Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Well, the rain falling on the A/C unit woke me up at 4am and I knew the answer before even looking at the weather. The rain was here and would likely be present until late afternoon. I never did go back to sleep and thought about what I could shoot quick in a little drizzle to salvage the last full day on the coast. The only thing that came to mind was that red truck out on the main drive. I could also hopefully do some night photography with the lights on the buildings. The main thing that kept me here until Tuesday morning was the hope for one more good sunrise before I left the coast.
We shall see how that turns out because as of right now (1:42pm on Monday) it is still raining and I’m still in the shorts that I slept in. From here on out, it will be a surprise for all of us how things turn out. I know that as of right now, I am just shy of 500 photos on the camera which is going to be a lot to work through when I get home.
Until next time…if there will be a next time on this trek.
That was how I ended the last blog which was written on Monday afternoon. Monday was my third full day on the Outer Banks and the weather forecast had gone back and forth between rain and clouds since before I even left home on the previous Friday morning. I was really hoping for a repeat of Saturday when I woke to the rain falling on the A/C unit. If that had been the case, I would have been able to get out and do some photos during the afternoon and into the evening. As you can see above, it was early afternoon, and the rain was still falling. I hadn’t even gotten dressed to go out because the rain was falling so hard. I was making use of my time even though there was nothing to photograph in the hopes that I would keep my creative energy flowing. I had spent about five hours typing out the blog for Sunday, well before I even knew how the photos had turned out. It was a gamble to type out about 13,000 words not knowing if there would be photo one to put inside of the entry. It was my best option for spending the time though as I had already done the blogs for the previous two days.
When I got done typing, I looked outside, and it was still coming down rather heavy and the sky was just a blanket of white. I didn’t want to sit in the room all day because I was starting to regret staying this one last night. I had talked to the front desk and there was a good chance I would be able to leave early without penalty. I had also talked to Toni and she made good points about giving up on the possibilities that might present themselves before I had to return home on Tuesday. Obviously, I had decided to stay, but I wanted to make it worthwhile, and I could only do that by getting dressed and going out there to see what might happen.
I grabbed my gear and went out for a bit of a drive, or shall I say splash. It was a constant rooster tail arching well over the 4Runner as I made my way down the road. It was hard to look for potential subjects, so I decided to go shopping for a little gift for Toni since she had been left all alone at home while I was out photographing the coast. That activity didn’t last as long as I had hoped and the rain was still falling. I started to think about things that I could shoot in the rain which pretty much resulted in the red pickup that was on the main road. I could work it with the umbrella mount on the tripod keeping the lens free of rain drops. I was out, might as well go and give it a look.
When I got there, the truck was nice enough, but the only thing that I could do with it was to shoot some isolations which could work, but there wasn’t enough patina on it to really make that interesting. The water running off of the surface wasn’t really doing the truck any favors either since it was pretty well a uniform red. It was just too difficult to work through and I didn’t think that it would be worth it. It did give me the idea to go back to the old Chevy that I had seen in Manteo to see if the owner was there for the permission that I needed to be on the property.
The ride inland was full of promise as the rain was slacking up a bit and the lighting was looking pretty good. I could see that I could make this work if the owner was there. As I pulled into the parking lot there were no different vehicles there and it didn’t look like anyone was present. There was a number on the sign at the entrance that I called. There was a voicemail that said that they were going to be closed in January, which led me to believe that the restaurant had not actually reopened. Instead of asking to leave a message, the message prompted me to message the owner on Facebook. By this time, the light was failing, and I didn’t think that there was going to be time to send a message and wait for a response that might include a good deal of back and forth as I explained my reasons.
Instead, I just used my time to drive around to see if I could find something else to shoot before the light left. I kind of got lost driving around Roanoke Island which was my goal. I didn’t really find anything that jumped out at me, and certainly nothing worth shooting in the rain. Sunset was not far off, and I had been wanting to find something to shoot in the twilight with the building lights. Hoping that the rain was going to stop by early evening, I set out to look for a location that might lend itself to that concept.
