Saturday, Oct 28, 2023
As I sit here starting this blog entry, I can’t help but think about a paragraph that I had just written in next month’s Behind the Camera which will be published on Wednesday morning. I said something to the effect of “it has been a while since I’ve been out to get photos with my last trek a couple of weeks ago.” Of course, I was referring to my big day in Taylorsville with that comment. Obviously, when I wrote that, I was thinking that I was going to be done for the month as far as new photos go. Yet here we are talking about a trek that happened just hours after I wrote that line. What in the world happened?
Well, I’ve been letting my creative self rest a bit after what has been a very eventful stretch of time. I’ve been taking care of things here at home and just generally getting caught back up with life. Part of that was taking the freshly cleaned Miata out for a little spin in the 80-degree afternoon before we start to get really cold, really quick. I didn’t know quite where I wanted to go, but since ASU was having their homecoming game, I didn’t want to go up the mountain, and with the Parkway closed in several locations, I didn’t want to be forced to go through Boone. With that in mind, I decided to head out towards Traphill. It’s been a very long time since I’ve driven through that area of the county, and it is one that I have always enjoyed, even before we moved out here several years ago. It was a quick trip and full of nice roads to carve.
I took the regular route out that way and decided to go past Stone Mountain and just see how the colors were looking out that way. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about photography, but I just wanted to spend a little time enjoying the Fall colors while they lasted. The drive took me down very familiar roads and past one location that I had been wanting to photograph for probably about four years now. I know it was before we moved out here in 2020, when I first stopped and asked permission. On that occasion, I spoke with a lady about photographing some cars that were in the side driveway to the house. She was hesitant to give me permission since the cars belonged to her husband who wasn’t there at the time. I left my card as I tend to do and asked that he give me a call at his convenience to discuss my request. Years passed by and I never heard from him. I would stop by every so often and knock on the door, but never got another answer even though the cars in the driveway would change from time to time.
When I drove by the location today, I saw three cars in the main driveway which was more than I was used to seeing. I also saw that the trees over the cars that I was interested in photographing were looking quite nice in their Fall clothing. The lighting wasn’t too bad with the clouds moving over the sun regularly which changed the intensity of the light quite a bit, giving me options as to how to light the scene. I didn’t have the camera with me, nor was I equipped to be able to pull off the road with the Mazda. I just kept on with my drive and enjoyed the day.
When I arrived home, it was around 3pm and the lighting was still looking good outside. Toni was occupied doing other things and I started to consider going back out to Traphill again, but with the camera this time. Looking at the weather, Sunday was going to be totally sunny, and I was already planning on doing the last mow of the season with the last of the warm days happening. The beginning of the week was going to be spent back and forth to Winston taking care of some things for our youngest. Beyond that, the weather was still looking clear for the most part, and there was no guarantee that the leaves would hold out that long. I had the light, the time, and the inspiration to give those cars a try. I grabbed my gear and was off on the road retracing my steps out to Traphill.
When I arrived at the house, I pulled into the driveway and went to front door as I had done so many times in the past. I recognized the cat that came to the window to say hi as I rang the bell and knocked. I waited for a few minutes, but nobody came to the door. I heard no activity inside at all, so I went to either side of the house and announced myself in case anyone was in the back yard. There was no answer, and no indication that anyone was home. Apparently, I had driven out here for nothing which would not have been the first time. I went back to the truck and pulled back out to the road. I drove slowly past the cars really wishing that I could have the chance to get a few photos. It kind of hit me at that point. What I liked about the scene was the view I had from the road. I could very possibly get a photo of at least one of the cars from the shoulder of the road. I started to look for a place to pull off and park.
The cars coming up behind me forced my hand and I continued on and got turned around. On the way back, I pulled off on the shoulder of the road opposite of the car as that was completely off of the property that I would be shooting. The problem was, there wasn’t enough shoulder to safely be out of the traffic, so I continued on and got turned around once again. This time, I pulled onto the yard extension beyond the driveway. It was just big enough for the 4Runner, and I hopped out to get the camera.
