Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Yes, I know we are not quite yet in Summer. I’ve missed it by a few days, but with temperatures in the mid 80’s, I’m not going to split hairs. Also, for those who are wondering, I did get the yard mowed yesterday and it really needed it after all the rain we have been having. That brings me to today and what probably should have been a day at home washing the truck. Well, you know how I am about those kinds of chores after the whole mowing incident on Monday. To be fair though, we are looking at good rain chances for most of the coming week and I figured since the truck isn’t that bad, I might be better off leaving it dirty so I wouldn’t have any issues taking it out during the stormy weather to maybe get some landscape photos now that Doughton Park is opened again. That left me with a fairly open day today and the weather was looking great for those non-photographer types that like warm temperatures and clear skies. We all know that I live for a nice cloudy day with cooler temperatures when it comes to photography.
However, I do have a soft spot in my heart for days like this when I can drive the Miata the way it was intended to be driven…topless. Now, I will drive this car in the winter with the top down as well, but I have to bundle up like Ralphie’s little brother in A Christmas Story to handle the cold wind, even at 50 degrees. It is much better at 80 degrees but starts getting a little too warm at 90 which made today a great day to get the car out for a drive. A week ago, I finished up the detail on it, which was two fun filled days of wax on, wax off. Since it was still pretty much spotless, I considered taking it out for a little photo shoot but really couldn’t think of anywhere to go with it. I’ve pretty much exhausted the areas around here that would fit the personality of the car and the areas that had the right colors to compliment the deep red paint on the car.
While I was getting my morning stuff done, I was considering some options where I could drive the car. One of the options that made the most sense was to head out to Doughton Park to make sure that it was accessible, as they say, by US 21. I’m still working on a workshop possibility out there in the near future and need to check things out to make sure that everything survived the hurricane so that I can be sure that there is enough subject matter there to fill a workshop. Of course, the most direct way to the park was closed still which meant that I was going to have to go through Elkin to get there. That is a great little drive in the Miata, and I had considered doing a photo walk through town which could give me something to do once I got out there.
The more I thought about it, the more ideas came to me as far as things that I could shoot in the bright sun since clouds were going to be at a premium for the day. I wasn’t really looking forward to walking around downtown in the heat, but there was one store at the corner that had a couple of red convertibles on display behind some large picture windows. I had a passing thought of parking my car on the street under one of those windows and getting one of the cars framed in the window. It would be kind of like a past and present kind of shot, but I wasn’t sure if there was parking on the street where I would need it.
From there, I could go up to Doughton and possibly get a few more photos with the windy road going into the picnic area with the fresh greens of the trees. There was also a nice split rail fence that I might be able to use for a bit of interest as well. It would be a great little ride to take and the possibility of getting a few photos was the icing on the cake. I went ahead and got ready to head out which meant shoehorning my camera bag into the trunk of the car. It just barely fits the opening but sits very nicely in the recessed portion of the trunk. The tripod had to ride on top of the bag held in place by the straps to keep it from flopping around. Either my camera bag is too big, or the car is too small. I’m not quite sure which is more accurate, but I managed to get them both married for the trip which was all that really mattered.
I started heading East and was enjoying the mid 70’s which is just about perfect convertible weather. I was thinking about what the photos might look like, and I wasn’t really feeling either option. You see, the car was all clean, had fresh oil running through the motor and was feeling a bit more fun than either of the locations would have indicated. I wanted something with lots of color and a bit more playful than either of the locations that I had in mind. This was where my day took a strange turn.
Not that long ago, I had seen a post on Facebook about the old Shell Station in Winston Salem that was shaped like…well, a shell. It had been restored years ago, and I remember seeing it as a kid with my family. I didn’t quite remember where it was but had done a quick look through Google Maps and found the location. It was in one of the older areas of town and an area that I don’t really get into that often, even when we lived in Winston. Something about the photo that I had seen on Facebook was now haunting me. It was very colorful and quite playful in its appearance. Since it was one of only a handful of these Shell-shaped stations made, and I think it is the last surviving one, it was a unique sight to see. The gears started moving in my head and I started to put together a composition with the Miata in the scene. The building itself would look like a postcard shot which isn’t quite my cup of tea, however, with the addition of a car much more modern than the building, there was a point of interest in the scene that completed it. The fact that the structure was all yellow and red added to the alure for me since the car was red as well. Considering that the sky was clear and blue, I was pretty sure that I could get a pleasing color balance to the scene.
Just like that, I had changed my destination and doubled the length of the ride I was embarking on. I pulled the phone out and keyed in the location so that GPS could take me there as the last few turns, I wasn’t going to be overly familiar with. I was still enjoying the drive, but now I was excited about the photographic potential for this trip which was a nice change from how it had started out. I had plenty of time to think about the composition because by taking the back roads, the trip was going to take just under two hours.
When I arrived, I found the station to be situated in a rather busy intersection with houses and other businesses around it. I knew that it was not going to be isolated, but I wasn’t really overly happy with how things were looking all around the station, or the room that I had to work with in the parking lot. I went ahead and pulled into the lot right in front of the building and started to position the car where I had planned for it to be. There was a large pothole in the concrete that I had to watch for as it would cause the car to lean heavily to one side. I also wanted to cover it with the car as it would have been a distraction in the photo. I started off by straddling it and I got out of the car to see how the composition was looking. The angles were all wrong and I needed to have the car straighter in front of the structure and not at an angle like I had imagined.
I got the car situated once again, but this time I had the car to the right of the pothole which effectively masked the distraction with the car. I checked things again and found that the position was working much better than before and the center cap on the front wheel was nearly in the right position. I just needed to creep forward just a tad more to get the BBS logo level with the ground. Once I had that done, I turned the car off. I had considered leaving it running so that the headlights could be left on, but I remembered the last time I did that with this car, they really didn’t make that much of a difference because of how the lights were situated. For simplicity, I just left everything turned off.