Over the next hour, I looked around and got more and more frustrated. The light was flat and almost had a green hue to it. There wasn’t going to be any blue hour at all, it was just going to go from gray to dark. With the rains coming back in force and a fog rolling in, I was starting to really think that nothing at all was going to work. It was getting very hard to see any details that might make for interesting photos. Since nothing at all was working in my favor, and it was starting to feel like I was forcing the issue, I decided to cut my losses and head back to the room.
Yep, I had spent a full day on the coast and hadn’t pulled the camera out, not a single time. At least it wasn’t a wasted day since I was well ahead on my blog writing. All that was left was Tuesday morning when I was checking out. I looked at the weather once again and it showed that the rain was supposed to move out of the area by 11pm or so. The morning was going to have low clouds which would clear off by 9 or 10am for mostly sunny skies.
Low clouds are not great for sunrises because they don’t pick up much color, but the thought was I could get some abstract type photos using the heavy cloud cover and a long exposure on the ocean. It was worth trying because I wasn’t going to be able to get a customary sunrise based on the forecast. I was also thinking about driving close by the old Chevy on the way home and I figured that I could send a message to the business owner now that I had time to draft something that made sense and hopefully answer all of the questions he might have.
As I set the alarm for 5am, I thought back over the previous four days and felt like it had gone very well. There was only one day that I wasn’t able to do any shooting, but I felt that the first day when I normally don’t engage in photography more than made up for it. I still had no idea how many keepers I was going to have, or what they were going to look like. It was all a bunch of hoping on my part.
As you can probably tell, the tone of this blog is a little different than they have been. I am back home, and I am writing this one early Saturday afternoon. That is four days after I have returned home. I’ve been very busy since getting back as I have been editing through all of the photos, and then putting them into the written blogs to be posted here. As best I can tell, I have about 25 hours invested in the edits at this point which is right up there with how long it took me to edit through about 90 photos after returning from Alaska in 2008. I know that I was at the computer for more than 24 hours straight going through those edits in Photoshop. I’m too old to do that now, and since I am no longer working as a Police Officer, I didn’t have to get them done before going back to work. Now photography is my job, and I have spent in excess of nine-hours every day since my return to get to this point.
I now know how the trek went and finally know what photos have made the cut and which ones didn’t. If you have been keeping up with the blog, you know the answers as well. I am more than elated with how this has gone and will chalk this up to one of my most successful treks ever. It is always stressful going to a location that is far enough away that you have to find a place to stay since you will already have time and money invested in the outcome. Fortunately, I have spent years shooting everything that I could locally in order to give me the tools that I need to capture those scenes in unfamiliar locations. Thanks to all that experience, I have found myself in a situation where I can react very quickly to things and can read a scene very quick. Up to this point, that has allowed me to capture 491 frames of which I have found 47 keepers. That is a nearly 10% hit rate when I have spent quite a bit of time shooting the same thing for different wave patterns and light. The hit rate on those wave photos was dismal and that was by design, but that means that for other subjects, I was able to get the shot and move on quickly with a very high percentage of keepers. Without getting into a math lesson in percentages, I am beyond happy with how many keepers I have brought back from this trek, and that is even without looking at what I shot on the way home which we will get to shortly.
With the final photos being edited, I am writing this as I would normally, but I will try to keep things going in a similar fashion because I really kind of liked how the other blogs turned out with a description of the day and the process rather than the mechanics behind the photos. It was the experience that I want to share as well as the photos. If you would like to learn more about how to create photographs like this, I would encourage you to look into a mentorship with me at some point. For now, let’s get to 5am on Tuesday morning.
A slow melody starts to play on my cell phone, but I am already awake. I turn it off and open the weather app to see what I am looking forward to. Mostly cloudy, but no rain being reported. The radar shows the rain cleared out of the area around 2am which was as good as I could have hoped for. A check of the clouds showed dense low clouds with nothing above them. It was going to be a heavily overcast morning and that might mean that the sky was going to have no detail at all. I considered finishing packing up and leaving right after I ate some breakfast, but I couldn’t at least go out on the beach and try for something. If the camera stayed in the bag, I wouldn’t even need to clean it up because I had done all of that Sunday evening after I got back.
