Monday, November 20, 2023
This was a rather unorganized trek if I do say so myself. I didn’t really have a clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish today, I only knew that there were going to be low and mid-level clouds through most of the day. What I probably should have done was the Fall detail on the Miata, but I wasn’t really looking forward to working from sunup till after sundown just yet. I’ll save that until I am pretty much done driving it for the season and can keep it a little cleaner with short trips through the Winter on warmer days. What I wanted to do was to get out and do some photography, but I really wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to capture. The answer to that question came near the end of the day after I passed on many a scene that I normally would have tried to work. To keep from hinting at this aspect, I think that subliminally I wanted to get away from the warmer tones since my last mentorship outing was surrounded by warm earth tones and not much else. I needed to find some balance in my world and I was missing the cooler colors of the spectrum. The second revelation didn’t happen until nearly the end of the day, and it was a conscious thought for me.
Within my photography, I tend to have two different approaches to things. I get in close and isolate subjects looking for details, textures, and shapes. The other way that I go about working a subject is more of the all-encompassing composition showing everything and the surroundings. If you look through my recent treks and the images that I’ve captured, the last time I really went out and worked the grand scene was probably when I went up to the Blue Ridge Parkway in the early Fall. I was able to use my wide-angle lens and really concentrate on getting a lot of the scene in the frame. Since that time, I have been working in more confined areas and dealing with more isolations than anything else. While I do love my isolations, I like being able to get a wider view of the world from time to time. It keeps me engaged with the world around me. I’ve also come to realize that there are times when the details get to be too much for me, and my brain wants to let the details go in order to focus on the “bigger picture.” I think that is what happened today because I passed on a lot of places where I could very easily get some good isolation shots, but they didn’t interest me like they needed to.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. I haven’t even left the house in your view. Let me reel things back in for a moment. When I saw that there were going to be clouds in the sky, I checked where they were going to be the best. It seemed that I was looking at pretty good coverage over most of the area which made it really easy to pick where I wanted to go. I didn’t have anything local that I was wanting to shoot but did recall a few areas of interest that I passed when I was with John the other day going out to Vale. There were lots of interesting cars that I saw, one in particular was a blue early ’50’s Chevy. It was the color that drew me to it as we passed, and I think it was that blue that called for me this morning. I didn’t’ recall exactly where it was but knew it was kind of close to where we shot that day. If I followed the route, I would pass by all of the scenes that caught my eye on that day, and I would end up at the Blue Chevy.
It seemed like a plan, and I grabbed my gear after getting my morning stuff done. The trip was a longer one, nearly an hour and a half before I got to the ultimate destination, but I spent that entire time looking at the different scenes that I had spotted earlier. The first one which would have been great was behind a closed and locked gate with numerous signs indicating that I was going to be about as welcome as David Smith from US Medicare calling me to check on my recent back pain. I took a hard pass on that ask because I had a feeling how it was going to go. The next spot that I passed was opened up, but looking at the vehicles parked along the trees, I didn’t really see anything that jumped out at me. It wasn’t worth an ask just yet. I needed to figure out more of how I intended on shooting those cars before I bothered somebody.
There were a few other little places that I passed which just didn’t really sing to me. It wasn’t that they were bad scenes, they just weren’t what I was looking forward to shooting. I’m used to this and have learned to embrace that little voice and not to force a photo. It made me feel good to take control over the situation and allow myself to be picky. I mean I do have about 155 photos in a folder waiting to be shared on social media so there is no shortage of photographs looming which will sometimes make me a little anxious. There was no anxiety here though, and I was content waiting for the right scene to present itself. I just didn’t know when that was going to be.
Almost as if I was planning on a direct route to the blue Chevy, I found it and slowed down. It was just like I had remembered seeing it, but I was able to look at it a bit more critically this time. There was a newer model Buick parked next to it, and a ’60’s Chevy pickup on the other side. The chrome was in good shape which was going to make reflections a problem, and the proximity to the other vehicles meant that I was going to have to do some isolations in order to really work the car. I got turned around to take one more look at the car and figured that I had driven all the way out here, I might as well see if I could get a few photos of it.
I pulled into the driveway and went to the door to knock. I could see movement inside and waved as I waited for them to get to the door. I introduced myself to the property owner and told her why I had stopped. She had a great poker face because I had no idea how she was going to respond. There wasn’t much thought in her answer, and she seemed happy to let me photograph the car. I ensured her that I wasn’t going to mess with it, and just needed about 30 minutes to get a few photos shot of it. With that, I went back to the truck and grabbed the camera. I built it with the telephoto lens because I knew that I was going to need the compression and needed to keep myself away from the shiny bits to avoid being a cameo. The long lens has become a very popular choice for me when working isolations on these old cars and I hoped that it was going to come through for me again.
I took a quick walk around the car and determined what my best angles were going to be. The best patina was on the passenger’s side which had a nice Northern Exposure causing a bit of organic coating to show up. There was no angle where I could get a full on view of the car, and from where I had to park, anything dealing with the front bumper was going to have a larger than life 4Runner reflected. With all these constraints in mind, I went to the area which is probably the easiest to shoot. This is the rear fender on the passenger side. The shapes just flow together so nicely with that portion of the car and I knew that would be an easy one to get in the bag.
