Monday, January 5, 2026
OK, I get it….I talk a lot about “stories” related to the photos that I shoot. This trek is really no different, but there is a cool story that goes along with it, even if I haven’t been able to verify it completely. Before I get into that though, I do want to welcome in the New Year which is happening a little later than usual. I normally get out on the first day of the year in order to get some fresh images right at the start. This year, I wasn’t really feeling much like doing that and had some other things going on which took my attention. I think that I’m finally to the point where I am just going to treat photography as an art and not worry about scheduling and making sure that I’m constantly creating “content” since that is never what I set out to do with my photography. I might get more into that later, but for now, here we are a few days into the new year, and I have finally found something that I wanted to shoot.
To be fair, I had seen this car many years ago and had dismissed it. It was a bright blue Studebaker sitting in front of a house right off of the main road that I travel quite a bit. I’ve used the side street where this car is to get turned around from time to time in order to shoot a barn that is close by, but never really lingered on the car. The first problem that I saw with it was the fact that it was parked right next to a house which would make a full shot of the car very difficult. Second of all, the car was in very good shape with minimal rust and the paint pretty much intact. It was the right era for what I like to photograph, but it wasn’t showing its age. There were plenty of other subjects out there that I could shoot that fit the decay theme much better than this car, and that was what I did for years.
A few days ago, a friend of mine that will often send me tips about cars and barns that he sees in his travels, sent me a quick message with a picture of this Studebaker and a rough location where it was at. I didn’t recognize the car right off because my blinders had been on for quite a while. Seeing the photo did spark my interest because of the car, not so much the condition or the location. I immediately thought about what kinds of isolations that I could do with the car and kind of got interested in it.
When I pulled up the map and located it on street view, I then remembered seeing it before and the negative takeaways I had come up with. Those were all still very valid concerns, but it had been a while since I had been out with the camera. This was at least something that I could do close to the house, and it would be a bit of a challenge. I just needed the right kind of day weatherwise. We had been seeing our share of sunny days and that just wasn’t going to work for this one. I wanted some nice, soft, and even light for the maximum flexibility in how to shoot it. Looking ahead, the first cloudy day was looking to be Monday with low clouds in the morning giving way to a high overcast for the afternoon. It looked like I would have until about lunch to get something done before the light would start to fail. Of course, I also looked around the area to see where the clouds would be going in case things didn’t work out. It looked like East of home was going to see more clouds in the afternoon which gave me some options.
By the time Sunday night had rolled around, I had a gameplan. I was going to start off with the Studebaker and hope that I could get permission from the owner since I was going to need to be well within the property to get the photos made. I would then travel down to Lenoir in the hopes of securing permission from another property that I had been trying to get for several months now. If the light was still holding, I would try and make contact with a guy in Elkin who I have been trying to get in touch with about a bunch of old cars on his property. Coincidentally, the lead for that location came from the same friend that tipped me off about the Studebaker. I had left messages and even messaged through Facebook in an attempt to get a location on the property and permission to go there. I had heard nothing at all back from him, but since the weather was potentially looking good, I would try one last time while I was out with the camera.
Just in case none of the above worked, out, I had recently been out to one of my favorite places to shoot to talk with Dean about a car I was considering purchasing. While I was there, I happened to notice some extra decay on the big white firetruck that had prompted me to stop at this spot many years ago. Of course, the cars at his shop have all provided some really awesome chances for photos for me over the last few years. This got my mind working and even though I had the camera in the truck, the light wasn’t good enough to do any photography at the time. The thought stayed in my mind though, and I figured that since Yadkin County was going to have clouds longer in the day, that would give me a little bit of time to work the property if all else failed.
I did start the day off rather early and got my morning routine taken care of before heading out shortly after 8am. I would have preferred to have started a bit earlier, but the last thing I want to do is start knocking on doors before the sun really comes up. I want to be considerate to folks who can sleep in a bit, but I still wanted to get an early start in case the clouds broke sooner than expected. It was 9am when I pulled onto the street and found the car just as expected. It was still a pretty good example of an old car, but there was some tall grass that had grown up around it in the front which had turned brown with the change in the seasons. This was a great clue of decay and neglect which I knew I could incorporate into the photos. There were two people in the street when I pulled in, and they separated with one going back across the street and the other waiting close to the Studebaker.
I got turned around so that I could park on the correct side of the street while the guy was still standing there. Undoubtedly, he was wondering why this strange truck was driving down a short dead-end road and turning around. As I pulled onto the shoulder, he started to approach, so I got out quickly and met him. I went through the usual speech that I do when meeting property owners and asked if he was related to the house where the Studebaker was. It was his mother’s house, and he lived next door, but the car was his. From there, he was happy to let me take some photos, and he remained out with me while I got things set up and started working.
