Thursday, March 2, 2023
There are times when I see the benefit to being a landscape photographer as opposed to a decay photographer. This was one of those times and I ended the day with very mixed feelings about my chosen subject for the day. The weather was promising some pretty good light with clouds overhead for pretty much the entire day. I had a few things that had to be taken care of first thing in the morning, but by early afternoon I was ready to head out and get some photography done. Knowing that the light would be good for decay subjects, I decided that I would venture out and try to find some nice scenes to photograph. There was really only one that I had in mind that I was interested in working, but I hadn’t quite figured out how I wanted to approach the myriad of cars behind the shop. I had been out there once to scope it out and had left without even trying anything. I was thinking I might be able to figure something out now, so that was my basic destination.
I loaded up the truck and headed out to Hays which was just under 20 miles away from home. As I was driving up the road, I happened to see an old Ford Torino behind a house which I had not noticed before. I thought about it for the briefest of moments and decided to go ahead and see if I could get permission to shoot it. I wasn’t thinking that it was going to take long and then I could be back on my way to the original destination.
I got out of my truck and went to the door. A few seconds after I knocked, I was greeted by the property owner, and I got the sense that he was going to be reluctant to give me any permission to enter his property. I just cut to the chase and explained why I was there. We went back and forth, and I could tell that he was feeling me out as he wasn’t committing to a response one way or the other. I just kept talking to him and eventually, he stated “I’ll let you take the pictures on one condition; I’m going to be with you.” That was easy enough because I never feel like I need to hide my activities with the property owners. I agreed and said that I would meet him out by my truck after he got his jacket.
We walked out to the back yard together and we continued our discussion from earlier. I could tell that he was still feeling me out, but I was grateful for the chance to get the photos. I learned that recently, somebody had come out and stolen the grill off of one of the cars which perfectly explained his hesitancy for me to go out there. He also told me some of the history of the cars. There were actually three cars out there which two had been pretty much hidden from view from the road. There were actually two Torinos and a Mercury. This falls right into my “plus 1” theory where if I can see one, there is usually more than that in the area.
I took a moment to get an idea of the angles that I had to work with. I didn’t want to linger with this part because I didn’t want him to think that I was spending too much time looking at what he had. Once I had a basic idea of how I wanted to shoot the cars, I put my bag down and grabbed my camera. I went with the 24-70mm lens for the simple fact that I can work quicker with it than I can with the long lens. I needed to be able to get as many compositions as I could as quickly as possible because I had said that it would take me about 30 minutes to photograph the cars. Not wanting to put him out since he was out with me, I wanted to keep to that estimate. I knew that I could easily spend a couple of hours here on these cars, but I knew that would overstay my welcome.
The first composition that I worked through was a simple quarter view from the rear of the car which was the best view since it was nosed up to some trees. I found the right angle to showcase the lines of the car and dialed in the polarizer. I got a couple of quick shots off with slight variations in the framing and then picked it all up to go to the next composition I had figured out.
The next one was more of an instinct composition because I have shot that front quarter isolation with many different vehicles. Again, I wasn’t taking too much time to think, and I was just operating on auto pilot. It was kind of like doing a portrait shoot going through the basic posing cards and not really giving it much other thought that that. It was working out though, and I was liking the compositions that I was coming up with. For this front view, I was interested in the tire since the “Winston” lettering was still quite bold and it was positioned quite nicely for the composition. Since the grill had been removed, it allowed the focus to fall on the fender shape and the wheel mostly which I liked. There was a nice bit of surface rust on the hood and fender that added to the interest as well.
