Thursday, February 15 – Sunday, February 18, 2024
OK, before you have a chance to say it, I know that I drove like 700 miles to only photograph a 1960 Ford Thunderbird. It sounds crazy, and I would totally agree with you under normal circumstances. I assure you that the plan was much more involved than just photographing a single subject. Let me bring you in from the beginning so that you might understand how this came to be. You might even realize just how lucky this one subject was for me.
It all started earlier this year when Toni and I had some business to attend to in Williamsburg, VA which is an area that neither of us have been before. That was around mid-January and it turned out to be necessary to return in the middle of the month of February as well. Since the first time was more an anniversary trip than anything, I left the camera at home so that I could dedicate all my time and energy to being with Toni. On this second trip, I wanted to bring my camera along with us in case anything jumped out at me. To be fair, there really wasn’t anything that I saw on the first trip that made me think about making any photos, but my mind wasn’t in that gear so I wasn’t really sure whether or not I would be able to find anything.
The rough plan was to try and get some night photos of the city areas that we would end up in for dinner each night. There were also clouds forecasted through the days which got me thinking about going out towards the coast to do some landscapes, or possibly to the marinas on the lakes to do some long exposure work. Of course, there were also some older areas that might produce some interesting industrial decay which I have been wanting to photograph here lately. Outside of that, it was a historical area with lots of historic displays. While I hadn’t really seen much that appealed to me the first time out, I had high hopes for some good photography for this return trip.
Our first evening there we went out for dinner, and I took the camera with us. After we ate, we went for some ice cream, and I was looking for interesting light patterns on the buildings. I found one subject close to Baskin Robbins, but upon further examination, there was too many distractions on the left side of the building which threw off any composition that I would want to try. I kept my eyes out on the way back to the hotel but didn’t see anything else. It was no problem since this was our first night. In fact, I was thinking that there might be some great photos around the hotel because it was an old building and since there were very few occupants there was a creepy vibe that I loved. It put me in the mood to photograph some of those aspects, but I was going to have to think on it for a while before I could come up with compositions to shoot.
The first morning we were there, we went down for the continental breakfast and while we were getting some food, I was looking outside at the pool. Of course, the pool was closed and hadn’t been cleaned in a while. I saw pine needles piled up around the furniture and it looked like the water was a tad green in the low light of the cloudy morning. The reflection of the chrome ladder by the depth markers interested me quite a bit. Had we not had an appointment in less than an hour, I would have gone up and got the camera and begged for access to the pool. Unfortunately, there was no time, so I was going to have to wait until we got done, or the following morning.
Well, the meeting went longer than we expected, and it ended up being done in the mid-afternoon. By this point, Toni and I were both really exhausted and hungry. We got back to the hotel and got situated to go for an early dinner and the camera came along with us. After we ate, I did a little looking, but eventually went back to the room with nothing in the bag. I wasn’t worried though as this was only the first day. I still had plenty of time to work something out, and the entirety of the following day was open for photography.
I spent some time looking at different places on Google Maps that might prove interesting. There were a lot of marinas that grabbed my attention for access to some old pilings which I love to photograph as well as possibly some boats and maybe even some small boat wrecks in the marshes. That was going to be my main focus for Saturday after I got my pool photo from the hotel. Things were looking up, I had a plan, and the weather was looking good for it with some good cloud cover at various altitudes.
When morning came, it was the wind that woke us up. It was whistling through the door to the balcony and the trees outside were swaying pretty heavily. The clouds looked good, but they weren’t nearly as thick as they had been the morning before. We went down to eat some breakfast and I looked outside at the pool. The light was completely different which changed the tone of the scene and things didn’t look nearly as neglected. Of course, there were quite a few more people around as well which changed the vibe of the entire hotel in my eyes. With the high winds causing ripples in the pool and lots of motion in the trees around it, I decided that it wasn’t worth trying to do anything with it just yet. In fact, the gale force winds were kind of putting a damper on my plans for the day photographically. It is very difficult to photograph anything in winds that are 20-30mph. With those winds being quite cold as well, that took the last bit of oomph out of my wanting to go out with the camera.
