that the sky was going to cause some issues with the exposure, so I went to the bag and pulled out a 3-stop soft edge ND Grad which was placed in the holder next to the Color Combo Polarizer which was already attached to the end of the 24-70mm lens which remained on the camera the whole time. The filters allowed me to get the exposure that I needed with the sky intensified a good bit to bring out the detail in the clouds.
The only real concern I had with this photo was the movement of the trees. There wasn’t much wind, but as close as I was to the tree limbs, any movement was going to blur the leaves. I just boosted the ISO a stop and that got me a shutter speed of 1/13 which was sufficient to freeze the slight motion of the limbs. I shot a few images of this composition as I took advantage of the clouds covering the sun and changing position in the background. It didn’t take long until I figured that I had what I needed from here.
The sun was still a little troublesome, so I decided to look for another isolation to shoot. While this car didn’t have the rust that I normally love in my isolations, all of the emblems and trim were present which made my job a bit easier to find compositions. I just looked around to find the more interesting bits of the car which I finally landed on. There was a simple 289 V8 emblem on the passenger side fender which I liked. There wasn’t enough interest right around that emblem to pull off a successful image, but if I opened up the composition to include the wheel and the areas of rust above the emblem there would be a nice balance to the scene and a visually interesting image.
I started to work out where the camera should be, and I started out wanting to work from an angle because I’ve learned here recently that my square-on approach is not always the best option. In this case though, I found out that shooting square to the car was the best angle because it kept the relationship between the emblem and the wheel correct, and since the wheel wasn’t turned, this allowed me to capture the round shapes of the tire, wheel, and hubcap, along with the arch of the fender. This composition was as much about shapes and textures as it was about the emblem. After I got things pretty much dialed in, I shot a few different exposures as I narrowed in on the final exposure and framing. When I was happy that I had what I needed here, I realized that I had been shooting at ISO200 after that last composition. This was not the end of the world by any stretch as there really isn’t much difference between 200 and 100. However, since nothing was moving here, why not go ahead and shoot the final composition at the cleanest native ISO since there were no negatives to that setting. That turned into my keeper, even though there was no visible difference between the ISO speeds.
When I stood up to stretch my legs, I looked down at the car and enjoyed the textures that I found around the door handle. This was to be my next composition. I spent some time looking around the door handle to find interesting elements to include in the photograph. There wasn’t much of anything around it that would work. I did like the lines of the rear pillar since this was a 2-door car, but even that didn’t really work for the composition. I kept extending the framework of my concept and ended up adding in the rear wheel which seemed to do the trick. I now had a diagonally opposed element to the handle that added another shape and brought in some more textures with the dirt. I could still have the lines of the quarter and rear pillar to complete the look which seemed to work.
I brought the camera back up to a higher altitude and started to frame up the shot as I had imagined it. It actually came together quite quickly, and I was able to shoot just a couple of frames here because nothing was moving, I was just waiting for the sun to hide a little bit. While I was shooting this composition, I realized just how quickly I had been moving through the different compositions. I was only getting a few exposures for each, and my frame count was staying really low. I was just hoping that I wasn’t rushing myself out of good images. I was really hoping for about three keepers from this car which I thought was reasonable considering the lighting that I was working with.
Even though the lighting wasn’t the best, I didn’t seem to be bothered at all by it. I was really enjoying my time with this car and felt that I didn’t need to be worried about whether the photos were working or not. Everything felt like it was happening as it was supposed to. I just kept going with the flow and capturing the photos that I felt might work. I didn’t linger at any of them because I did want to shoot a variety of shots with this car in a short amount of time. I just trusted that the fact that I have been very active here lately with the camera meant that I was working more instinctually rather than having to think through each composition on a detailed level. I felt like I was in the zone, and I just rolled with it. I tried not to overthink anything, and I put no pressure on myself to produce. If I had two or three by the end of this, I would be happy.
Feeling like I had what I needed from the passenger side composition, I moved over to the front driver’s side where I could get between the car and the flower garden and maybe get an isolation or two. When I got into position, I looked to see what areas of interest the car had on that side. The first thing that drew my attention was the area at the front pillar. Here I could see one of our old state inspection stickers which expired in June of ’05. That sticker was only mildly interesting to me, but the Slick 50 sticker on the vent window was certainly a period correct piece that shows that this car was still being taken care of when that inspection sticker was current. In addition to the stickers, there was also the rearview mirror which added yet another element, and I could see that the round shape helped to balance out the steering wheel. The chrome trim around all of the glass broke up the different elements as well which added to the visual appeal of the scene. The more I looked at this, the more I liked it. I went ahead and extended the tripod and got the angle right on this section of the car.