I think I worked just a couple of variations on this view before I was satisfied that I had what I needed with the Torino. I moved to the second Torino which was in the woods. It was mostly stripped bare and there wasn’t much of anything left to it, and I saw no compositions since the brush had pretty much taken it over. Behind that was a very large Mercury which he had bought just for the motor. It was largely intact, but not all that beautiful of a car. I was drawn to the headlights and the prominent grill though and started to think about a composition there. The lichen and textures from the patina of the metal gave a great framework for the brightwork that I was interested in, so I framed it up so that the areas of texture established the frame of the composition. The grill was included just enough to show the curve, but not enough to show how far it went. I was more interested in the parking light as a third visual anchor. It was the bottom of the frame that I wasn’t happy with because it included too much of the ground. There was no apron under the bumper which made the front end seem really high off the ground. My solution was to change the aspect ratio of the photograph to a 16:9 which minimized the ground and changed the visual weight of the bumper at the lower left of the image. The end result captured what I liked about the Mercury. Sadly, these cars are just too large and lack a lot of the character that I like to include in my photos.
I was thinking that I might be done at this point since I had been out there for about 20 minutes. I made one last walk around the scene to see what else I might be interested in capturing. Of course, all the while I was doing this, I was engaged in conversation with the property owner who I could tell was getting a bit more comfortable with me. I was glad that things were going well, but I was having a hard time really concentrating on the task at hand. I’ve run into this a time or two before and it is just the nature of the job in many cases. I would much rather be distracted during a shoot than to not have the opportunity at all to get the photos.
I was starting to slow down at this point though because I wasn’t feeling quite as rushed as before. I looked at the locations of all the badges on the cars to see if there was an isolation for me there. Mostly, those shots were not all that interesting because the metal around them was just not rusty enough to make it work. Eventually, I ended up back around to where my bag was. I looked once again at the rear of the car which I had determined made for the most impressive composition. I still liked the lines of the car from this angle and decided that I wanted to create a composition that was a bit more complex around this view.
I looked for the other elements that I could bring in. There was a tree to the right that offered a bit of structure to the scene which I had kind of cut close in the original composition. By including more of the tree, I would have to include the other two cars in the composition which wasn’t really a bad thing. Now that I had been up close and personal with both of them, I could understand their place in this photograph a bit better. I started working out the best place to place the camera and began working the composition from there.
I was a little further to the right than I had been before, and I was a lot further back. This changed the perspective on the car, but it also allowed me to bring in the other two cars. Granted, the other Torino was mostly covered by the brush, and it wasn’t a major element, but the front of the Mercury was framed within the trees and added a really nice element to the scene. Again, it was a 16:9 crop that came to the rescue as the native aspect ratio showed too much sky and the cars were lost in the frame. By dropping that top part of the frame, I was able to direct the eyes better to the line of cars which was what I wanted. The final bit of this composition came from an ND Grad which held the exposure back in the sky just enough to get the Mercury to expose correctly in the shadows and to give a little punch to the Torino.
At this point, I had probably been working the scene for about 35-40 minutes. I had kept the owner outside long enough at this point, so I packed up the camera and started back to the truck. We continued talking as we walked and when we got to the driveway, he saw the mail carrier coming down the road. He went in to get a letter to send and I put the camera up. When he came back out we were still talking as the mail carrier came and went. I didn’t mind at all because he had some interesting stories about his time in the US Army during the ’60’s and his time as a truck driver. I think that when it was all said and done, we had been out in the driveway talking longer than I had been working on the photos. That is how it goes sometimes when I start talking with property owners. This was one of those times where I am pretty sure I would be able to come back in the future for another session without a problem. It was touch and go at the start because I could tell that he wasn’t overly trusting of my intentions whi I totally understood. In my experience, folks that are up to no good generally don’t want to hang out and chat. I think that was probably his last test for my intentions, and I suspect that I passed.
