Tuesday, January 16, 2024
I told you I would be back with the second part of this trek. As you have read in part 1, this was another one of those outings that was supposed to be quick with only a photo or two. In that regard, I failed miserably. You have already seen nine of the new images for the day, and that concluded the location that I went out to photograph. I was ready to go home and get warm so that I could start editing the handful of photos that I was more than likely going to deem as keepers. of course, if that was the case, I would have finished up with that last blog entry and been able to move on to other tasks. Nope, things didn’t work out that way because I had a slight detour I wanted to take before I went home. Since it was just across the highway where I would be anyway, I figured it would do no harm.
What I am talking about is following up on a tip that I got from Dean during my New Year’s trek. In addition to providing me the contact information for the property that I had just photographed, he had added another location in the area that he thought I might like. I also had the contact information for that location as well but wasn’t really sure what to expect. I had been by here one other time while riding in the Miata, but hadn’t seen anything. Since I was in the truck which is a little easier to work back roads and gravel driveways, I wanted to scope it out again. I drove slowly by the house and looked on both sides of the road for any indication as to what would be hidden on the property but found no evidence of the rusty gold that I was searching for. Where I suspected that the cars were parked was up a hill with very limited viewing ability. I was really hoping to get an idea of what to expect before I bothered the owner with a phone call requesting permission to enter the property. It wasn’t appearing that I was going to manage to make that happen though.
While I was here, I might as well take the road out a little further to see where I might end up. I was sure that I had been down this way before, but I didn’t remember what was there. I also knew that things change over time and there might be something of interest down the road for me. If nothing else, I knew that I could slowly work my way towards home and scout out other locations as I was driving. Since I had the heat on and I could finally feel my face, I was feeling better about being out at this point.
My route ended up taking me into Courtney and then into Huntsville which I used to ride on my bicycle years ago. Not much looked familiar though, so I kept my eyes open for potential subjects that I could come back to later when I had more time and energy. Since I had gotten more photos that I had anticipated from the Dodges, I really wanted to get a start on the edits so I wouldn’t be up all night long working on them. Oh, the things we should do, and the things we end up doing.
As I was going through Huntsville, I spotted a familiar shape off on the side of the road. It was an old Honda Accord that appeared to be either a ’77 or a ’78. This is one of those cars that I have a soft spot in my heart for since my Dad had a ’78 Accord LX when I was growing up. I have a lot of great memories around that car, and I remember being fascinated with the manual transmission. The car I was looking at was not in great shape, but honestly it looked really good for its age. I slowed and checked it out for my own reasons, but then started to think about making a photograph of it. Granted, it wasn’t a muscle car, or an identifiable classic which I would usually photograph, but it did fit my criteria for a decay image.
It was kind of isolated between two houses and next to a driveway. There were distracting elements on either side of it, but from the driver’s side front quarter, I saw an angle where I could really get the car to stand out. There was some patina on the paint showing years of wear and tear. Surprisingly little rust was visible, and there were some dents. The pleasing shape of the car was all there though with all the trim and bits still attached. I got turned around and took a closer look at it as I evaluated how a photo would look. The car was silver in color which didn’t really jump out at me, and the lighting was kind of flat due to the overcast that had returned. It was still interesting to me though.
I turned around once more and slowed to look for a place to park. As I was doing that, the neighbor across the street came out and was walking across the yard. I figured that I had better not pull off on his shoulder because that would be a guaranteed conversation with someone that didn’t own the property I was wanting to shoot. The answer was to get turned around again and pull off on the side of the road where the car was parked. There was an area that had some trees between the road and the houses that looked like a good spot even if I was going to have to be partially in the road. There was very little traffic, so I figured it was a safe bet.
The car was right at the side of the road which meant that I could photograph it from the shoulder without an issue. With it being that close, I chose to get my 24-70mm lens, and the polarizer fitted to the camera before mounting it all to the tripod. I then went over to the car and started to frame up a composition. I could easily get the houses out of the frame by getting a tight crop on the car, but there was a barn that I had not seen which was down a small hill. The roof was visible behind the car. In order to deal with this issue, I went down into the ditch beside the road which allowed the camera to be right at ground level. This placed the roof of the barn below the car and effectively hid it from view. The angle also emphasized the sleek (for that time) body lines of the car.