Since I was shooting from the side of the road, I wanted to make this pretty fast, but if luck was with me, the owner would come by, and I could have a chance to talk with him. Sadly, that didn’t happen. I started off with the standard lens and a polarizer because I wanted to tell a bit of the story around the car and thought that this would be the better choice. I tried a couple of locations right at the edge of the driveway next to the road. The composition wasn’t coming all that easy because there was a telephone pole that was bisecting the shed next to the car and there were various car parts all around the scene. What I ended up framing up here was a composition that included a tree trunk to the left as a framing element, the entire shed to the right, and I cut the composition on the right side of a truck wheel that seemed to make sense. That left the car pointing to the left of the frame, and slightly off-center to the left.
Speaking of the car, I had originally thought that it was a Chevrolet, but looking at it closely through the lens, I realized that this was actually a Ford Fairlane. When I researched it after getting home, I realized that this was likely a 1960 Fairlane and to my knowledge, I had not photographed one of these yet. That make this even more interesting, and I was committed to getting a good shot of it. There were three other vehicles in the driveway, but there were no compositions to be had with those based on their positions within the space. This Ford was the only car that I could isolate and photograph effectively from the street. At least I was able to get the Fall foliage in the shot to add to the story and add a bit of color to make the green car stand out a bit more.
Because I was committed to this subject, I decided that since I was creeping closer to 70mm on the lens, that I might want to switch out to my telephoto lens for a few shots. I did that and got back into position. It was much easier to frame up a close in shot on the car. Changing my angle allowed me to cut off the front side of the shed as well as the telephone pole. This was the composition that I felt was probably the strongest one out of the bunch, so I spent some time tweaking it to make sure that it was just right. In the end though, it was the composition with the standard lens that turned out the best. Keep that in mind since I was shooting from the street, probably 60-70 feet away from the car which is usually a good reason to use the longer lens.
I double checked to see if there were any other compositions that I could shoot from the side of the road but found nothing. In the ten minutes that I had been there, the owner never did show up. I hated that I wasn’t able to get in closer as there were a few other compositions that I wanted to try, but I was much too far away to get the framing right for any of them. This was going to have to be one of those times when I was satisfied with a single image from a location. It didn’t bother me really, because I felt pretty confident that I had something good enough to be a keeper. It is ironic that the one that I thought was so much better turned out to be a little boring, and I liked the storytelling that the larger frame provided to this scene.
It was time to move on down the road and head home. I needed to get gas, so I decided to go a different way back to my side of Wilkes County which took me on a connector road to get to 268. This is another one of those roads that I have been on many times over the years and knew it quite well. However, things area always changing, so even when I am on a very familiar stretch of road, I am constantly on the lookout for photographic possibilities. That is one thing that Traphill has always been good for, and usually when I start photographing out there, I end up going back many times over as I keep seeing things that catch my eye, but for different conditions.
As luck would have it, I spotted something that was new from the last time that I had been down this road. Over on the side of the street was a car that I knew to be a Ford Fairlane. It wasn’t until I had gotten home and verified that the first car was a Fairlane as well that I made the connection that my second subject of the day was just a different variation on the first. It was a newer model, and in much better shape. In fact, it had all the clues of being a car that had been taken to shows in the recent past. It was much nicer than the cars that I normally photograph, and my first inclination was to pass on it. However, as I drove by, it just looked right to me. The chrome, the emblems, the tire dressing…it was all just so different from what I normally photograph, and I recalled my recent success in Taylorsville with a car in similar condition. It was enough to get me to turn around and look at the scene critically once again.
On the second pass, I started to look at the surroundings. There was a large building and a house behind the car. To the driver’s side was a PT Cruiser which didn’t interest me in the slightest for a photograph. There was a For Sale sign on the dash, and different decals in the windows. It was very apparent that getting an overall composition wasn’t going to be possible here as there were just too many distractions. The details interested me on this car though, and I thought that was where the story was to be found. The issue there was the shine on the paint and the bright chrome all over the car. This was one of those situations where I would more than likely end up in the composition as an unintended cameo. This is never preferred as I want to capture the subject, not the photographer.