I eventually got back on the road, and I was back enroute to my original destination. It was a lot later than I had suspected which meant that I wasn’t going to have the time there that I was planning on having. I also hadn’t figured out how I was going to approach the location. As I was touching base with Toni, she said that the rain was getting ready to start which was a bit earlier than expected. By the time I got to the location just a mile or so down the road, I had all but talked myself out of trying it due to time and weather constraints. I drove by really slow to see if there was anything that jumped out at me as far as a composition. Again, I saw nothing right away and since I was going to have to find somebody to let me in the gate, I decided against stopping here. I already had permission, but when I had gotten that permission, I had no idea that the cars were all behind a fence. I wasn’t sure if anyone was at the shop or not and didn’t want to interrupt anyone unless I knew that there was a photo to be had.
Instead, I started to head towards home looking for other subjects to work. There was one that I passed which I had seen and dismissed a long time ago but had been brought back up in a conversation with a friend of mine who had recently seen it. It was a ’57 Buick I am thinking which was parked beside a garage. The location was no good for a photo, but I thought that I might be able to get an isolation or two out of it. I went down the side road that brought me to the house and went to the door and knocked. There was no answer and no signs of anyone at home. I took that as an indication that I wasn’t going to be shooting this car at all today. I did go back out to the street so I could get a better look at the car. It was up on blocks and there was a black Buick parked next to it which might offer some possibilities as well. It is not an ideal location, but if I can get permission to be there, I think I can get some interesting isolations if nothing else. I’m definitely going to keep this one on my list for the next time I am out that way.
It was seeming like the day was over. I needed to get home and get a service done on the truck which was now due. When I got back to the main road, I remembered that there was construction going on and one of the lanes was closed down. I just went South and was going to take the longer way home. As I meandered down the road, I saw a scene that I had spotted many times before and decided to go and check it out a little closer. When I turned on that side road, I didn’t like the compositions that were available, so I just kept on going down the road looking for a place to turn around. Within a few feet of driving, I remembered what road I was on. Another friend of mine had suggested a couple of years ago that I check out a barn which was in a field off of this road. I had been by several times and wasn’t all that impressed, but the sky was looking really good, and I thought that I might be able to do something with it. Since I was out here, it was worth checking out.
When I arrived, the barn looked amazing. The field had been cut down which was a change from the last times I was out here. The Spring colors were starting to pop in the trees to the rear and the sky was looking fantastic. I wasn’t sure what kind of composition I was going to use here, but it was worth stopping for. I pulled off on the shoulder of the road where the ditch evened out so that I didn’t tear up any of the grass. I grabbed the camera with my 70-200mm lens since the barn was a good distance away. The property had a fence around it and signs indicating No Trespassing, so I knew that I was going to be staying right next to the road for this one. That was actually fine because there was no need to get in any closer and I was liking the perspective that the distance was offering me.
I started to set up a basic composition a short distance back from the truck and found that the lighting was perfect, and the sky was rendering very well in the photos. I wanted to get a slightly different angle, so I moved further back down the road until I had another break in the brush around the fence. This was looking better still, but I had some background houses to deal with which caused a bit of problem for me. I just kept working the scene and finding the right angles.
I eventually decided that I needed to go a little further down the road which allowed me to eliminate all of the houses and it provided a fairly good angle on the barn. I formed up the same basic composition that I had been using but decided that it just didn’t work here. As I was looking, the clouds were perfect in this direction, and I wanted to incorporate more those in the composition. I got the tripod leveled and flipped the camera on its side so I could take a series of vertical images to be merged into a panorama. About the time I got the camera in position to do my dry sweep through, I heard a door opening up.
The man came out of the house and asked what I was doing. I love that question because there is usually very little question as to what I am doing with a long lens mounted to a tripod. I resisted the urge to answer in a smart-assed way, and just simply stated that I was there taking a photo of the barn. He laughed a little and I thought that all was going to be well at this point. He asked a follow up question along the lines of did I have permission to be here. I simply responded that I was on the shoulder of the roadway which was an easement and public right of way. He didn’t like that response and started questioning if I had seen the signs. I had, and had no intention of entering that property. The conversation continued to go south, and from the best that I could gather, he was not the property owner and decided that his platform was going to be that I was trespassing by taking a photograph of a barn in the field while not actually being on the property. I tried to be as polite as I could, but I could tell that he wasn’t going to let it go.
