Sunday, October 16, 2022
Yep, you read that right, I started the day at Doughton Park, visited Germany, and ended up in England. Well, I might be exaggerating a tiny bit there, but I cover a lot of ground today. If we fast forward to the end, I shot 79 frames, and ended up with 16 images to share here in the blog. I would say that was a very successful day, but how did it all start? Well, this was actually not even my idea for a trek. This one was initiated by one of my mentorship clients after we went up to Thunder Hill this past week for a sunrise. The colors weren’t all that great which prompted him to want to do another try. He was wanting to go back to Doughton Park and work on some compositions and was willing to get up for sunrise once again when the clouds would cooperate. He is learning the value of weather for outdoor photography.
Of course, after our morning at Thunder Hill, the weather kind of cleared up and we had a bunch of sunny days, but looking at the weather for Sunday, there was a good chance of clouds. Specifically, the kind of clouds that should yield some decent color in the sky which I wanted to expose him to. The high clouds were going to be replaced by low altitude clouds fairly quickly, but that should give us some definition in the sky to work with. It was looking like a good time to go so I texted him. He was all in and ready to go. I suggested that we meet there at 6:45am which should give us enough time to hike up the meadow to get to the location that I would usually go for sunrise.
I got to bed at a reasonable time and had my clock set for 4:45 so I would have time to get some breakfast and get some morning chores done down in the studio before I left. I guess I was sleeping well because at what I thought was probably 2am, Toni woke me up. It sounded like a bad joke because she asked if I needed to be up in a way that I just knew she was kidding with me. I looked at the clock and saw that it was 5:30. After some very quick half-conscious math, I determined that I had to get up right then to have a chance at leaving on time. I needed to be on the road by 6am. I got up and did the mad dash to get ready, knowing that if this was just for me, I would have stayed in bed and forgotten about it. However, I had somebody depending on me for my time, so I had no option. I skipped all the things that I needed to do in the studio and was on the road right at 6am. I had to get gas which put another delay in my morning. I was still doing fine with time, but then got behind a Mazda hatchback that was steady cruising on the two lane at a whopping 25mph. Did I mention that this was a 55mph zone, and solid double yellow lines for as far as I could see? I was never going to make it to Doughton in time at this rate. I didn’t want to illegally pass him, although it would have been as quick as passing a cyclist. I just blinked my headlights as we came up to parking lots where they could pull over and get out of the road. After about 3 miles, they pulled off and I was back on my way at a reasonable speed.
I pulled into Doughton three minutes late, which was just not like me at all. When I got to the parking area where I had said we would meet, I was the only one there. I got my gear out and ready wondering what had happened to John since I could usually set a clock by his arrivals. I sent a quick text, and in a minute after that I saw him rolling into the lot. He had been waiting for me at the other end of the park. We were only a few minutes off from what I had been hoping to start at, so we set out on our hike to get started.
The color had already started to kick off, and I could tell that this might be the best sunrise that I had seen at Doughton. There was just no way to get up to the top of the hill in time because the light was already at a state that I doubted would get any better. I looked around for a quick composition and found one just a bit back down the trail. I called John over and we got set up. So I could get him dialed in on a composition a little quicker, I pulled my camera out and got it set up to demonstrate the idea behind the silhouetted sunrise composition. By the time he got his camera mounted and ready to go, I had made the first exposure and showed him the composition I had found so he could use that as a starting point. I fine-tuned my composition a bit as he was starting to make exposures and we discussed the different ways of working the elements into a cohesive composition.
We stayed at that location until the color all faded and discussed the very quick lessons that I had gone through. From that point on, things slowed down considerably, and we were able to take our time and talk through the compositions. We went to two other locations over the next few hours and worked several different variations on compositions and I even introduced him to black and white photography to take advantage of the clouds that were moving into the area. He worked hard through the morning and around 10:30 or so, we were wrapping it up. I had shot two of the scenes we had worked on, and one of them appears above. Like I said, the sunrise was beautiful with a very prominent blue cloud right above us that just set it all off. The second scene that I shot was decent, but I had similar compositions that had turned out better, so I didn’t bother finishing the edit on that one. That was all that I had shot during the day because my time was spent primarily with John which was the whole reason that we were up here to begin with.