We spent most of the day in the room just chilling because neither of us cared to go out in the weather. Around mid-afternoon, the winds started to calm a little bit and we decided to head out and do some shopping before stopping for an early dinner. On the way out, I grabbed my camera despite the fact that by this point I was thinking that I wasn’t going to get any photographs shot at all. The wind was going to be too difficult to work with in any scene with water. That pretty much eliminated the marinas, and the coast was certainly out of the question.
The shopping took a little bit of time and when we left, it was still a bit too early to stop for dinner, so I went driving around to see what we could find. We ended up stopping at a Nissan dealership to check out the new Z which they had in the showroom. It was nice, but nothing to write home about. When we left from there, I drove a bit further down the street as we were getting into the county areas which always appeal to me a little more. There was still nothing that I wanted to photograph through that area, and it was starting to get late. I decided to pull the plug on the photo exploration and call this trek done for. We got back on course to the restaurant that we were wanting to eat at for the second time once again while visiting Williamsburg.
As I was driving down the road, I wasn’t even really looking for anything, and we were about two miles from the restaurant. Something caught my eye on the right side in a parking lot. It wasn’t the new Ford Bronco that was parked there, but rather a baby blue Ford Thunderbird that looked to be an early ’60’s vintage. As we got closer, I didn’t think that it would be anything that I would want to photograph because it looked to be in too good a shape. However, as we passed it, I could tell that it was in rougher shape than I had thought. The paint had a nice patina on it, and there was probably a bit of rust here and there. It wasn’t much, and the setting was terrible, but it was the only thing that I had found that interested me on this search for a photograph. We got turned around and I tried to find the car again which was a little harder from this side. I did find it once again and pulled into the parking lot where I slowly drove by and looked at the car critically. It was still in better shape than I would have preferred but, there was something about it that I really liked.
The chrome trim was all in place, and I liked how the script on the door looked with the shapes molded into the panels. I actually saw a composition that I wanted to shoot. Since the car was a very light blue, I was pretty sure that I was going to be doing this in black and white which fit in with my goal for this year. I made sure that Toni would be OK waiting a few more minutes before we ate which she was. I got out and grabbed the camera with the long lens. There was no sense in trying to get a lot of area on this car, and certainly no reason to get a shot that established the setting. The telephoto would be great for getting those isolations that I was going to be after with this one.
The first composition that I went for was the one on the passenger door that I had spotted from the truck. I wanted to get the scalloped body line as well as the bulge that the script was placed on. As I played with the composition and the framing, I found that the door gap made for a very interesting line that worked with the other lines in the frame and I liked the keyhole cover for a bit of detail in some negative space to balance things out. I had the shot framed up in a minute or less and shot the first photo after being in Williamsburg for three days. I saw nothing that needed to be altered with the composition and in the interest of time, I moved onto the next idea which was a similar composition but shot from an angle further forward to show the terminal end of the bulge of the door. I liked it in the image review with the dynamic diagonal element, but the joy faded when I got that image home on the computer. It was that first shot which had been framed so simply that nailed everything I wanted out of this door.
Just to make sure that I had plenty of options when I got the photos home, I went to the other side to shoot the same compositions which would read quite a bit differently because of the way the shapes would be pointing. They looked pretty good in the image review but again these didn’t rise to the same level as that first composition that I had shot which turned into the first keeper of the trip. Not wanting to end this with some simple side compositions, I started to look around the car for other points of interest.
I’ve always been drawn to the rear of these Thunderbirds with their triple lights and recessed center section. This was what I was wanting to work on next and found the right angle that I wanted to work with, but before I could get the camera trained on the interesting parts, I heard a truck pull up behind me. I turned as it was slowing to hear the driver ask if I liked the car. I said that I sure did, and he let me know that it was his. This sparked a conversation about the car’s history and how he had owned it since his senior year in high school after he had bought it from his uncle for a dollar. We talked a bit about his plans for the car and how it had arrived in this shape. He also confirmed that this was a 1960 model which I wasn’t sure about. I was given his blessing to photograph the car all I wanted. We exchanged business cards and I let him know that I would be happy to share the photos if any of them turned out decent.