He told me a bit about the car and its history. From every indication, this car is pretty much a running and driving example, but he needs to do a little work on it like replace the generator and get a new grill. He will top it off with a fresh paint job and it will be ready to roll. Being able to talk with him allowed me to feel more comfortable with the lack of rust on the car. While rust is usually one of my favorite elements in this kind of photo, he shared a story about the blue that was on the car. He told me about how Studebaker had done two special colors for when Alaska and Hawaii were added to the United States. The blue that was on this car happened to be in honor of Alaska’s entry into the states. I do have a soft spot in my heart for Alaska, so this intrigued me quite a bit. It was a beautiful blue, but I had initially considered doing the photos in black and white since the blue just seemed to be too vibrant for what I was wanting. With that bit of history in mind, I was all in on the blue paint from that moment forward.
Now, when I got home later that day, I did some searching to see if I could verify the story, but I was unable to get anything concrete. I have no doubt that Ted was right about this as he knew quite a bit about Studebakers, and I imagine that in short order after publishing this blog, I will get the confirmation that I am looking for from someone that reads the entry. For now, I’m going on the fact that it is true, but even if not, it did make me really love the color of this car.
While I knew that doing an overall photo of the car was probably not going to be possible, I did want to get an establishing shot of the front of the car. It was one of the rare times that I have photographed a largely complete car with chrome that was all in good shape. The exception was the grill which was due to a cleaning mishap by a relative of Ted’s. The rust on the grill contrasted nicely with the paint and the other chrome which was a big part of the story. The tall grass added to that and the only way to really capture that aspect of the story was to get a decently inclusive composition of the car as a whole.
What I decided to do was to get a front half shot that focused on the front clip with just enough background to give it a bit of a story, but the dominant part of the frame was going to be the car. I had already loaded up the standard zoom which would give me the most flexibility in compositions as well as the ability to get in much closer than the telephoto lens would allow. It wasn’t the most inspired choice, but I was just getting the ball rolling in the new year and that sometimes calls for just going through the motions. If I was compelled to switch out lenses, I could do so relatively easily as the truck was parked close by. For the time being, I just concentrated on finding compositions that worked with the car and the environment.
The standard lens made it rather easy to get the shot that I was after of the front of the car. I kept the background to a minimum and while there were two different houses in the background, neither proved to be a distraction which was what I was wanting. I liked the little bit of perspective distortion that the lens provided in close like I was, but it wasn’t over the top. The splash of red on the hubcap completed the scene which was dominated by that cool blue….Alaskan blue I kept telling myself.
It was the red on that hubcap that inspired the next composition on this car. While the “S” wasn’t standing upright, I think that the intention of the design was clear. To make sure that the connection was made, I included the Studebaker badging on the fender as an opposing element to the photo. The angle that I chose was based on the fact that I wanted to have the two triangles framing the right corners of the photo for a bit of visual tension with the roundness of the wheel. The gentle slope of the fender arch had the same elegance as the script, and everything just came together so well for this shot. This was the kind of isolation that I had in mind when I started seriously considering capturing this car. It brought back memories of a blue Ford that I had shot a couple of years ago that was in similarly good condition.
With the moldings all in place along the side of the car, I saw yet another opportunity for a composition. There was a nice curve to the molding towards the back of the car right at the door handle. I have done plenty of compositions based around door handles, but I saw the chance to really set the molding off with it here. I started to work out the angles and found one that I liked a good bit. I was really wishing for some textures on the door either from rust or some patina, but the paint was just in too good a shape for that. I liked the composition, but there was too much negative space for me, and I was hoping that I would be able to work that negative space into a meaningful part of the composition.
As you can tell from the photo here, there was a good bit of processing to this image. The blue is a different shade, and the overall appearance of the photo is not directly linked to how the car looked. This was one of those times when I kind of opened up the creative doors a bit and allowed myself to play with the dodging and burning in Lightroom. In order to maximize the negative space, I darkened the whole image for some added drama and mystery. This created some reason for the negative space so that it wasn’t going to just be empty space which is a bad thing. With the entire image darkened, I came back and restored the exposure around the handle and even boosted the exposure on the handle a bit for some added contrast. The blue was altered to be deeper and a bit more sinister so that it would match the mood that was developing in the photo.
The end result was a photo that had tons of contrast and visual mystery that made it much more engaging than it had been straight out of the camera. The composition had been solid, but the flat light wasn’t doing me any favors. By doing the extensive dodging and burning, I brought back that visual interest that the lighting had let me down on. Clearly, this is not a naturally lit image, and it does look processed, but that was what I was going for. This is one of those times you are seeing what I saw in my mind, not necessarily what I saw through the camera. In that regard, I think that this works very well.