I threw on some clothes and grabbed my gear to walk outside about 45 minutes before sunrise. The minute I exited the hotel, I could feel a light mist in my face. Are you freaking kidding me?!?!?!?! I was so tired of rain, but I still had plenty of time before the light would start to work in my favor. I knew that there was really nothing out here to shoot as a foreground so I was looking for something where I could just use the waves and the sky for an abstract kind of photo. At least the mist was stopping, or I was just getting used to it. Either way, I didn’t think that it was going to be enough to cause any problems should I find something to photograph.
As I scanned the horizon, I was looking for anything in the sky that would show as different in a photograph. I needed some sort of texture to make the image work. There was just one area where there was a brighter spot which wasn’t too difficult to see since it was still dark outside. There wasn’t much light in the clouds, but I knew what I could do in post with it, and it was good enough to give me a reason to pull the camera out and give it a try.
I walked around on the beach for a while until I found an angle that I liked which would put the bright sky at an angle to the beach. I moved in close because I wanted a lot of the frame to be taken up by the water rather than the sand. It is nice to not be as paranoid about my gear as I once was. I remember times in the past when I wouldn’t venture out onto the sand to get a photo. No way that would have worked this morning, and as you can remember from the previous blogs, I have spent a lot of time with the tripod getting washed over by the waves. My feet even joined in at one point.
Now that I had the spot picked out for the tripod, I dropped the legs at about the height that I was going to want the tripod at. I pulled the camera out with the long lens on it. This is a trick to take advantage of small pockets of interest in the sky while a standard or wide-angle lens will include much more of the sky. Since there wasn’t any sun out, and I wanted to keep the same color tones on the water, I didn’t bother with any filters. That would also keep my shutter speed a little more flexible.
The first image was a text shot with a three-minute exposure. The concept was there, but I didn’t like how the water turned totally flat with the long exposure. I wanted to have some detail, so I fiddled with the exposure until I found the right combination for about 30 seconds, with an appropriate depth of field. This exposure looked much better with some variation in the waves. I made one slight adjustment and shot a third that looked perfect, though it was too blue for what I was wanting. I knew that I could work with it in post though. I had my first image of the day in the bag, and just like that, I was glad that I had stayed.
As I looked around, I could see that the sky overhead was starting to get a magenta hue from the sunlight coming from somewhere to the East. I didn’t think that it was the city lights because of how far it reached. Whatever it was, I liked it and wanted to see if I could capture it with the camera. I found a suitable location a bit further down the beach that had a collection of beach homes with some lights on. This was kind of the night photography that I had been wanting to do, so I gave it a try. The color was very faint in the camera, and based on my custom color profile, I didn’t get excited about this one at all. There was only the test shot made and I abandoned it wanting to get back to the ocean which I thought would provide some more interest for a photo.
This is the point where I would have said something to the effect that I was glad that I didn’t waste the time on that composition because it just didn’t excite me at all. I would then have to put in another short paragraph describing how the one frame actually worked out and had enough color in the sky to make the photo work quite well. It is just another example of how I might misjudge a composition in the field because things never look the same on the back of the camera as they do on a computer screen and certainly not anything they look like hanging on a wall. I’m just glad that I took the opportunity to grab this one shot and that I didn’t mess it up before deciding that I wasn’t going to like it.
I did move back to the waves for more photos after my quick diversion with the houses. The light was starting to come up a little better now, but there wasn’t any color at all in the sky. I had to go with my initial tactic of finding that one bit of interest in the sky which turned out to be the ever-evolving bright spot once again. Since there wasn’t much in the way of a composition here, I just found a spot and plopped the tripod down with the camera pointed to that bit of sky. I framed the image to include just the waves up to the point where the water was rushing back out to the ocean. I had no interest in getting the sand here and was looking for waves that would complement the sky more than anything.
As the tides came in, I would press the shutter release when I thought that the waves were looking particularly interesting. This was usually when a wave would crash, or there would be an interesting pattern developing. I was paying more attention to the scene in front of me than I was to the camera. Every so often, I would check to make sure that the exposure was still working as the light increased. Everything was going well, and I was really hoping that a few of these might turn out. I knew that like the first composition I shot the final image was going to rely heavily on the post processing to get the colors right and to define the contrasts. even though there was a brighter spot in the sky, the light levels were still much too low for there to be any real contrast.