However, once John was satisfied with the day, I was left to my own devices. I had a brief thought to stay at Doughton and work the Fall colors, but most of the leaves had started to fall already, and there were crowds starting to arrive. It was more than I cared to deal with, so I got things packed up and headed out of the park. I could see a lot of traffic on the Parkway so I knew that this was not the place for me to be any more. I decided to head back into North Wilkesboro and check out a few places that I had seen the last time I was out in the Miata driving around. It really got me thinking about my November issue of Behind the Camera which I have just recently finished the rough draft of. Here I was leaving the place that everyone with a camera was going to, and my biggest reason was I didn’t want to shoot what everyone else was shooting. I had decided to forego the Fall Foliage in favor of finding some decay subjects to work with. There would be less people around as I did that, and there was a good chance that no other photographers were going to be interested in sharing subjects with me.
I was trying to remember the locations that I had in mind and ended up passing a location that I had been wanting to shoot since Toni and I moved into the area. Originally, this little church had a VW Bug, and two Plymouths parked by the trees. The Plymouths have been gone for a while and I’ve been wanting to get the Bug for a while. There was just nowhere to get out of the road which was why I had never stopped more than just to scout the place out. Over time, the barriers had faded along the shoulder of the road and there was now room for me to pull out of the road without blocking a driveway or road. I decided that since the weather was great for this type of photography that I would stop and give this car a try from the roadway.
Since there had been barriers up, I had figured that the owner didn’t want anyone snooping around his vehicles, so I planned on staying on the side of the roadway with the telephoto lens to get the shot. As I was building the camera, I could hear what sounded like somebody saying “hey.” I looked around but didn’t see anyone. I went back to what I was doing and heard it again. This time, I looked up at the top of the hill. Sure enough, there was a man standing up there asking what I was going. I quickly answered and assured him that I was going to be staying on the shoulder, off of his property. It was hard to communicate from that distance, so he came down the hill to me. We chatted for a bit, and ultimately, he gave me permission to access the property to get some photographs. I thanked him and went back to the truck to swap out the long lens for the 24-70mm since I was going to be able to get in closer now.
I worked several different compositions of the Bug and decided that I really liked it with a good chunk of the church next to it. The compositions with the door and the address marker seemed to balance out the composition quite well, and that was what I ultimately went with for an edit. I also moved in close to shoot some isolations which I hadn’t really thought I would be able to do. The Bug was a powder blue which always looks fantastic with rust. I dialed in a composition that included the turn signal which was bright orange as well as a large patch of rust that had similar, but darker tones. The blue balanced it all out, and the headlight was the much-needed visual anchor for the scene.
When I was satisfied that I had everything that I was going to want, I packed it all back into the truck and go turned around. From this point, I went on my mission headed out in the direction of Ronda and Traphill where I had found a little repair shop with some interesting old cars parked around back. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to anything with these because I hadn’t seen them long enough to determine what kind of access I would need. As I got closer to the shop, I could see that the bay doors were open, and I saw two guys standing just outside of them. I got turned around and pulled into the lot to ask them if they minded if I got some photographs of the cars. They were happy to let me poke around and told me that there was another old car on the side lot that I might have missed. I thanked them and parked out of their way before getting my gear out of the back.
I started off with the car that I had seen from the road which was an old Ford Fairlane. It was the front of the fender and the headlights that had caught my attention and that was what I had intended on capturing. However, I wanted to try and get an overall view of the car to start with. That was going to be harder than I was expecting because there were cars on either side of the Ford that I didn’t want in the composition. That forced me to go with a more stagnant composition, but at least I had a good angle on it. I minimize the chance of including one of the neighboring cars, I chose to go with the telephoto lens which has quickly become one of my favorite lenses for this type of photography. I ended up being pushed back right up to the building behind me, but I had enough room to get the lens to work the way that I needed it to.
