Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Let’s see, I think it has been a month since my last post. No, wait a minute, it’s been a week since my last post. That’s not right either. I think it has only been a few days ago since I last went out. It was the first time in a very long time that I had just had that urge to go out and capture some photos. It felt really good, especially since I had gone nearly a month since my last trek which had become the norm. By the end of that one I was feeling pretty normal and positive about my photography. I was even looking forward to the next time I was going to get out to do it again. My idle thoughts started to be filled with destination ideas, and I was planning my next trek before I even knew what day I was going to go out.
As luck would have it, there was a break in the sunny days that have been happening since the hurricane. While I am thankful for the respite from the rain for those in the mountains that are still without homes, power, and water, I do enjoy the clouds when it comes to photography. According to the forecast, the latter half of the day on Tuesday was supposed to be cloudy which would then give way to sunny days for the next good while. Looking at the area forecasts this was going to be pretty much the case over the entire area that I would be looking to visit. I had omitted the mountains out of respect and to stay out of the way of the recovery efforts. It was looking like my path would be either out to East Bend to possibly visit Outlawed Restorations since there are always endless possibilities out there, or I might go and explore on the roads going down to Troutman.
You see, while I was going back and forth between here and Alpine Performance and Offroad to get the new truck dialed in, I had seen a lot of potential down that way. Nothing that had just jumped out and begged to be photographed, but lots of clues that I might find some decent subjects out that way. I knew it would be a matter of more looking than shooting if I chose that option, but there was something drawing me to the unknown that was found South. By the time I was headed to bed on Tuesday night, the decision was all but made that I would go on one of the routes to Troutman and see what I could see.
I really do like days like this for photography because there is no need to get up early, or to rush through my morning routine to get out on the road. I knew that there was no sense leaving before early afternoon because the clouds were all rolling in after 2pm. That allowed me to have a relaxing morning and get my mind on what kind of photos I would be looking for. Without really knowing what I was going to find, I kind of had to leave a lot of my plans quite basic because I didn’t know if I would find barns or old cars. There was the possibility of doing some landscapes out there as well. With the mix of low and medium level clouds, I was pretty certain that I was going to be able to include the sky in the photos which was something that I really couldn’t do with my last trek.
I think I ended up leaving a little after 1pm and headed down 115 towards Statesville. This is a route that I have taken many times, but there are two roads that I will usually turn off on before I get to Statesville. I was going to go past those and go through Statesville this time because what I had seen that was interesting was out that way. Once I passed the second road that I was familiar with, I was on the hunt and trying to remember what I had seen in my previous travels through the area. As I was coming through one area, something triggered a memory of a car that I had forgotten about. It had looked like an early ’80’s Crown Victoria as I rolled through the last time. It had been covered with pine needles and other debris. While it was a bit younger than my typical decay subject, it had aged enough and was in a condition that would possibly work for a photo or two.
I kept my eyes to the left and when I saw a certain building, I knew that I was close because I had remembered seeing it as a landmark. Sure enough, the property next door was where the car was located. I slowed and checked it out. The car was looking good, and there was an old house behind it buried in the trees that added so much to the composition. This was going to be a great subject because of the totality of the story. I still didn’t find the car an overly strong subject, but it helped to tell the overall story quite well.
After getting turned around and parked on the side of the road, I went to check the scene out a bit closer. The car turned out to be a Buick which kind of surprised me considering how much it looked like a Ford from the road. Nevertheless, it was mostly covered with tree debris which added to the mystery of the car. The white paint made sure that it was visible which was important for me as I needed it to jump out at the viewer in the photos. The house was really cool, and I was surprised that I hadn’t seen it from the road earlier. It was well within the trees making it a very difficult subject to capture as all of the details were obscured by branches. I was pretty sure that I could bring out the details a bit more in post which meant that this was a very good scene to work with.
I went back to the truck and grabbed the camera with the 24-70mm lens attached. I chose this lens because I was going to have to work kind of close to the scene with the road not far away and if I was going to include the house, I was going to need a wider focal length than the telephoto would allow. Of course, I added a polarizer so that I could control the look of the glass on the car. Once I had the camera built, I went back to the car and started to figure out the best angle for the car as well as the house without including the next-door building in the composition. I found a couple of variations that I played with and landed on two that I liked. I shot just two frames for each taking into account the breeze and any traffic reflections in the windows.
Once I was reasonably satisfied with the overall composition, I started to look for more intimate captures that I could do with this scene. I didn’t find the front of the car all that interesting, so I moved to the back of it and started to see how things were looking from that angle. I could make out the door to the house much easier from this angle which prompted me to frame up a shot. I kept removing distractions and decided that the front door was my focal point which pushed my decision to crop a lot of the car out of the frame. I ended up only using the trunk area to help point to the door while setting the mood of neglect and time. It was not a composition that I would normally do, but for some reason it just felt right with this scene. Once again, it was the voices in my head directing what I was doing with less emphasis on conscious thought. My instincts were kicking in even quicker with this subject than they had just a few days ago. I wasn’t bothering myself with silly concepts like depth of field, compositional rules, or even exposure readings. I just saw what I liked and framed up a photo that represented it with an exposure that I felt would do it justice.