When the conversation was over, I went back to framing up the composition that I had started on. It wasn’t coming together quite as well as I had hoped, but I worked several variations out in the hopes that one of them would turn out decently. One of them did which focused on the three lights more than anything else. The composition was accentuated by using a 16:9 aspect ratio to bring more of the attention to the lights rather than the surrounding bits of trim which were just there to establish some framing.
When I had shot this, I was thinking black and white, but when I got it into the computer, I felt that it needed some color since there were complimentary cool and warm tones present thanks to the red lights and blue paint. I didn’t want to go overboard with the saturation levels or even the intensity of the hues, so I pulled out my favorite color profile that I like to use in this situation. This was going to keep the colors really desaturated and add a cool color cast to the scene by reducing the impact of colors other than the blues. This worked out quite nicely and allowed me to build up the colors as I wanted to. The end result was true to what drew me into this scene in the first place, so it was promoted to a keeper photo rather than the test that it had started out to be.
By this point, I was starting to feel pretty good about how things were going with this car. I mean, I had finally found something to photograph, and it was a car that I don’t get to see all that often. It would have been great had it been in a location that I could have done some overall shots, but it was starting to offer up some really nice isolations as I began to understand this car on a deeper level. What I was shooting had nothing at all to do with being in Williamsburg, but it was really falling into place with what I have learned is the fine art of decay photography. Speaking of which, I might as well mention that I am offering a workshop in early April about doing this very type of photography. If you have a hard time seeing the compositions that will allow you to pick out the details, this is the workshop for you. This little skill had positively saved this trek and allowed me to capture some meaningful images even though the subject was sitting beside a very busy street and next to a brand-new vehicle that did nothing at all to help tell the story. The story that I started to tell was that of the details which identified the car without giving it away if that makes sense.
One of those aspects that I wanted to pay attention to, was the hood scoop, which was not all that special, but I felt that I needed to give it some attention anyway. As I started to move the viewfinder around the hood, I started to see a really cool abstract quality building up. The patina of the paint seemed to help frame the leading portion of the scoop and I knew that I could pull more of that out in post if I framed it correctly. I extended the tripod and started to get the right framing which would place the scoop in an interesting position within the frame while the patina filled up the negative space without overpowering the details of the scoop. It was a balancing act that required a few exposures because I would not truly know how it looked until I got it home on the larger screen.
I’m really glad that I shot as many as I did, because it was the last of four variations that turned into the photo that I put through an edit. There was no question that this one needed to be a black and white image because that would allow me to really bring out the framing aspect of the patina while keeping the attention on the shape of the scoop. Any color would have been a distraction for sure, and the end result showed me just how effective my choices had been. I really loved how it turned out and I felt that everything from the grungy look to the shapes all worked together magically within the frame. It really was one of those photos that caused me to catch my breath for a bit. I don’t know how it will look after I’ve had some time to live with it, but for right now, it is one of the favorite photos I shot so far this year.
With the concept of the hood still fresh in my mind, I went back to the rear of the car where the Thunderbird emblem was located between the bulges that housed the taillight assemblies. I knew that I wanted to do something with this section but had not quite figured it out just yet. I think that my mistake had been to focus on the side angle rather than just going right into it. I moved the camera directly behind the car and framed the composition with the lower edge right at the edge of the body line to get as much breathing room as possible on the emblem. I opened up the sides until I had the humps framing the emblem and I let the top of the frame happen to end wherever it would.
My expectation was to give this photograph the same treatment that I was going to give the hood. I even started this one off as a black and white, but the deep shadow of the patina caused some issues with the balance of the image in black and white. There needed to be something else in the negative space and I felt that color would do the trick. I didn’t need a lot of color, just enough to set the mood and to give the negative space purpose. To make sure that the negative space remained balanced with the main subject, I changed the aspect ratio to 16:9 which did the trick to keep the balance just right. The color was set with my favorite desaturated color profile once again which I think was perfect for this one. Just like the hood scoop, there is an undeniable grunge quality to this one which capitalized on what texture the car had to offer on the paint.