Once I had the overall shot done, I moved into the front quarters to get the headlights. What I liked about these was how the fender protruded out at the corners with the bumper flowing into the fender. It was a very 70’s look and I thought that it captured the essence of the car quite well. I also liked the bits of debris that had gathered around the headlights. I struggled with the composition a bit because to get both headlights in the frame along with the pointy edge of the bumper, I was going to have a headlight centered in the frame which I didn’t want to do. As I was working out a composition that I liked, I did something that I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I cropped one of the headlights leaving only a half of it in the frame. This allowed the other light to go where I needed it, as well as getting the join of the fender and bumper. The cropped light turned into a curve element instead of a circle that actually worked in the composition. I was a little surprised at how well it worked out, but I really liked it. I chose to go with a black and white presentation of this one because the only real color involved was along the top and the right side. The color actually threw the balance of the scene off, so I just did away with the color entirely.
Still trying to work the scene to get a composition that worked, I raised the camera and framed up a vertical shot next. This one only needed one of the lights, but I had to make sure that I had that nifty angle at the front of the fender. Because this one included the fender and another batch of colors, I felt that there was much more visual balance here in color than the previous one. There was no need to convert this one to B&W, and the different colors seemed to help the story here. This was a challenging car to photograph, but I enjoyed working out the compositions and ended up with three images that I like from this one car that I had seen for a split second while whipping around the back roads a few days ago.
Feeling that I had all that I needed from that car, I turned my attention to the Torino that was parked a few cars down. I had not seen this one from the road, but there was something interesting about it. I loved the fact that the hood was open, showing evidence of what once resided in that engine bay. The yellow color worked well with the Autumn foliage behind it. I had a similar problem with this one as I did with the other car. It was parked right next to one car, and there was a truck parked in front of the car, along with another truck beyond the car, but very visible. If I shifted my camera to cover that truck with the front of the car, I would end up with a bright red Mitsubishi SUV. I decided to go with the white truck with no front end as a background because the red would pull too much attention. I further reduced the impact of the truck in the background by opening up the lens and letting the depth of field get relatively narrow throwing the truck into blur. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but I think it worked quite well overall. I did a little experimenting with a processing style on this one to try and pull the vegetation tones and the yellow of the car closer together. Originally, I didn’t have much hope for this subject, but in the end, this photograph is one of the better ones I shot from this location.
While I wished I had spent more time with the Torino, I moved quickly over to a purple hued VW Bug for my next subject. I’m sure you have noticed that I have a think for these little cars and have photographed a good many of them. They are plentiful in this condition, and immediately recognizable by just about anyone. At least for me, I can’t help but smile when I see one. I’m hoping that my photographs have the same effect on the viewers as well.
Sadly, I wasn’t able to get an overall photo of this car, and I’m not quite sure that I would have wanted to. The window tint was bubbled and purple which made the whole car look a little bit oddly colored. Instead of trying to get the whole car, I figured that isolations would do it more justice. I set off looking for curves and color within the car’s body. I knew that there were some very good compositions along the front of the car, so it was just a matter of finding the angles that worked for this one.
As I started to get the angles right, I started to see more possibilities for different photos. I decided to try a composition that I usually reserve for trucks from the 50’s. The basic shapes were pretty much all present to make that composition work, so it didn’t take long to get things organized just so. The different colors of the patina gave me just enough visual contrast to make me keep this as a color image even though I had thought originally that I would want it to be black and white to concentrate on the shapes more than anything. The colors just worked too well together in both of these compositions that I kept them both in full color with a similar edit to each for continuity. I’m still crazy about a VW Bug and have yet to meet one that doesn’t make me feel good.