Another area of the car that I wanted to spend some time with was around the door mirror and the point where the door, fender, hood, and pillar all came together. The collection of lines and shapes has always provided some great compositional possibilities for me. I did have a harder time than normal with this concept though. There was a lot of time working through the geometry of where I needed the camera to be in order to get the correct relationship between the different shapes. There was also the matter of whether or not I was going to include the door molding which if I wasn’t careful would start to include the Studebaker badge on the fender. There was no way that I was going to be able to include that because it would have changed the scope of the photo too drastically.
After I had shot one frame that included the molding, I thought that the image was too complicated and decided that I needed to dial it back and include fewer elements for a more direct appearance. This proved even harder as I tried to make sure that nothing looked accidental along the edges or corners. I constantly shifted the camera around and changed angles and framing. I shot a few different variations of this and finally with the last one found what I thought that I could live with. It looked simple and effective on the back of the camera, and I really thought that was it.
When I got the images pulled into Lightroom and started to cull through them, I was happy to find that last shot was one that worked the best, but when I got to the first shot that I had done which included the molding, I kind of liked that one as well. By the time the last stage of the culling happened, it was between those two variations on the composition. What I had thought looked the best in the camera was not aging well. It was overly simplistic and seemed a bit closed in. It looked better on a smaller screen, but when looking on the monitor, the openness of the fuller composition won me over. This was the one that I was going to process and move forward with. That little bit of molding at the bottom left just framed the entire composition so well, and that detail hadn’t translated on the small LCD when I looked back at the image after I had shot it. We can add this one to the list of photos that I didn’t think would work in the camera but turned out very good when viewed on something larger. It is very similar to the comparison between digital and physical prints being made. Photos will always look better in print form than they do on a computer monitor, and that is the end purpose that all of my photos are shot for, though sadly, I don’t get to see nearly enough of them in print form. If there are any favorites of mine that you see, I would love to make a print just for you. It is a great way of showing your support for my art, and you get a beautiful piece of wall art for yourself.
The last composition that I worked with was yet another view of a door handle. I went from the opposite side this time for a completely different look to the composition. It suffered from many of the same issues as the other one had in terms of the empty space. By treating this one the same way in post as I had earlier, I was able to change that empty space back to negative space with a touch of mystery. Originally, I had figured that I would do this one in black and white and even tried to do that in the early stages of processing, but the end result was lackluster. It needed something and that something was the color and the shadows which were all brought out through the processing.
With that last frame, I had shot a total of eleven exposures for my time with the Studebaker. I had learned a lot about the car as well as the owner by this time and felt like it had been a great start to the day. The question was, where would the day take me after this? I still had three other places in mind, and the clouds were still looking good overhead. With that in mind, I bid Ted a good day and thanked him again for the opportunity to photograph his Alaskan Studebaker. It was now time to head off to Lenoir to see if I would be able to make contact with that property owner after maybe a dozen times of failing in that task.
The trip wasn’t bad at all, and it was nice to get a little heat as I had gotten a little chilled working with the Studebaker. About the time my bones got warm again, I was pulling into the driveway of the house next to the one that I wanted to shoot. I had determined from the satellite view that whoever mowed one of the yards, was mowing the other. Since the one house was vacant, I deducted that the owners would likely be in the house that I was pulling into.
There was an open shop along the side of the driveway that showed no signs of movement though the radio was playing as always was. I walked up to the front door and knocked. I heard the dogs like I always had but could see a TV on in the room which was not something I remember before. In short order, I could hear somebody coming to the door.
When she opened the door, I stepped back a little so as not so crowd her and introduced myself. I was able to confirm that the properties were linked, but she was not comfortable giving me permission because the vehicles were all her husband’s. I didn’t want to put her in an awkward position, so I didn’t press matters. I just gave her my card and asked that he call me when he gets a chance to discuss whether or not he would be comfortable with me photographing the cars.
With that, I turned and went back to the truck. I wasn’t upset because after several months, I had finally made contact with somebody and now the ball was in their hands. I was one for two so far in the day and the clouds were still looking good overhead. After I pulled out of the driveway, I searched for a parking lot to pull into so that I could call the guy in Elkin about the old cars. Hopefully, I would be able to get permission to access his property for a bit of photography, but so far, I had not been able to reach him.
Was this the day? Was I now headed to Elkin? You will have to wait until tomorrow to find out. I’m going to call this blog done and take a quick break before starting on the next portion of the day. Stay tuned to find out what happens next.
Until tomorrow….