I could see that there was activity at the building behind the cars so I figured that I might as well stop and ask permission. This was an easy ask since the car was for sale. I figured that they were used to folks coming up and asking about the cars beside the road. I was able to quickly speak with the owner who gave me permission to photograph the car. Once I figured out where to pull the 4Runner out of the way, I grabbed my camera. This time I started with the telephoto lens so that I could get close up shots from a bit further away. This is one of those tricks that I have figured out over the years when dealing with chrome. It isn’t always 100% effective, but it is much easier to make me disappear from six feet away than two feet away.
The light was my biggest consideration with this car. The sunlight was shining on it from the driver’s side and the rear. That left the front and passenger side in the shadows. This gave me several different options on how to light the car because I could use the shadowed side for even lighting, while I could get highlights and depth on the sunny side by including some shadows from raised elements. It was kind of like the best of both worlds in a way since I usually like to work with even and diffused lighting mostly. With nice paint, a sunny day can be magic though.
The car was a kind of creme color which I also liked. It had just enough color to it to be interesting as a color image, but not so much as to mandate color over black and white. It was the options that this car provided that really grabbed my attention. In fact, I had told the owner that the Ford had spoken to me because it wasn’t something that I would normally have stopped to shoot. I was just following instinct at this point and letting it take me where it would.
For the next thirty minutes or so, I worked my way around the car and framed up isolation shots that I thought would work. Some of them were in the sun, some were in the shadows. I considered black and white versus color for nearly every frame. Usually, the deciding factor came down to the colors that were in the frame. I knew that when I got the images home I could make a final decision at that point, but in all reality, the only color on the car was with the Galaxie emblem on the rear of the front fender, the GT logos on the wheels, the marker lights and taillights. That wasn’t a lot of color to really make an impact. The white paint on the car was a warmer tone which I thought would go well with the reflected blue in the bumpers and chrome bits, but even that was kind of a secondary consideration. I was really looking for shapes and contrasts more than anything.
For those of you really paying attention, you will see that I have already shown two very similar compositions from the front left corner of the car. If you look right below, you will see a third. These photos are a progression as I got closer and closer to the different details. I didn’t expect to have three of these in the keeper file as I only wanted a single shot from this angle. I just didn’t know what the best option would be. As I culled the images, these three remained and I liked them all equally. The crops told different stories and included different elements. The wider angle shot had everything from the headlights to the grill, to the orange marker light, the motor emblem, the fin on the fender, the wheel with center cap, and the Galaxie emblem behind the wheel. All of these elements worked together and formed a multitude of triangles within the frame which I liked. The colors played an important role in this one as well with a balance in cool and warm tones. This was the first of the three that I edited because I really liked how all of that came together.
The edit on that one was most certainly destined to be a full color image because of the roll that color played. There was really no other way to let that one shine. The opposite was true with the next of the three that I edited. This was the extreme close-up where I concentrated on the fender fin, headlights, grill, and motor badge. Color played absolutely no part in this one at all, and I went straight to black and white for it. The edit was actually quite simple and took me no time at all to finish. It was an elegant display of shapes and lines which was just what I had been after. Omitting the bumper forced the attention on the elements that I had been drawn to, and that was just perfect.
I now had two similar angles that I intended to keep in my collection because they said such different things. What was to become of the third composition that fit in-between those other two? I really liked the composition, and it was one that I had shot a number of times on other cars with emblems in similar places. I was missing the Galaxie emblem behind the wheel, but I was funneling the attention more to the wheel and motor badge. Missing out on the Galaxie emblem took a lot of the pull away from having the photo as a color image. By making it black and white, it would stand apart from the wider shot, but it would put it in direct comparison with the closer in composition. I had a problem here because I couldn’t justify keeping all three images if any two were similar.