Since there wasn’t much patina on the car, I really didn’t need to get the top surfaces in the photo. For me, the points of interest were the dual headlights, the dropped turn signals below the bumper, the hood ornament, and the lines of the side of the car. The low vantage point gave me all of that and more. The background consisted of nothing but trees which gave a beautiful contrasting texture to the scene and allowed me to make the generally overcast sky more visually interesting. All that was left was choosing what kind of depth of field that I wanted to use here.
I could have made everything tack sharp easy enough, but I felt that a certain amount of blur in the background would work great. Too much though, and I risked losing the texture that the trees offered. I went with a very moderate amount of softening to just make sure that the attention remained on the car and not the trees in the background. Looking at the colors, or lack of colors involved with this scene made me pretty sure that this was going to be a black and white photograph. I was so convinced in that, that I switched the camera over to that picture style to help me see things as they were going to appear.
I spent more time here than I thought I would and ended up shooting eight frames. There were two variations on the composition with a slight change in height. The majority of the exposures were to ensure that the weeds and grass were sufficiently frozen with the shutter speed. It was one of the earlier ones that ended up being the keeper here, but the following ones also worked, they were just safeties. After just three minutes of shooting, I was confident that I had what I needed to make a good photograph. I packed things back up and got in the truck to head home.
A Honda Accord is not my typical subject, but after I did the edit on this one, I really love how it turned out. There are just certain cars that have a timeless look to them, and I think that the front of that car fits that category. The profile and rear views are not nearly as interesting, but that front end was a design that Honda got right. Since this was the only example that I have seen that would be worthy of a photograph, I would have been crazy to bypass it. It might not appeal to anyone else out there, but this one speaks to me on a level that none of the others from the day ever will. Ultimately, that is the real motivator behind what I shoot. I have to have a connection with the subject no matter how small. When it is a strong connection, I feel that the photos turn out that much better.
On the ride home, which was about an hour or so, I kept thinking that I usually end up working three different locations on days that I do more than one. I don’t intend for it to happen, but it always turns out like that. I was on the highway now though, and the prospects of finding another target of opportunity were slim. I could have stopped at my favorite old Pontiac, but I really didn’t see anything all that different from other times that I had shot it which made it much less appealing. I wasn’t really pushing to get another location because I had started this day out to just get a single subject captured which I did in the second frame of the day. Everything beyond that point has been icing on the cake.
I just happily drove down the highway listening to my tunes and going back over the photos that I had shot so far. I was thinking that six of them would work out as keepers and I was planning on how long the edits would take and if I would be able to get the blog entry done before time to go to bed. It was getting doubtful that I would be able to get it all done, but that is what happens when I have a successful day with the camera.
Just before I got into North Wilkesboro, I recalled three green Fords that were parked at the edge of a parking lot I had spotted a few weeks ago. I’ve been by to look at them several times since, but there has always been a box truck parked right in front of them which severely limited my ability to get compositions. This location was visible from the highway, and I peeked over my shoulder as I passed by. The truck was now gone, and the three cars were in the open. They were all parked very close to each other, but they were at least in a position where I could photograph them. I didn’t have to think twice, I exited the highway and worked my way back to where they were parked.
They happened to be in a business lot that I figured would be open since it was still before 5pm. Well, none of the doors were open and I saw no signs of life. I drove over to the cars to look at them more closely. There was a boat of a Thunderbird nosed to the edge of the lot. That car did nothing at all for me. The next car was a Mustang which was backed to the edge of the lot. I didn’t like the color on the car, but the Mustang design is well known, and I was sure that I could do a lot with isolations on that one. The third car was what looked to be a Fairlane but turned out to be a Galaxie 500 which was even better. They were all puke green and I kind of figured that I would be leaning heavily towards black and white for these.