I pulled the tripod out of the trunk and grabbed the camera from inside of the bag. I chose to use my standard zoom because I wasn’t going to be able to get far enough away to use the telephoto as I would have preferred. I added the polarizer so that I could get as much blue in the sky as possible since it was starting to look a little hazy. Once the camera was all built, I moved over to where I suspected the composition was going to come from. It was nearly at the edge of the parking lot where the sidewalk was. I quickly realized that I could have shot this with my wide-angle lens just as easy since I was at 28mm from this spot to get the whole scene in the frame. I didn’t want to go and swap lenses though, so I was happy leaving this one attached and working with it. I also didn’t want to go much wider than this because it would start to really distort the car.
Now, I had to work on how to frame the composition because I had a house directly behind the Shell and one that was off to the left of the frame which would also be included since I was wanting the car to be diagonally opposed to the structure. There were other things like a white shelter, another small yellow and red building, and even a car ramp that I had to deal with as additional elements. There was no way to omit these things, so I had to compose in a way where I could minimize their impact in the scene. This became a bit harder than I had thought, and with the bright sun, it was hard to see the details in the camera to get things just exactly right.
After fiddling around with the placement of the camera, I had an angle that was flattering for the car as well as the shell structure. I had minimized the impact of the extra elements and actually made use of the white shelter as a framework for the left side gas pump. I had to include the two houses, but they were mostly in the shadows which helped me out a ton. The bit of the green house that was in the sun just helped to fill the negative space to the left and since the house was green it didn’t pull too much attention away from the main players in the scene.
With the sun very harsh at this time of day, I had to really work with the exposure as I needed detail in the shadows to work with but there were plenty of areas that were right at the edge of blowing out. I ended up shooting three frames with this first composition with slightly different exposure settings to deal with the highlights as well as experimenting with the depth of field. You would be surprised to know that this was shot at f/5.6 which makes the car and the building in focus, but the houses start to fall off and go soft. I was able to get away with such a wide aperture because of the focal length which gave me a lot of depth of field to start with. All I wanted in focus was the Shell and the car, and that was pretty much exactly what happened here.
Now that I was comfortable with the exposure values, I changed up the composition just a bit and got in closer so that I could go with a 24mm focal length to see if it would benefit me to swap out to the wide-angle lens. I also elevated the camera a good bit to change up the relationship between the elements and tried another few frames based on this altered composition. After the sixth frame was fired, I felt that I had exhausted the possibilities that I wanted to explore for this location. I had also noticed that there was a “No Trespassing” sign on the fence behind the Shell. It looked like it was for the property of the house, but that wasn’t an access point for the property which got me thinking that it might apply for the lot that I was in. There were no other signs that I had passed by to get to this point, and I wasn’t going anywhere near the rear of the building. However, I didn’t want to press my luck by sticking around. I had the photo that I was wanting, and that was good enough.
I packed everything back in the trunk and headed back towards home. Of course, I had to stop and get gas on the way which was a little ironic after making the trip for the express purpose of stopping at a gas station.
For the two hours that I was driving home, I was wondering if the photo would work out as I had hoped. It was just too bright out there to really see the detail in the image review to know if everything was looking the way I was wanting. There was also the chance that this was going to be just too kitschy of a scene and not something that would work for my aesthetic. There was about a 60% chance that this long drive was going to be just that, a long drive with no photo to share. I was fine with that possibility because it really had been a nice ride, though it was starting to get a little warm at this point. I don’t usually run the A/C in this car other than to keep the seals lubricated once a week, but I was enjoying the cool air hitting me as I was driving down the road watching the outside temperature climb to 87 degrees.
When I got home, I got the six files imported into the computer pretty quickly. Of course, it didn’t take long to cull them with so few images. I ended up with the last of the second set and the last of the first set making it through the first round of culls. Now I was comparing the two images and started to look at them both very critically. There was only a slight hesitation before I made my choice that the first composition was the winner of the two. This is the one that I started to process and did so with the idea of really working the color end of things. I even selected a color profile that I don’t usually use except for landscape photos where I want to really pull the colors to the forefront of the image. The actual processing didn’t take long at all and there were not that many changes that I had to make along the way. Most of what I did to this image came down to dodging and burning to get all the tones in line with where I wanted them to be.
The end result is one that I am actually quite happy with. It is over the top for what I would normally photograph, but considering the main subject, it all just works. I think that this photo is all about fun and that carefree summer feeling. The colors make you happy and increase your pulse, while the theme of the gas station and a convertible just make you yearn for the open road. At least that is how it affects me. No doubt about it, I made the right choice by altering my destination after just a few miles of beginning my drive.
Thank you for joining me on this trek. I hope that you enjoyed the departure from the norm and appreciate the photo for what it is. Of course, I’m happy to offer this as a print if you would like to hang it on your own wall, but I do realize that you might not have a specific connection to the car in the photo. However, that brings me to the other purpose of this photo. I am not above pimping myself out to be your automotive photographer. If you have a special ride that you would like to see captured through my lens, I would love to discuss your vision with you. While I don’t usually photograph shiny cars, I am quite capable of doing so as I have shown with this one and Toni’s new car from a couple of weeks ago. I just need to know what I’m going to be photographing and some ideas on how you would like to see it. I can then put together a location and get the shoot done for you. As they say….get in touch.
I’m hoping that with the storms coming through over the next week or so that I’ll be able to get out and do some more photography with some dramatic skies. I’m getting a little tired of the bright sun and blue skies that have been overhead most of the time with the only other option being heavy rains that just spring up out of nowhere. Time will tell, but I’ll be back here soon enough with some new photos of something.
Until next time…