I don’t think that this one is as effective as the hood scoop, but I think that it does a great job at telling a similar, yet specific story about this car. One aspect that I really liked about it which was just pure random luck is how the keyhole is placed within the emblem. This is not something that I have ever taken notice of before, but in this composition, it acts the part of an eye looking dead at the viewer. This forces the attention right on the emblem which is where I wanted it to go. I don’t think that this composition would have been nearly as effective without the keyhole, or if it was placed somewhere other than in the emblem as it was. Good job Ford!
I might have been starting to feel a little cocky at this point because I moved to the large rear pillar on the driver’s side to try and make a composition with that bird emblem. I ended up framing up a composition that included that, the door handle, and the steering wheel as three main elements. The idea was solid, and I thought that I was onto something. In fact, I shot three variations of this hoping that one would work out well. I had one of them that made it through the first cull, but never made it through the second one. There was just too much going on and I felt that even with a 3:2 aspect ratio, it felt too square. I had plenty of other compositions that I really liked to spend much time on this one to see if maybe changing the ratio would help. I just deleted it and moved on to the others.
I had reached the point where I felt that I had photographed all that I needed to with this car. I took one last look around before packing it all up and heading off to dinner. What I found was a simple rearview mirror on the driver’s side fender that seemed to be rather prominent. Here recently, I have been having some great luck with compositions shot from this area of the car using the lines of the body panels to establish the composition. As I looked, I liked how the mirror fit into this space, and could use the windshield as another shape within the frame.
I moved the camera around until I found the angle that I liked, and I extended the tripod legs to lock in that angle. I fine-tuned things and landed on a composition that I liked. I shot two different exposures here because of the passing traffic reflecting in the surfaces. While I was looking at it closely, I didn’t like how the mirror was cutting through one of the dominant curves in the body panels. I adjusted the height of the camera about an inch and that fixed that problem, and I shot an additional two frame to make sure that I didn’t have any reflections in the chrome or glass. By this point, it was getting to be so much of a problem that I had to bump the ISO to 400 to get a shutter speed of less than half a second which was the longest I dared to keep the shutter open. It worked because the last image of the day was devoid of all reflections and looked beautiful.
This twenty-second frame was another one that I felt was one of my best of the year so far with how the shapes all worked together. The black and white edit really floored me, and I thought that it looked better than I had expected it to. I really liked that the strongest reflection was that of the mirror in the windshield glass. My eyes kept going between the two main elements with the lines creating the structure within the frame. I was really impressed with how it turned out which has caused me to put this one along with the hood scoop in the folder for my most significant images of the year. We will have to wait for about 10 more months before we know if either of these make the final cut.
For now, the impressive part is that out of 22 frames, I have five keepers and what I felt were ten relatively strong images out of the total to begin with. This was on a trek that had already gone quite a while without any success. It was a chance sighting in a parking lot that brought me to a quick 25-minute photo session that ultimately resulted in the only time the camera was pulled out of the bag for the entire time that we were there.
Normally, I think I would have been upset by this kind of difficulty, but as I had considered everything throughout the long weekend, I had found myself in a place that really didn’t excite me photographically. This will always make it very difficult to find things to photograph, especially if you are trying to focus on aspects that are unique to the area. I just didn’t click with the area, but when I found a subject that I was familiar with, I jumped into action and really came away with some solid photographs with only a few minutes spent on the process. Even the edits went quickly as did the blog entry. I think at this point, I have spent four hours working on the edits, and the blog entry. This has to be a record for me in terms of efficiency when there are five photos to work through and talk about.
I do hope that you have enjoyed this trek as well as the photos that resulted. Don’t forget that I do offer prints of all of my photographs if any of them speak to you. There is just no better way to enjoy photography than in a physical form. If you are interested in capturing this kind of photograph for yourself, check out the Art of Decay Workshop this April. If you happen to miss that, I do offer mentorships that can be customized to what you want to work on which could include this very type of photography. Let’s talk about options and find out what works best for you and your budget.
Until next time….