As I was convincing myself that it was worth taking some photos, I saw a golf cart coming down from the businesses further up the road. He didn’t seem to be phased by me and went into the building that was attached to this parking lot. I parked my truck and walked over to the building. Once I found the guy inside, I explained why I was there and what I was wanting to do. He had no problem but told me that it would be better to ask the business owner. I called him as he was in another building and had a quick conversation with him that resulted in the needed permission to get some photos on the property.
With that in hand, I went back to the truck and grabbed the camera. This was going to be quick, so I didn’t worry about the gloves or hand warmers this time which turned out to be a mistake. I chose to go with the 70-200mm lens since I knew that isolations were going to be the way to get these cars captured with them being so close together. I started off with the Galaxie because I saw a composition right off that centered around the flat tire and the fender emblem.
Since I was figuring that I was going to be shooting most of these in black and white, I had the camera switched over to that picture style to give me an idea of how things were going to look. I liked the contrast of textures between the metal and the pavement with a transitional area at the bottom of the fender blending the two textures. I used the side molding trim to bring the eyes into the frame from the left and through the emblem to the flat tire. It was all done diagonally due to the camera position, not an arbitrary tilting of the camera that is all the rage on Instagram these days. The camera was actually plumb with the horizon which made this look that much better in my opinion.
Things were getting started very well with this car, so I went around it looking for other points of interest that I could photograph. I found the driver’s side front quarter that had a nice bit of rust shining through the green paint around the trim fin on the top of the fender. I like how chrome and stainless contrast with rust, so this was working well all on its own. When I thought about the green and orange/red tones present, I saw a very nice color harmony happening as well. The composition was a simple one that I have used many times on Fairlanes and Galaxies recently which included the headlights and a portion of the grill. The carriage bolt on the bumper provided the last bit of the composition down in the lower left corner which helped to close it all in.
There wasn’t anything really special about this composition as I knew I had several others that were very similar. Because of that, after two rounds of culling, I chose not to edit it because I didn’t want to have yet another of this composition. It wasn’t until I was done with all the edits that I went back through the discards to see if I had underestimated any of them. This one stuck out to me as a strong composition with a very pleasing color harmony. Green has become an increasingly favorite color of mine recently, and while I wasn’t all that thrilled with the greens represented on these cars, it was something different from the blues, reds, and whites that I normally find.
With that in mind, I pulled in the version that had made it through two rounds of culling and started to edit it. The edit went rather easy and quick as I just had two colors to work with. The hint of blue in the bumper and silver trim was desaturated a bit to keep the attention on the green and the rust. The end result was a photo that I really liked, even if the composition has been shot many times before. For me, it was the mix of colors that made this one stand out from the crowd enough to add it to the keepers for the day. While I liked the way the green worked, I also considered that this color palette would work in spaces where my existing examples would not. Since I do strive to create meaningful wall art, I have to keep the options for different spaces open which this allows me to do.
Speaking of which, don’t forget that I offer all the photos that I shoot as prints. You can get standard sizes and media options directly from the website, or you can contact me for a special order should you want something bigger, or you want a different type of media like canvas or metal. There really is no better way to enjoy a photograph than in its intended form. There is just no control over digital media because not all monitors or devices are calibrated the same way. I go to great lengths to have my monitor calibrated to the camera, which is also calibrated to the printer. While you might see more or less pure blacks on your monitor, or possibly a different hue of green, when you get a print, you are ensured that the image you are seeing is exactly what I intended at the time I created it. Plus, I’ve never had a physical print fail to display like I have the digital versions. With a physical print, you can look at it every time you pass by without having to open an app, or scroll through a feed.
At this point, I was starting to get very cold as the wind was biting harder than it had previously. I was also in the shade, and the sun was going down. The temperature was below 30 at this point and the wind was bringing that number down even more. My hands were too cold to benefit from gloves at this point, and I didn’t want to fish the hand warmers back out again. I was pretty sure that I was going to be finishing up here pretty soon, but not before I gave the Mustang a quick look.