Feeling that I had enough of this type of image after about 15 minutes of shooting, I started to look around for something else to shoot. A bit further down the beach I saw an object right at the water. I couldn’t make out what it was though, so I just walked down to it. It was maybe 100 yards away, so it didn’t take long to get there. As I got closer, I had to laugh at myself. I could see the warnings on the top of the structure that warned of an underground pipe and a deep hole. Once again, I have been drawn to a storm water drain. After 50 years of life and many trips to the beach, I have never seen these before, and now I have seen two of them. The structure was interesting, and certainly fell into my love for decay subjects. You might remember that I have figured out I am addicted to decay, and I might have a problem there.
Looking at the warning signs, I felt that this would not make a good photo because who would want a photo of a storm drain exit on the beach? I started to walk away and go further up the beach to find more waves crashing. But instead of the waves crashing, I had another thought come crashing into my head. The signage made for a more interesting story with the structure, and the cautionary tone would work very nicely with the movement of the ocean. I liked the idea, and it certainly went with the decay theme that the trek had started to take on. I went back to it with the intention of proudly framing up a composition of the little drain shack and creating something special with it.
The composition was rather simple, and I was actually happy that it put me far enough away that I wasn’t worried about the water getting to me. I was well out of the way and into the soft sand. Without many options of how to frame this shot, I was able to set things up quite quickly and then just wait for the waves to do their things. I was looking at the image reviews to see where the waves ended up in the frames that I shot because that was going to be the key to the success or failure here. I noted that the waves were looking particularly wonderful at this section of the beach. They were nice and soft, while still looking quite forceful. I started thinking that this was going to look great as a black and white photo. The sky was starting to come to life, but still without color. That extra contrast would work out nicely for a powerful black and white photo.
Of course, when I got home and started going through the files, I saw the color frames as the original RAW captures came up. While I liked the idea of the black and white, I wanted to see what a color version would do as well. I went with a non-standard color profile that changed the tones subtly to make this a more dreamy photograph. From there, the edit almost took care of itself with just some slight contrast adjustments to make things pop. The photo that I selected for the black and white version also went very well and looked perfect as each photo says something different based on the pattern of the waves. The presentation between color and black and white helped to tell the stories that I was trying to convey.
I had almost walked away from this composition, and it ended up yielding two very different photos that I quite like. I don’t know if anyone will want a print of this on their wall, but I like it and that is all that really matters when it comes to my photography. If you find these interesting or beautiful in their own way, let me know your thoughts. At least I will know that my decay addition has some company.
Feeling like I had spent far too long shooting the waves and there wasn’t a lot of variation possible, I turned my attention back to the dunes and the fences. There were lots of little areas that I thought had some interesting fences and dunes, but the light on them was not all that great. The sky was also rather bland with just a solid overcast in most areas. That didn’t stop me from working a few scenes. My thoughts were that I could do these in black and white where I could really play with the contrasts. They might work as color, but I was thinking that the light was just too flat the sky too boring for that to happen. Switching the camera over to B&W allowed me to see how the shapes were looking without color. I was liking what I was seeing and worked several different areas.
The nice thing about the flat lighting was that there wasn’t much need to make multiple attempts at a single composition. nothing was really changing, so as long as I had a shutter speed that would freeze the tall grasses enough, that was all I needed to change between shots. I just made sure that I spent enough time on the compositions so that I didn’t need to tweak that part of it. After years of photographing fences, I had the compositional ideas down pretty well.
There was one little section of fence that I found to be particularly interesting as one end of it had fallen down. It was at the top of a dune which isolated it against the sky. Now normally, I would have hated to see this happening with a bland and overcast sky as I love to see texture in the background brought in by an interesting sky. This time, however, I was looking at a complex scene full of lines and texture and an interesting sky would have overly complicated the scene forcing a color composition. I didn’t have the light to support color here, so having that bland white sky helped to really isolate the slats of the fence. It was going to look fantastic in black and white, or at least that was what I was hoping.