The problem was, I wasn’t getting the composition as quickly as I thought. Nothing really lined up the way that I wanted it to and things just felt off. I was trying to include too much I think because the paint was peeling above the wheel and I was trying to get that included to the detriment of the rest of the composition. I played with it for a while and realized that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this. I decided to move my attention to the hood ornament which wasn’t all that spectacular, but it did have a few interesting qualities that captured my attention. First of all, there was a nice bit of detail on the front of it that consisted of red and black lines. I knew that this would look really good with the blue paint. Secondly, there was a good spot of rust right next to the front of the ornament which reflected into the chrome giving some great structure to the shape. There was more rust along the trailing edges which added to the color balance in my eye.
I framed this up and made a couple of exposures. There wasn’t much need in doing more than two because the composition was simple, as was the exposure. I just wanted to make sure that the bees that were buzzing around my hand didn’t get into the line of sight with the lens and cause a blur. The bees were annoying, but that was the extent. I didn’t mess with them, and they left me alone for the most part. I didn’t linger here any longer than necessary because I didn’t want to push my luck with the business end of them.
I considered the hood ornament to be my first image in the bag because I felt that it was the first shot that I had made that was likely to amount to anything. For those wanting to keep track, my first keeper happened at frame number eight for the day. It was taking me a while to get warmed up it would seem. From there, I was feeling much better and started to put my attention on the passenger side of the car around the beltline. This was the area that had the most age showing on the paint and that wonderful patina from being North facing was really showing off on this side.
There were several different angles used and framing to arrive at the usable composition that happened at the end of a string of seven more frames. It was that last little tilt of the camera that allowed me to get the angles that I wanted in the frame to keep things interesting. Using the door handle as a visual anchor worked great to bring the eyes to the bubbling paint which brought you to the area where the paint was missing. The sculpting of the rear fender balanced that element out with a bit of light and shadow. The coated windows brought in the last bit of visual balance and texture in what I think is my favorite photo from this car. It is just abstract enough to keep my attention on all of the little details within the frame and my eyes pursue exactly where I wanted them to go.
I was feeling much better about the car at this point and started working other areas with a photo here and a photo there. In all, I shot 22 frames on this car, and the last one that hit was number 19 which was a second attempt at the shape of the rear fender and the emblem. This one worked much better than the original attempts and felt right when I shot it. The trick I found here was keeping that whitewall ring fully intact and not broken by the fender. I cropped in close on the left side through the actual tire to simplify the edges, while placing the center cap and the “DeLuxe” script diagonally opposed to keep the visual drama in the frame.
While I was shooting, the owner came out and asked me a follow up question that she didn’t think to ask originally. She asked what I was going to do with the photos. I told her exactly what I shoot the photos for, and she was happy with that. Her concern was that I was going to use the photos for commercial work which is something that I don’t usually get involved with. When it all came down to it, I let her know that I loved the color of the car and haven’t really seen one this color in a long time now. When I said that, I realized why the blue was speaking to me so loudly. It was the reason mentioned earlier in this entry and I could certainly understand after working a lot of very brown and orange scenes the other day. Even looking back at the photos from that session, I can see where I was pushing the envelope to get away from those colors as much as possible. Here I was photographing a lot of blue, and couldn’t be happier with the color palette I was seeing.
Not wanting to overstay my welcome, I made a last walk around the car to make sure that I had everything that I wanted. It seemed that I was in good shape here and figured that I had two photos that would probably work pretty good with another two possibles. It was something, and I wasn’t looking for a lot of new photos which make this perfect. I still wanted to find something else to shoot though. I wasn’t quite done with expending my creative energy. Since I was pretty much at the end of my planned route, I chose to start driving along the different roads to get lost for a while and see what I could find.
That was where things started to get interesting. I passed by a number of interesting old cars, and several old buildings. They weren’t what I was looking for though, but I didn’t know why until a bit later. As I was trying to figure out my reluctance to shoot these subjects, I found that they all had a similar quality in that they were in locations that would more than likely prevent getting an overall shot that had room to breathe. It was this breathing room that I was wanting to showcase in a photograph. I wanted to have the sky in the frame, some trees, maybe some grass. I didn’t much care what the subject was going to look like, but it needed to fit in the scene and make a pleasing composition to look at. I was needing to find something that was set apart from everything else to make the composition that I had in mind, but this is one of the harder things to do in a new area. It takes time to find those wonderful scenes that just scream for a photo to be shot. At least I had excellent light, and the sky was looking really good. I just wasn’t finding anything at all to put in front of the camera.
I drove around for a long time and as I was starting to think about pulling the plug and going home, I came around a corner and saw a barn between two houses. There was plenty of separation between the houses, and it looked like there was a tree with some Fall colors still showing right beside the barn. This is a great setup for a composition and one that I have shot many times before. The way that things were looking, I was going to have no problem getting the sky in the shot which was what I was wanting. I got turned around to take a second look and found that the scene was perfect and there was even some really tall grass on the opposite side of the barn from the tree with some cattails near the roofline. I turned around one more time and looked for a place to pull off on the side of the road because I could easily shoot this from the shoulder.