This was the car that I had been most excited about since most of the Mustangs that I come across are either restored, or so decayed that they don’t make good images. This one was just perfect, except for that color. As I walked around it, nothing was really jumping out at me. Sure, I could get the standard headlight photos, but where was the challenge in that? The front of the car was actually in really good shape which made the headlight photos rather boring which made me not even want to try doing them. The character points along the sides of the car were in equally as good a shape which inspired very little creativity. It wasn’t until I got to the rear of the car that I found the taillights. There was nothing particularly unique about these lights as they are the same ones on the back of every Mustang of this vintage. What I liked about them was the fact that the red and green really complimented each other, and the bumper had rust bleeding through the chrome which added that degree of decay that I was after.
I had the area that I wanted to capture, I just needed to figure out the composition that would work for it. I took the camera and started to look at the different angles that were available to me. The one that seemed to work the best was from the inside looking out. The issue was that the cars parked on either side were entering into the composition. The only way to avoid that was to elevate the camera which changed up the composition.
It took me a moment to see that as a positive though. With the extra height, which was well above eye level, I could see the shape of the individual lights which I really liked. The gentle body curve framed them nicely with the bumper and the elevation added a diagonal element to the composition that brought some visual drama to the scene. I was really liking this composition and fired off three different frames to make sure that I had the depth of field right. I was a little concerned about the ground beneath the car because that was just more green to add to the frame. In order to get the color balance right, I was going to have to really massage the tones, and with the grass blurred out, it would just become a colored texture without detail to confuse the scene.
When I started to edit this one, I didn’t hold out much hope for it, but I did edit it fairly early on just to see if it had the merit that I thought it did. The first thing that I did was look for a color profile that fit the scene. As it turned out, one of my favorite ones for late Summer worked perfectly because it added a very warn undertone to the grass as it pulled on the yellow color channel more than other profiles. The green of the car remained accurate, and the reds had some added pop to them. From there, I did an edit that included mostly global adjustments, but I then moved into a few local one just to really direct the eyes. The end result is a photo that I am very pleased with and kind of surprised at how well it turned out.
I’m glad that I took the time to get this photo because it was the only photo I shot of the Mustang. After having been all excited to find one in this condition, I was not expecting to find so little to photograph with it. The more I looked around it, the more boring the car became to me. I guess because you see them all over the place, photos of Mustang bits just kind of blend into the crowd. I always want more from my photos, and I was finding those interesting bits and pieces on the car next door to the Pony.
As I was finishing up looking at the Mustang, my attention once again landed on the Galaxie 500 emblem on the fender. I had already captured this as part of a larger composition which you have seen, but I was thinking that the emblem deserved some attention all its own. It is not the first time that I have photographed this emblem, but it was the first time doing so with a green car. The 500 portion of the badge had a slight golden hue to it which I planned on working with in the edit. Green and gold work very well together and with the spots of rust along the body surface, I saw a recipe for a fantastic color palette.
The composition was simple as I used the molding once again to point to the badge as I had before, but instead of the badge being a stop on the way to another element, I chose to end the route right there. I used the camera position to make sure that I had the right angles and that there was a bit of a diagonal element to the scene for some visual excitement. Depth of field was also a concern as I was shooting on the longer end of the lens which made the depth of field much shallower, especially when I was as close as I was. I think at 165mm I was positioned so close that I had the lens focused at the closest it was able which was only about halfway through the script. The f/22 aperture carried the depth of field the rest of the way.
The edit was the final element to this photo. As I mentioned, I did some color tweaking with the green and gold tones to bring them into the proper relationship. With a bit of dodging and burning I was able to really direct the eyes exactly where I wanted them be. The patina gave me a much better surface to work this out when compared to the last time I shot a similar composition with a restored Galaxie. I much prefer this one for the simplicity of the emblem along with the colors that are shown. it also helps that this is the proper side to shoot this composition on because of how the image reads. I had the light on my side for doing it this way fortunately.