My personal threshold for this is I will do what I can legally do, but if it starts to upset folks, I won’t push the issue because it is just not worth it to me. I had explained why I could legally be here, and why I didn’t need specific permission to photograph the barn, nor did I need a property release to create art from the photos. He wasn’t hearing any of that though, so I told him if it was causing a problem, I would leave. He said that was a good idea. I was about 5 minutes away from getting a panorama that would have been amazing, but I went ahead and grabbed the camera to walk back to the truck while he went back inside.
I had just gotten the polarizer off of the lens when he came back out holding something roughly 13×19″ in size tucked inside of a plastic sleeve that looked rather familiar to what my prints look like when I ship them out. I stopped what I was doing and started back his way hoping that he had a change of heart. He showed me a photo of a different barn that (I’m assuming) he had shot during a sunrise. He asked if I could tell when the photo was taken. I answered Spring because of the different shades of green, and he corrected me that it was in the Fall. I wasn’t sure what was happening here because he had just run me off from the property that he hadn’t claimed was his, now he was wanting to talk photography with me. Again, I bit my tongue from saying something rather mean to him and tried to maintain my professionalism, but it was getting very hard at this point. My suspicion was that he remembered that I said I did some teaching with photography, and he was looking for pointers, or maybe a pat on the back. Whatever it was, I wasn’t inclined to give him any of the above. I took the opportunity to try again to see if he would let me stay for the photo, but that got shut down quickly. Then it was all over. He went back to his house, and I continued to break the camera down. I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but I was a little upset at how this had gone. I had a really wonderful photo in mind for here and I was just about to get it going when things were cut short for no good reason at all.
It was at that point that I really saw the benefit of doing landscape photography. Most of that is done in parks and unpopulated areas. I very rarely ran into an occasion where I needed to ask permission to shoot anything, and hardly ever had to have a conversation like I had just had over a landscape photo. If you have followed this blog for any length of time, you know how seriously I take trespassing and respecting property. I don’t like having experiences like this because of the great care I take to avoid the situations considering most of the decay photographers out there will happily trespass to get photos. They will even break into buildings for the sake of a photo. Here I am, doing everything I can to respect property and I get run off while being completely legal.
It was just one of those days. I started off needing permission and had to really work for it. The next location I shot didn’t need permission, and I got raked over the coals for being in the public right of way. I’m really starting to want one of those shirts that says “Photography is not a Crime” because of times like this when it seems like an uphill battle to get photos created. The utter sadness of it all is that I am just wanting to celebrate the beauty of things that are quickly fading away. Most of what I shoot are things that even the owners don’t give much thought to anymore except for the passing offer to buy the old car or truck.
It was not an excellent day by any stretch, but I am really quite surprised that out of only 18 frames shot, I managed to get five images that I liked. On that fact alone, I think that this was a successful day. I wish that it had gone smoother and that I could have worked the scenes like I really wanted to all the way to their completion, but I do have to roll with the punches. My goal will always be to capture the scenes that excite me, and I was able to accomplish that along with getting the inspiration for another location that only requires getting permission. I just hope that that attempt goes better than how things have gone lately.
Thank you for joining me on this trek, and I hope that you enjoy the photos. If there are any that speak to you, I would love to talk with you about getting a print of your very own. You can order directly from the website, or I am happy to talk with you directly for larger sizes or specialty media like canvas or metal. Either way you go, you will be able to enjoy the photograph as intended and true to my vision for the piece.
Don’t forget that I have a series of introductory workshops coming up this Spring where I will be teaching the fundamentals of exposure, building a composition, and how to focus. These are the three areas where I see my workshop participants having the greatest difficulties with. This is your chance to learn these elements of photography and have a much stronger foundation to grow from. Get signed up today to ensure that you have a spot in the workshop.
Until next time….
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