I spent a lot longer on this composition than I did on the other fence photos because I wanted to make sure that I got the exposure right and the framing exact. I ended up underexposing this by a good bit to make sure that I had plenty of latitude for contrast adjustments. I had plans of making this a high key photo, but I didn’t want anything at all blown out. What I ended up with was a very muddy photo on the back of the camera which gave me a lot of concern about how this was going to turn out. The histogram even showed just a peak in the midtones with nothing stretching on either side of that peak. As with the early photos, this was going to be a product of post processing rather than great right out of the camera. I just hoped that I would be able to make it work out.
After working the fence sections for a while, I got a little bored of them and figured it was time to go back to the room. Before I did that, I happened to look back over the water. The clouds were breaking up in the area that had been brighter than the rest. The clouds were now bathed in the warm light of the rising sun which created a scene that I never would have thought possible with the weather forecast. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, I grabbed the camera and went back to the edge of the water and started to find a pleasing composition.
Without there being a strong visual anchor, I was left relying on the waves again for both a foreground and point of interest, so it wasn’t just a photo of the sky. This is not my favorite type of composition, but I’ve seen it work more often than not in the past which gave me hope that I could pull this off. It was once again a timing issue where I was waiting for the waves to crash or do something interesting. Every time I felt that something was about to happen, I would press the button on the shutter remote.
I will say that this is one of those times I really value having that remote release because there is no way to do this with a 2-second timer to let the camera settle down after the shutter button is pressed. Without the timer, there would be camera shake causing blur. By using the shutter release, there is no contact with the camera and the shutter will fire right as the button is pressed. It is as accurate as I can make it while still taking into account my own reaction time for seeing the conditions developing in front of me. After a few days of this, I was getting pretty good at reading the ocean and knew the clues to look for as to when the waves would come to play.
As I was getting the images that I was after, I started to realize that there were some seagulls flying over the water right in front of the opening of the sky. Now, my shutter speed was right around a half-second to a second which was much too slow to freeze the birds which just blurred across the frame. Because I knew how to deal with this, I was able to make some very quick exposure adjustments to get the shutter speed to 1/100th of a second while keeping the overall exposure the same. The benefit was that I had the same photo being recorded, but with less visible motion. It didn’t help the water, but I felt that the birds were now a main part of the story and it was a fair trade for the photo.
Now, it became a matter of watching the birds more than the water. I wanted to get them in the frame where there were three of them fully visible at a time, and preferably in the brighter area of the sky. Adding birds into an image is something that is really easy to do in Photoshop, but here I was faced with the very real circumstance of having the birds flying right into the frame. I had the right lens and was able to get an exposure that would work with them. I’m not a fan of adding elements like this later on in post and won’t do it under most circumstances. I will admit that the birds really do bring another element to the photo and I’m thankful that they decided to join me that last morning on the beach.
Straight out of the camera, the photos actually looked very good, but I added some warmth to the scene through a slight color grade as well as working the RGB curves to bring out all that wonderful color. The last bit of the equation was adding a bit of the warm light on the water which was only barely being reflected. The end result is a series of photos that I think really capture what a coastal sunrise should be all about.
And just think, up until I was capturing this series of photos, I was under the very real assumption that there was going to be no color in the sky because of the clouds. I think the part that I didn’t really expect was that after the sun got high enough, it would illuminate the tops of the low clouds and blast through to the clouds that were a bit higher up in the sky. The sun was still fully behind the darkest clouds, so it was only the surrounding light that was offering the color. It was a perfect opportunity, and it was only in a small section of the sky. Had I been shooting with the standard zoom; I don’t think I would have been able to react quick enough to get these shots.
By this point, I was fully happy that I had stayed that last day. This morning should have been just a photo or two with the conditions that were expected and barely worth staying that whole extra day. However, I had witnessed several different conditions already up to this point with both blue hour-long exposures interesting colors in the sky, and now a breathtaking sunrise. All of this has happened in a period of about an hour. It was now just after 7am and I was finally starting to get good light on the dunes thanks to the opening in the clouds.