My initial solution was to copy the edits from each image and apply them to the middle-cropped composition. By doing this, I was able to directly compare that image with the two extremes to see if I liked it better or worse than the other two. This usually works very well, but in this case, I found that I still liked all three in different ways but didn’t like the edits from either of the other framings applied to this one. My solution became clear with that bit of knowledge. I would do a unique edit on that image that played down the roll of color but didn’t go as far as to lose the color completely.
I went through the color profiles to find one of my favorites for just this kind of edit. I applied the profile to the image and started with the edit. In no time, I was looking at a photograph that captured what I loved about each of the others and blended those elements together. The photo was colorful, but the colors weren’t as vibrant or in your face. The tone of the photo had gone much cooler as well which I really liked. I was now looking at three images with three crops, and three completely different edits. Since I liked them all so much, I decided to keep all three of them.
The one element on this car that seemed to drive so many of the compositions happened to be the Galaxie emblem on the rear of the front fender. I loved the warm tones of the 500 and XL portions of the emblem because of how it interacted with the paint on the car. I had shot this element from several different angles, but still wanted to see more. I went to the driver’s side where the sun was hitting the car and studied the emblem in an attempt to make a composition around it specifically. Sometimes simple is best. I just found an angle that would put the emblem at a diagonal through the middle of the frame with the door seam in an opposing direction. The chrome molding was placed right at the corner which I usually tell folks not to do, but it worked in this situation since there was a point on the line which pointed back to the Galaxie script. The visual weight of the colors in the lower left kept the eyes in the frame which was all that I really cared about in this composition. There was a lot of negative space, but the slight body line at the lower right helped to control some of that negative space.
In the end, I had a very simple composition that begged for full color. I started the edit with a landscape color profile which saturated the colors and gave it a little pop. The only problem was that the emblem became too heavy with that treatment. Had I been wrong about this one? Would it be better as a black and white? Nope, it lost the effect completely without color. Once again, I was back to that reduced saturation profile that I liked so much. It worked great for this one because the emblem was really the only color in the frame so there was no need for it to be over the top. I dialed it back and gave the white paint a bit of a cool tint to balance out the colors. I then selectively worked the oranges and reds in the scene until I had this.
The end result was one that was better than I had hoped, and I could certainly see this hanging on a wall somewhere. In fact, I can see each one of these photographs on a wall celebrating the Ford Fairlane. I’ve shot a bunch of them recently and the design is starting to grow on me. I have certainly found a soft spot in my heart for the nicer examples of this car which I have now successfully photographed twice. I’m not ready to give up rust, but I am starting to see the value of smooth paint and colorful emblems for a photograph.
I did come about an interesting realization during this shoot that you might find humorous. If you will recall, I started out with a car that was a good distance from the road. I ultimately went with the long lens because of that distance but had started with the wider 24-70mm lens. That was the lens that captured the image that I kept. Conversely, when I had access to get in close to the car, I shot the entire thing with the long lens. Typically, when I am forced to shoot a car from the road, the telephoto lens is the best choice, while getting in close to a car is usually the realm of the standard lens. I got it backwards this time, but the reasoning behind the choice is solid. I needed to tell more of the story with the first subject which needed more of the surrounding. On the second subject, I just needed details, and didn’t want to be a cameo, so I needed to be a little further away from the car. Lens choice can make or break a photo, so it pays to think about that option before you start out.
I do hope that you have enjoyed what I suspect is the last trek of the month, but then again, I thought that trek had already happened. That is part of the charm of being a photographer I suppose. There are times when conditions and subjects present themselves and the next thing we know, we have shot 54 frames and come away with seven keeper images from a trek that wasn’t even a thought when the day started. If you want to know more about how creativity can work, stay tuned for the first blog entry of November. I’m going to talk about embracing the ebb and flow of creativity. Hope to see you then.
Until next time…
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