I spent some more time looking at the Galaxie and the Mustang as I was starting to hurt from the cold. I could feel the temperature dropping quickly and my core temperature was doing the same. I really didn’t want to continue, but I was here and I had two great cars to work with. There was just nothing else that I felt would make a good photo here. I would have been happy to call it quits at this point, but again, I have a weakness when it comes to stopping once I get on a roll. Instead of packing it up, I went over to the Thunderbird and started to look for compositions there. Now, keep in mind that when I talked to the owner about the cars, he referred to them at “three beauts” to which I said the Thunderbird didn’t do anything for me, but the other two were right up my alley. I still maintain that the big bird held no interest for me at all, but then again….
It was the hubcaps that first caught my attention on this car. They were the fan style with a huge hub in the middle that had the Thunderbird name and logo. These were cheesy wheel covers, but I saw an opportunity to make a photo out of one of them. I just had to find one where the logo was straight with the ground. The rear left one fit that bill and I started to work on a composition that used the fan detail as radiating lines around the hub. I wished that the wheel was bigger, or the hub was smaller because there wasn’t much room at all to make a composition out of this. However, I saw all kinds of potential in this as a black and white photo. In fact, I switched the camera over to the black and white picture style so that I could really see how things were looking. It wasn’t that bad and I shot two frames before deciding that was all I could do with the hubcap.
It was more an experiment than anything else, but it made it through all phases of the culling and ended up getting edited. That process was very simple and basically included working the contrasts within the black and white color profile. I believe that this was the quickest of all the photos to edit and it is just interesting enough to be added into the collection of keepers from the day. I think that it will probably have the same future as another isolation that I shot of a Thunderbird many years ago which has turned out to be one of my more interesting compositions after I almost discarded it for its quirkiness. Over four years later, I still can’t bring myself to pull it from the portfolio. Maybe it is a matter of not photographing many Thunderbirds and the times that I do they really stand out for me. Whatever the case, I hope that this one wears on as well over the years.
Now that I had photographed a part of the Tunderbird, I decided it was worth walking around it one time to see if there was anything else worth capturing. I think that I walked a mile before I got to the front of the car without seeing anything but a sea of green. When I got to the front, there was the first bit of interest that I had seen on the car which was the grill. Now, by interest, I don’t mean that the design was beautiful, and it made the car look wonderful. Actually, the oversized center section of the grill looked right ugly to me with the large car behind it. This was not a good design element for the car as it was both too big and too small for the car. However, I saw it as a great opportunity for a photograph because of the huge distance between the nose and the inset portions of the grill. There was also the Thunderbird emblem right above the grill that I thought I would be able to include as well.
I started to figure out a composition but by this point, I was in pain. I had only been in the elements for about 20 minutes at this point, but that was enough for me. I could no longer feel the shutter button and had to look to see where it was to be able to place a finger on it to fire off the camera. I could barely rotate the polarizer, and really couldn’t tell if I was smudging the front element or not. The absence of fingerprints on the filter indicates that I was probably not touching the clear parts. Despite the difficulties I was having with fine motor skills, I was really liking how this composition was turning out.
There was little doubt in my mind that this was going to be a black and white photo since the only color present was the green hood at the top left of the composition. The rest of the frame was largely devoid of color which made the color that was there a distraction. The biggest creative decision that I had to make here was in terms of depth of field. I somehow managed to find the depth of field preview button and dialed in an aperture that I thought would work well which turned out to be f/5.6. That gave me good focus on the nose of the car with the secondary grill softened substantially. Just to take the concept one step further, I opened the lens up to f/2.8 and fired off a second exposure. In the camera, I liked that one better, but when I got it home my opinion changed.
The one with the moderate aperture worked out the best because it provided the best separation between the levels of the grill. The elevation of the camera did the rest to establish the depth needed in this photo. As I had figured, black and white was the way to go and it made for a very compelling photograph of a very uncompelling vehicle. While not my favorite from this location, it is right up there at the top which really surprised me. Remember, this was the car that held no interest for me when I arrived. Here I was two shots in with it and both of them proved to be rather interesting.