With the colors getting washed out with the rising sun, I once again turned my attention back to the dunes. There was a dark house visible on top of one of the dunes that caught my attention as it was framed by a series of fences on the face of the dune. I liked the contrast and decided that it was worth a few frames. I didn’t stay with this long though because the composition was really that simple and there wasn’t a need to wait for anything else to happen. Once I had the few frames that I needed, I moved on down the beach to look at more sections of the dunes.
A bit further down the way, I found another section of fences all in a row. This section didn’t have anything poking over the dunes which simplified the composition. I saw this as a black and white composition from the start because the sky wasn’t all that interesting behind the dunes. I have found it much easier to deal with a boring sky in post when I convert the photo to black and white. I switched the camera over to monochrome and even dialed in a 16:9 aspect ratio so that I could get three fences without too much sky or tracked sand. The composition was again quite simple, and I hoped that it would work as well as it was looking in the camera.
With that composition done, I was about back at the hotel and thought that it was time to head in and get some breakfast. I’ve thought that already this morning and found that there was still more to photograph right after that thought. Well, this was that same kind of moment because as I looked behind me, I saw some great colors in the clouds off to the right. It was not as dramatic as the previous composition had been, but I did like the colors and thought that I could make some kind of composition with it.
Once again, I grabbed the camera and went to the water side of the beach and found a good place to set the tripod. Unlike what I had been doing, I decided to include the sand and the area of wetness from the receding waves. I wanted to capture a bit of color in the reflection of that sky to pull the whole image together. With the seagulls out of the frame, I was able to get a more appropriate shutter speed for the water and started to make exposures as the waves did interesting things. The light wasn’t going to hold for long, and while I was photographing this section, I saw another scene developing off to the side. This time it wasn’t subtle colors in the sky, it was a breakthrough of sun from a hole in the clouds.
I didn’t even have to move the camera, I just panned over just a little bit to frame up a composition with the opening. I could tell that the rays were coming in at an angle and that dictated the position of the clouds in the frame. All I had to do was figure out if I wanted the sand in the frame or not. I opted for a composition that used the waves as the foreground for a bit more excitement to go along with the hole in the clouds. Once things were framed up, I fired off a series of shots as I thought the waves were looking good. I didn’t have time to really look at the image review because the light was fading very quickly and I didn’t want to miss any opportunities.
After a few minutes had passed, the light was gone as the sun was higher than the hole would show. This was it; I was tired and ready to get some breakfast. The last hour had been more involved than I had expected, and I was worn out. Of course, this is a good problem to have after a day of being unable to shoot anything and I was very thankful for the opportunity to get so many different compositions with so many different conditions. I was going back in my head thinking about what I had shot because I had captured something like 150 new frames if my math was right. I could think of about 10 photos that I thought would probably make the cut. I wasn’t completely sure at this point though because I really hadn’t been able to study the resulting images. I was just thinking back to the different compositions that I had shot and assumed that most of them would yield at least one keeper.
Before crossing back over the dune, I happened to see one last fence that caught my eye. It was a simple thing sitting there on the dune, but there was a section of brown grass that created an “X” right there on the dune. It was interesting enough, and a simple enough composition that I could grab a quick shot of it and head back in. I got into position and set the camera up where the angle was right. I framed up the shot rather simply and fired off the first exposure. Things looked good, and I was about to pick things up and head back to the room when the unexpected happened. As I have said, there have been so many conditions on the beach this morning and I had been able to respond to all of them. There was one that I would have never thought possible, but here it was.
I could see the yellows and pinks of a rainbow starting to develop right over the fence I had been shooting. In fact, it fit right into the composition as I had created it, so I opened up the framing a little bit for more sky and shot the photo. I could barely make the rainbow out in the LCD, but it was there. I quickly flipped the camera into a vertical orientation and reframed the shot so I could get a photo with more of the rainbow. With the same settings as before, I fired off another shot, but this one didn’t have the rainbow present. I could just barely make it out with my eyes, but it didn’t look as though the camera was able to get it. I dropped the exposure a bit and tried again. Still no luck on the LCD and at this point the rainbow was gone from sight.