I wasn’t spending a lot of time on any of these shots, and by the end of this second composition, I only had ten frames shot. The next composition was a single shot and done situation where I wanted to capture the partially removed bumper and brake light from the rear of the car. I have found that I love working these cars that are nearly buried in the ground because we are just not used to seeing bumpers in the grass and under the leaves like this. It also allows me the chance to get the camera up high for a vantage point that we don’t normally get to see of any car.
With eleven frames exposed, I took a quick look around and saw nothing else on the car that I wanted to work. The design features of it just didn’t really interest me as much as the totality of the scene. The car was a great element to the story, but it had a hard time carrying its own in a photograph. That last photo I took of it was the only one that I could find where it made sense to be the main character. There was nothing to complain about though. I had the first shots in the bag, and I had found this little treasure while getting the truck built last month. Even though I had forgotten about it, I knew when I got close that there was something waiting for me. Maybe if I had been in a more positive mood last month, I would have remembered it more readily. Regardless, I had now photographed it and I was happy.
I could have very easily gone home at this point and been satisfied with the day. I wasn’t quite ready to do that though, and it wasn’t because I didn’t have any faith in the photos that I had just shot. Quite the contrary, in fact. I was energized from that subject and felt that I still had more creativity to work with and wanted to find at least one more subject to photograph. The clouds were looking great and if I had my choice in the matter, I would have wanted to find a nice barn scene on a hill isolated from everything around it. I knew that was going to be hard to find, but I was in a new area, and anything could happen.
After getting gas, I just started to go down side roads to see where I ended up. I found a lot of great possibilities like several older cars parked in a roped off gravel lot. They appeared to be associated with a used car dealer that was in a neighboring parking lot. There was obviously nobody in the office and all the entrance ways were coned off. There was a phone number on the building which I called in hopes that the owner would answer. I only got a voicemail which didn’t help at all. Based on how I was moving through the area, I checked it out twice before I moved on to a different hunting ground.
In time, I found myself on 90 headed towards Taylorsville. I was reasonably familiar with the area and knew that there were barns to be found out there. As I was driving through Hiddenite I spotted a couple of barns set out in a field that looked perfect for a photo. They were on the opposite side of railroad tracks on the other side of some trees. I checked the map out to see if there was any way to get closer to them. There were no roads in the area and the angle that I wanted was from where I had spotted them. I went back there and pulled off the road where the trees were the shortest. I did some lens math in my head and decided that I could get the shot with the telephoto lens, but there wouldn’t be the foreground that I really wanted because I would have to crop out the trees at the bottom of the frame. At that distance, I wouldn’t be able to get the detail in the barns that I would want, and it would just look like a snapshot rather than an art piece. I wasn’t convincing myself that this wasn’t going to work, I was just looking at things critically and knowing how I would edit it and what I would want out of it. There was no way that it would pass through the culling because of all the compromises that I would have to make.
Ultimately, I let the pair of barns go and started to look for something else. It was getting a little late and I was wanting to get home, but I knew that there were plenty of chances for other opportunities along the way. Once I turned onto Hwy 16, I knew of a few spots where I’ve found some interesting subjects before. I checked all of them out with no success. Normally, I would have been getting upset at this point for the amount of time that I had been out with only shooting one subject. Surprisingly, I was still very satisfied with what I had shot and was just enjoying the drive in the country. I am still getting used to the new truck and have been enjoying my time driving it which made the time pass by with a certain amount of pleasantness to it.
There was one spot along Hwy 16 that I was very familiar with and knew that there was an old International pickup parked by a shop that I had photographed several years ago. I had the opportunity to speak with the owner at the time who advised that the truck was a victim of a house fire after a full restomod build on it. He was trying to sell what was left of it. This was back in the Spring of 2021, but I had seen the truck out there every time since. In fact, I had been keeping an eye on it over the last couple of years in hopes of talking with the owner once again about possibly taking the truck off his hands. The shop has since closed down, and the person that was renting the house nearby from him has moved out. There is no contact information and no activity here anymore from what I had seen.
Every time I pass by, I check on it but hadn’t really considered photographing it again. I was pretty happy with what I had captured the first time. Now that I was driving through the area with such gorgeous clouds and my camera, I decided that I might as well stop by and work the truck again. The reason for this was two-fold. I wanted some new photos of it as the landscape around it had been cleaned up a little from last time. I was also hoping that somebody would come by to see what I was doing, and I might be able to make contact with the owner that way. Any other time I would do something like this, that would be the outcome for sure. It was worth the gamble as the worst that would happen would be that I might get a new photo of the truck. The best thing might be I see about moving it to our yard as a portrait prop and a bit of decay that I can shoot whenever I want to.