That was the last composition that I shot of the Thunderbird though, but not the last of the day. I went back to the Mustang and the Galaxie one last time to see if there was anything that I had missed. The only thing that I could come up with was the grill crest on the Galaxie. It was in good condition, and I have always liked the pattern on the grill. I got a simple shot set up which was straight on to the crest. I got the lines all lined up and fired off the shot realizing that I didn’t even pay attention to the upper portion of the composition which was a complete distraction to the photo. I switched over to a 16:9 aspect ratio and recomposed the photo for a second attempt. This one was not level, and I still wasn’t seeing a strong composition. It was at this point I realized that the cold was affecting my brain and I was having a hard time thinking through the creative process. That was my clue that it was time to get home.
Enter the next level of Hell for a photographer in the cold. This is the point where you have to break down your gear and put it away. I had been outside for less than 30 minutes by this point, but could no longer feel my hands. Just collapsing the legs on the tripod was a difficulty. While I could get the filter holder off of the lens, I wasn’t able to separate the polarizer from the mount. Getting the lens cap and body caps on were another difficulty which took much longer than it should have. Unable to get the filter removed, I just left the assembly sitting on the floor of the trunk to be broken apart when I got home. Even getting into the truck was difficult with my knees being more frozen than I had imagined. My day was done for sure, and I was ready to get home and get warm.
What had started out as a trek to get just one composition which I nailed right at the beginning of the day had ended up in shooting three locations with 70 photos captured. Of those 70, I ended up keeping 16 of them which were broken up into eight color and eight black and white edits. This was great since I am really trying to do more with black and white this year. I had spent about four hours out and about with two of those hours behind the camera. The edits took around three hours, and I spent another hour prepping them for the internet, with one more hour last night starting the first blog. I have been typing today for roughly five and a half hours to get to this point. As you can see, there was very little shooting time, but a lot of time and energy has been consumed to get us here. This is why I have introduced the “Donate” button that you see below. This same button appears at the bottom of the website and will continue to appear in the blogs for the foreseeable future.
Since the only way I get paid for these treks is by selling prints, I’m kind of under the gun to make those sales. I realize that in this financial climate purchasing a print might be outside of the budget for a luxury item. However, you might still want a way to support these treks and the photos that they produce. After a lot of soul searching, I have decided to allow for donations, or tips. Think about it as buying me a cup of coffee or maybe a sandwich. I don’t drink coffee, and according to Toni, I rarely eat, so this is a figurative description. The support that it will provide is anything but figurative. These donations will go a long way to helping offset the amount of time that I spend capturing, editing, and blogging about the treks. Of course, I would much rather you get a print for your money, but I get that the price might be a little out of the budget. It is worth noting that I have recently dropped the prices on my prints by a little bit to help offset the cost of inflation. Even though the prints are costing me more, I am trying to help my clients out because at the end of the day, I want my photos to live in a physical state hanging on the wall. As long as I make a little off of the purchase, I am happy enough.
Don’t forget that I have a workshop coming up in early April that deals with finding the artistic isolations that you have seen from me recently. This is a two-day workshop where I will be sharing a lot more of my tips and tricks when it comes to creating images like this. If you are even remotely interested in doing this kind of photography, I encourage you to get signed up for the workshop. The other workshop that I have scheduled for later in April is how to spot and photograph interesting scenes in mundane locations. This is your chance to see things through a creative eye and learn how to capture what excites you in a place that most wouldn’t even bother looking at. Both of these workshops are designed for any level of photographer but will greatly benefit those that are looking to elevate their creative eye. There are still spots available, but I have been getting a good bit of interest in them since releasing them.
I do appreciate you for joining me on this adventure. I’m thrilled with the number of photos that I have captured, but it has really been more work than I expected it to be. I hope that you have enjoyed the backstory behind the photos as well as the new additions to the collection here. Hopefully the next blog entry will be shorter with just a couple of new photos.
Until next time….