I wasn’t sure if any of these would turn out or not until I got home. I had shot four images from this scene as I have described. The first one would have made a fine black and white as I had intended, but it was the second frame that I was most interested in. I could make out the rainbow in the RAW file which meant that I would be able to recover the color through processing. The following two vertical shots showed nothing, and the composition was much weaker anyway. Having managed to get a single frame with a fleeting rainbow was more than enough luck for me after the morning I had experienced. It might not have been the exact composition that I would have chosen, but for being able to capture something like this that only lasted about two minutes total was pretty special.
Not wanting to press my luck anymore, I decided it was time to head back to the hotel and get the camera cleaned up before packing it away. I just left it all on the tripod to avoid opening the bag one more time on the beach. As I went in the back door of the hotel, the water was still dripping from all the rain that had fallen and it was a reminder that when I first came out this morning, it was still raining to a degree. To think, I had considered not coming out this morning. All of the opportunities that would have been missed. I guess what they say is right, you will miss 100% of the shots that you aren’t there for. I might not have captured every possible shot this morning, but I sure did capture my fair share of them. It was so worth having stayed for that last night, and I was feeling that this was probably my best sunrise for the whole trip.
After my breakfast of Raisin Bran and a danish, I headed back to the room. I was a little upset at the breakfast, but apparently pickings are slim on Tuesday morning’s an hour after they open up. I still had plenty of time to get the camera all cleaned up and packed away before I left. I was tired, but there was still a part of me that wanted to go and check out the old Chevy that I had now been by to see twice. I checked my Facebook messages and saw that there was no response to my message as of yet. I contemplated doing a quick gorilla run at the car by setting up the long lens and shooting from the parking lot to get one composition that I knew would work and leaving very quickly. It was not ideal, but I really wanted to try to get this car, and where I was going to need to be happened to be on the outer edge of the parking lot. I could articulate that I thought that the signs indicated no trespassing in or around the building since they were posted there, and not at the access point to the parking lot. Looking outside however, I started to think that I might not bother as it was starting to get rather bright rather quickly.
When I got done with the camera, I finished packing everything up and took it all out to the truck. Once I checked out, I was on my way home. The Chevy was just off the route by maybe a mile so it wouldn’t hurt to go and check it out one last time. As I pulled into the parking lot there was nothing at all going on but having looked at the regular business hours it appeared to be opening up for lunch at 11am. That was still a couple of hours away and I had hoped that the owner would be there getting ready. Just as I was getting my bearings in the parking lot, I saw a man come out of the side building and approaching me. I know the walk and the look; this was the property owner, and I was so glad that he was there.
I got out of the truck and introduced myself and explained that I had sent a message to him the night before. He knew of the message and said that he hadn’t had the time to respond just yet. I understood that and told him how happy I was that I had run into him this morning. To make s short story shorter, he was happy to let me photograph the car and even quizzed me on what year it was. My mind was exhausted from the past few days, and I blanked out on the era of car. I think I answered that it was an early 50’s which I knew was wrong but couldn’t get a better answer figured out. He went on to explain that it was a ’46 which was the same body as a ’42 but with some different chrome and emblems. It was from the year that Chevrolet retooled to once again make cars rather than implements of war during WWII. He did tell me that the hood ornament was offered in this style for only the ’46 model year with the V behind the crest for victory. That was a bit of trivia that I didn’t know.
With his blessings, I parked the truck and grabbed my gear. Since I had been thinking about the composition for so long, I already knew that the long lens was going to be my friend to help cut out the background and focus on the car. I added the polarizer which was the first time today I had used a filter. I went right where I figured that the winning composition would be, and I fired off a few variations on the composition. The sun was a little bright and that was causing some harsh secularity on the car which I didn’t like. I decided to give up on that and move in closer to see if there were any isolations that I wanted to shoot with it.