Well, I could shoot it from the shoulder, but there was no way to park the truck anywhere nearby because of ditches on either side of the road. Based on the driveway system, it looked like the barn probably belonged to the house on the right. While I didn’t need permission to shoot from the road, I wanted to be able to park in a driveway for safety. For this, I was going to need permission, and with that permission would hopefully be permission to get even closer to the barn which would make the photo better.
I knocked on the door and heard nothing inside. Nobody came to the door, and it was looking like I was out of luck. I got turned around and went back to the roadway and decided to roll the dice with the neighbor in case the barn was actually theirs, of if they minded if I parked in their driveway while I shot the barn from a distance. I started to go to the front door, but I could tell that door was never used, so I went into the carport where it looked like the main entry for the house was. There was a Ring doorbell on the door which meant that I had the right door. I rang and waited. I was expecting to hear a voice coming over the speaker, but never did. The light was still revolving, and I had heard the chime, so I knew that it worked. I figured that nobody was at home and within reach of a linked device. I turned to go back to the truck, and I head voice announce themselves. I turned and started responding asking if they owned the barn, or if it was the neighbor’s. It was the neighbor’s as I had suspected, but I continued to ask if they minded if I parked at the bottom of the driveway to keep my truck out of the road while I got a quick shot.
He responded that he didn’t mind at all, and that the owner wouldn’t mind if I took some photos. I could get as close as I needed to as long as I didn’t take anything. This was perfect! I would be able to get just close enough to get the composition I really wanted while my truck was safe from oncoming traffic. I parked out of the way of the owner and grabbed the camera. This time, I built it with a standard lens because I was going to need a moderately wide angle focal length without going too wide. I clipped on a polarizer and went to get set up. Before I made the first exposure, I could tell that the sky was a bit bright which was forcing the exposure to get a bit dark on the barn. I went back to the truck and grabbed a 3-stop grad which I slid in for a bit of exposure balancing. That worked out well.
From that point on, I went about the task of moving the camera inches or feet trying to get everything in the frame to relate to each other in the way that I wanted them to. This took some doing because I was trying to get separation with the orange tree from the background trees, while keeping the trunk in a spot that helped it to stand out. The barn was the easy part because it was happy to be there with a quarter view showing the tall grasses as the foreground element. What was going to make or break this photo was how the orange tree appeared so long as it didn’t make the barn look too odd with perspective distortion from getting in too close and low.
I think that it is all too easy to become hyper focused on the main subject of a photo because it is the main subject. In reality, the main subject has already done its job by catching your attention. You are usually much better off putting your efforts into composing the supporting cast members of the scene. This is where the composition can really shine. It becomes the little details like where the cattails are on the roof, where the tree branches are in relation to the horizon as well as the main subject. How much ground is shown in relation to how much sky is shown. All of these things are what makes the composition, not just placing the barn on an arbitrary location within the frame. If you remember that little tidbit, you will see a huge improvement in your photography.
The photo that worked the best was the last of a series of 12 frames, which wrapped up the total of 34 frames that I had shot for the day. I was excited about the barn in a way that I had not been for the car. The best I could figure was that this was the only composition that I found that showed some open space. There was still a lot of cooler tones in the sky which satisfied my need for some color balance in my life. The funny thing was, I had shot the barn thinking that it was going to be black and white, but I never got that far in the editing process because I really liked how the colors were looking from the very beginning. I thought that I might go with black and white on at least one of the car photos, but again, the colors that I was seeing made me happy, so I left them. I did go with a very desaturated color profile for the fender shot though because it is great for emphasizing the cooler tones in an image.
When I was done with the barn, I headed home to see what I had captured. I had told Toni that I was looking at two maybe three keepers. I actually ended up with five that I edited but killed one of them before preparing to upload. It was just a simple vertical shot of the “DeLuxe” emblem and the stone shield. There was nothing wrong with the image, but it was too simple and that made it boring. The one that showed the entire quarter and wheel was much stronger and that was the one that I chose to keep between the two. The four images that you see here are the four that I look at and am really proud of. I hope that you like them as much as I do. If any of them speak to you, please consider ordering a print for your wall.
If you would like to learn more about photography, and you enjoy my work, I do offer mentorship programs both short term and long term. All you need to do is to do a quick consultation with me to determine that we are going to be a good match, and that I can offer what you are needing. The consultation is free and there is no obligation to sign up with me afterwards. In fact, I’ve answered many simple questions during the consultation and never went forward with a paid session. That is just how I like to do business, although if I had a business manager, I’m sure that would not be recommended. I just enjoy seeing other photographers grow and succeed, and if I can help that progress any at all, I will jump at the chance.
Thank you for joining me for this trek. More than likely, this will be the last one until after Thanksgiving, so I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. May you enjoy your meal, and your family, but don’t eat your family.
Until next time…
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