I pulled into the parking lot which was eerily empty and grabbed my camera once again with the standard zoom on it along with the polarizer. I went over to the truck and started to pick out the compositions that I wanted to shoot. There was a tarp on the hood of the truck anchored by a cinderblock on the roof. I didn’t really like these elements, but I have a policy of not manipulating the subjects that I shoot which meant that they had to stay right there. To minimize them, I decided to shoot the truck from the rear and use a tree across the street to balance the frame. It took me a few minutes to figure out the angles, but I started to get a few frames shot. They were fair, but I wasn’t convinced about how good they actually were. I moved back to the front of the truck and started to work the angles that I was more familiar with from the last time. I tried vertical and horizontal compositions before I settled on horizontal.
I could tell that the exposure wasn’t all that strong because of the brighter sky, so I went back to the truck and grabbed the bag so that I could try different grad filters. I started off with a 3-stop soft grad which brought the sky under control and allowed me to up the exposure on the truck. This did the trick, and I fine-tuned the composition now that I had the exposure evened out. I worked a few different focal lengths and got a good feel for what worked with this truck. Now that I had a few other things figured out, I moved back to the rear of the truck and tried the same shots as before, only lower to the ground and with the grad filter. These turned out much stronger that the first ones and I felt that this was probably going to be my best image of the day. After seeing them all, I am still of that mindset. The colors just work so well, and the composition is very simple and effective.
There was no sense in stopping there though. I didn’t have a neighbor coming over to talk to me, and I wasn’t worried about my truck being in the way of business, so I just took my time and looked for other possible compositions. One area that I have always liked with this era of truck is the area behind the front fender where the fender, door, and running board come together. The lines and shapes always bring interest, and the textures of the rust complete it no matter what the colors are. Ironically, I think that the first time I shot this composition was on a VW Bug, but the formula holds for anything with a round fender leading into running boards.
I ended up shooting both sides because I wanted to have an opportunity to decide which looked better on the computer. One of them was largely monochromatic, but the lines were cleaner which defined the shapes better. The other side had more color variance as there was moss growing on it and the colors were more varied across the panels. There was more debris on the running board which gave a bit more visual interest, but it obscured the lines that were present on the other side. I liked them both for different reasons, so I shot them both.
When I got them home and started to look at them to process, found the decision even harder to make. both of them had turned out very nice and I had opportunities to edit them in completely different ways based on the way that they presented. The one that was mostly monochrome, I really thought would end up being black and white, but that just lost all the interest for me. Color was too intense though, so I went with a favorite color profile that really desaturates the colors and changes the contrast quite a bit. From there, I was able to build up the shot the way that I really wanted to see it. After a while, I had a very solid image with the main bit of local editing being a bit of adjustment on the door for added interest and balance to the scene. The other one was treated in the opposite way with much more saturation being added to the photo and more textures being brought out. Both of the photos were even better than I had thought when I shot them, so they are both staying in the collection. Which one has the best staying power, I won’t know for quite some time though.
There was one more area of this truck that I wanted to do something with and that was the side window glass. Because of the fire damage, the lamination had done some really cool things in the heat. The driver’s side window was the best, but there was really no composition there. On the passenger side, there was a better pattern to the melting and a bit of bluish color that complimented the rust colors quite well. This was the side that I decided to work. The trick was to find out how much of the door to include because I needed that color, and it provided a nice framework for the glass. I also needed to think about what was going to be seen beyond the glass which made up the background. I needed something for depth and a bit of brightness to balance with the blue portion of the glass.
After some playing around with angles, I found what I thought would work. It was unlike any composition that I had shot before and felt almost lazy, but there was a lot of work that went into finding this one. Instinct was still driving me at this point, but I found myself fighting it more than I should have. I think that is where this feels lazy because I just eventually let go and let it happen. The end result turned out to be Toni’s favorite of the day, but as I was editing it, I knew that was going to be the case. This kind of photo is right up her alley, so I was glad that I took the time to shoot it.
When I was done with this composition, I had shot a total of 30 frames for the day. I felt comfortable that I was going to have more than 10% keepers and was expecting as many as six. Here we are eight images later for a very successful trek. I think that over the last two treks, I have added more keepers to the collection than I did through the entire Summer. I know this seems like I’m bragging, but I love it when I go on treks like this, and I feel like I could make great images out of a white wall. My confidence has needed these two treks more than I thought, and I’m so glad that I’ve been able to go out and do what I love again.
I hope that you have enjoyed hanging out with me for the afternoon and that the photos meet your expectations. If anyone reading this blog knows the owner of the truck, please let me know. I really would like to take it off his hands. If you don’t know them, but would like a print of this International, or possibly the Buick, let me know. I would really enjoy doing some prints of these for clients to hang on the walls. I just don’t have the room here to give them the physical form that they deserve. You can order stock sizes directly through the website, or I can take special orders for canvas, metal, or fine art prints on larger media. There really is no better way to enjoy a photographers work than to see the photo in a physical form where all the variables like color and contrast have been removed. You will only see what the photographer meant for you to see, not what your device chooses to show you.
Until next time….