It was at this point that I realized that my ISO was still set at 400 from working the beach that morning. I normally reset it to 100 after a session like that but had forgotten. No big deal as ISO 400 is still pretty clean on this camera, especially in good light. Having seen it, I am glad that I went back to my base ISO for the cleanest image with the most dynamic range possible. I had a hard time finding isolations because the paint was in too good a shape. Isolations are more fun when there is rust to be had for that bit of texture. I did notice that the side of the restaurant was a bright orange with yellow frames around the windows. Those colors worked well with the purple of the car, and I liked the ramp railings going up to the entrance behind the car. It added a nice geometrical element to the composition as well as a complimenting color to the scene. I moved back so that I could get the scene in the frame with the long lens. I liked how things were coming together with the compression so there was no need to switch out to the standard zoom. I just rattled off a few exposures with slightly different framings to make sure that I had what I was going to want for the edit.
The last image that I shot was in a square aspect ratio which was my favorite in the camera. I brought in the two American Flags which I though added to the story and having them be flags for Police and Fire they were special to me on a couple of different levels. It was this image that turned into the keeper, but I didn’t keep the square format. Instead, I opted to go with a 4:5 aspect ratio which added more of the building and the back wall for a bit more depth to the scene. I loved the colors and how it all came together. This photo was worth me stopping for the third time. I felt better about this composition than I did about the one that I had started off with, and figured that I might want to try the other side again now that I had a better understanding of the light that was over me.
Before going back out to the edge of the parking lot, I moved in closer to work out a few isolations on the front of the car. The wheels had been of particular interest to me because they were certainly aftermarket and a good indication of the type of cruiser that this was at some point in its life. I framed up two different compositions that showed off the wheels and the grill. I didn’t need more than two of each just so I had a safety in case something messed up the shot. Only one of them worked out and I felt that it was a solid enough composition to be a keeper from this car. It highlighted the grille as well as the wheel to tell both parts of the story of this car.
With the isolations done, I went back to where I had started photographing the car and went with a slightly different framing that removed more of the distractions around the car but brought in the railing behind it more than the original composition had done. I really liked how this worked out even though the palm tree was right on the edge of the frame. I needed that trunk to frame the image, and it also gave the palm frond a reason to be there. The sun wasn’t quite as strong this time which made for a more pleasing photo which I’m always happy to accept.
What had started out as a quick grab shot on the way home had turned into about 15 minutes of working the subject. I had managed to get the shot that I was after as well as two others that I would have never been able to get without permission. I was happy with how they all turned out, and essentially really happy with how the whole trip had worked out. I just hoped that the photos saved on the memory card were as good as I thought that they would be.
It was really hard for me to estimate how many keepers I was going to have, but I was certainly going to be over my estimate of 20 providing there were no technical difficulties from me cleaning the sensor before leaving. I was still worried about how I had to work the brush to get rid of that smudge. My test after cleaning indicated that it was all good to go, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I saw the photos on the computer and started to process them. That step would begin on Wednesday morning.
Here we are on Saturday evening, and I have now completed four different blogs about the trip and done four different editing sessions to make it easier on the computer resources. Now that I am all finished, I am excited to share that I have shot a total of 668 frames, although that number is not representing the roughly eight or so images that I deleted in the camera along the way because of gross exposure issues, or just lousy composition. of those remaining 668 frames, I have fully edited and kept a total of 65 photos from these four days. There is no doubt in my mind that this trek has been a success.
As a side note, the tips that I have received through the button at the end of this blog have actually gone a long way towards paying for this trip and I greatly appreciate it. If you feel so inclined to help support my photography, the button below will take you to a site where you can leave a tip of any amount that you feel appropriate. Of course, I would much rather sell you a print of your favorite image, or help teach you photography, as I really feel like I have worked for that money. However, after the last week of over nine-hour days just to get these images edited and the blogs finished and published, I happy to accept tips from those that don’t have the room to display my work. No matter how you choose to support my art, I want you to know that I truly appreciate it.
Thank you also for joining me on this rather long and exciting trek to the Outer Banks. I know many of you love my coastal photography and I don’t get the chance to do much of that which makes this trek very special. I am so glad to be able to update my portfolio with the new images of the NC Coast. Let me know which are your favorites, and if you have managed to read through all four of these blogs. In the meantime, I am going to take a few days off from photography and get the truck cleaned up. I’ve earned a bit of a rest and a chance to do things that aren’t photographically related for a day or so.
So, until next time…..