I really thought that this was going to be a harder composition to get than it really was. Everything just fell into place and there was nothing that I could see that needed to be improved on. I ended up making just two exposures here as the first one I saw a reflection of truck in the chrome as it went by. That was an easy fix as I just waited until I heard no traffic to trip the shutter release the second time. A quick review of the image told me that things were in good shape with this composition.
I really felt like I was rushing things at this point because I was only shooting a couple of frames on each composition at this point which wasn’t going to give me much to choose from when I got home. I know that my average hit rate is only 10%, and I was just a few images over 20 at this point. Based on my average, I was only going to have two keepers out of the bunch, but the optimistic part of me was thinking that I actually had three or four by this point which I was going to like. I wanted to have more options to choose from with each of these compositions, but I just didn’t see the need as I was working through the exposures. I was just going to have to trust myself and hope that I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve culled out all the bad images by just not shooting them in the first place.
When I had convinced myself that there was no need to wait at that last scene any longer, I moved back out and away from the flower garden. The sun was slightly more diffused than it had been at this point, and I thought that I might want to try that front quarter view once again since I felt that the shadow was just too deep in the first set. I went back to the same angle that I had shot previously and then walked backwards. I wanted to see what this looked like from the telephoto end of the lens. It actually looked pretty boring at 70mm, so I moved in closer and closer until things started to look better. I thought that it looked good when I got to 31mm which was pretty close to where I had shot it before. I got the camera low to the ground once again because there were now two folks conversing behind the car which I wanted to block with the car itself. The low angle did the trick, and I couldn’t see either of them or the blue tarp on the ground.
In an attempt to make the exposure a bit better, I added a 3-stop grad filter to the front of the lens which pulled the highlights in the sky down a good bit. I fired off several exposures here as I worked out what shutter speed would freeze the leaves. It turned out to be around 1/15 of a second which forced my ISO up to 400 which was still not too bad for this kind of light. After I shot five frames, the sun got dimmer and the shadows opened up quite a bit. I pulled out the grad filter so that the trees wouldn’t be overly dark in the final image and let the sky blow out just a tad knowing that I could recover that detail in post. I was also thinking that this was going to be a black and white image which would make a white sky less of a problem. I fired off two more exposures to make sure that I got the leaves still and that was the end of that.
I had shot 29 frames in just over 30 minutes. I had gotten everything that I thought I could get with the car and felt really good about the photographs. I was still thinking that four or five of them might turn out to be decent. Thinking that might be the case, I went over to let her know that I was headed out and reminded her about my policy of providing a free print to the property owner should they want one. I mentioned it to begin with, but at that point, I had no idea if anything would turn out. This time, I felt like there would be something to see on the website by the next day. This turned into another pleasant conversation and the topic of portrait photography came up. As it turns out, her daughter is wanting to have a photo shoot done with the Fairlane and the question was asked if that would be something that I could do. Well, it would absolutely be something that I would want to do. It would actually be a lot of fun, and I made sure that she had my information so that we could talk about that in more detail later on.
I’m thinking that if I had gone out there at a time when she was inside, there would not have been the opportunity for this kind of conversation and the topic of portrait work might not have been broached. I would love it if I managed to get a portrait shoot lined up due to doing my decay photography as I have done for years. The idea of blending the two genres is also exciting for me. Time will tell if anything comes from it, but I’m always open to new possibilities when it comes to photography.
I hope that you have enjoyed this trek and the photos that have resulted. As always, if any of these photos speak to you, please consider purchasing a print as that goes a long way toward helping me fund these treks. Not only are you helping me to be able to create more photographs, but you will also have a special photo to hang on your wall. Photographic art can be a fantastic conversation starter and it can also just be something that you stare at and get lost in from time to time. Each print is accompanied by a short description of how it came to be in story form. It is just my little gift to you when you select a print that you would like to see in person.
Also keep in mind that I offer mentorships in several different levels for those that are looking to improve with their own photography or even just on the editing end of things. To get things started, I just need to talk with you over the phone or a video chat for a free consultation. During this time, I will listen to what you want to accomplish and make sure that I can actually offer solutions for you. We will also have time to figure out if we are a good fit for the session or sessions. Let’s chat and see if a mentorship is right for you.
Until next time…
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