By this point, I was feeling pretty accomplished with what I had shot so far. There was still one more car that was a possibility. In all fairness though, this was an ugly boat of a car. There wasn’t much rust on it, and it really didn’t fit my style. It was almost too young of a car to want to photograph, and I almost wanted to just pass it by, but something told me to give it a try. I walked around it and looked for interesting tidbits. The headlights held no interest for me, and neither did the taillights. The body lines weren’t interesting, and I was seriously thinking about writing a strongly worded letter to the designer of this car. The name plate on the trunk was the only thing that held interest for me, and that was primarily because of how the paint had faded above the script. However, there was a large part of my brain that was now preoccupied with a song. You might know it….it goes a little something like this….”Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take ya, Bermuda, Bahama”….and so on. It was just the bit of interest that I was looking for. I framed up the shot and got the image with a single try. There really wasn’t much left to chance here so I didn’t need to make multiple exposures with any changes.
Now that I had committed to finding the pretty among the ugly, I started looking for other isolations that would make sense. I came across these gills on the side of the yacht and figured maybe it really was an aquatic vehicle after all. The gills were very simple with not much interest around them. It was the runoff below them that caught my eye. The color of the car was going to make a nice background for these chrome bits, so I decided to frame this up as another composition. It was minimalistic and very simple in execution. During the processing phase, I did a color grade on it where I added warm tones to the highlights which made this work much better in the confines of color theory. I hate to admit it, but I really like this one. I still hate the car though.
At this point, I was pretty well done with the location. I had shot the three cars that interested me, and the one car that challenged me. I was also getting a little tired and a little hungry as well. I went ahead and packed up my gear and figured that I would head home, but I wanted to stop one more place before I called it quits. The last couple of times I’ve been through North Wilkesboro, I had seen a Triumph TR6 parked in the lot of a restoration shop in town. It wasn’t really decayed, although it was in need on restoration. It struck a chord with me since it looked like the distant relative of my Miata with a similar color, and that classic Brit convertible design. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do anything with it or not, but I wanted to give it a try since the weather was good and the business would be closed.
When I arrived, I took a closer look at the car. It was actually in really good shape and I was certain that it was going to have a fantastic restoration started at some point. I wasn’t interested in it all shined up though, I wanted to capture the before pictures. I grabbed my camera with the long lens because the chrome on this car was still in decent shape threatening to give away my reflection. I started off with the part of the car that interested me the most which was the back corner that completely identified the car. I already had a composition in mind, and I was making exposures in a matter of minutes. My intention was for this to be a color image, but when I got it into the computer it just felt better as a black and white photo. The red seemed too dominating in the frame, and by removing the color everything just seemed to fall into place much better. Not wanting to be done just yet, I started to look around the car for more compositions.
Probably the worst part of the car was the fact that the top was pretty well shredded. The rear windows were out of it, and the door glass was all rolled down. It was a chance for me to get an interior shot with relative ease. I decided to play around with that. Now, I don’t usually do interior shots and most of the ones that I have done have really failed as images. I just wanted to give this another try since I had a very nice view into the cabin. I started off using the top as a frame within a frame for the cabin which looked good but was a little confusing to look at. I changed things up and elminated the top and the trunk using only the driver’s seat as a foreground. That seemed to work much better. My next hurdle was the mirror which was aimed up at the sky. With the sky full of clouds, the mirror was showing bright white. There was no detail at all with the glass which I didn’t really care for.
I wasn’t able to eliminate the mirror from view, and my personal rules of conduct wouldn’t let me move the mirror to get a different reflection. I shot an HDR series so that I would be able to get any detail that was present within the mirror. Even underexposing the image by more than two stops didn’t bring any detail into the mirror. When I got the photos into lightroom, the darkest HDR frame just showed a gray mirror with no detail. There was no need for the HDR series after that, so I processed a single shot capture which worked fine except for the mirror. To address this, I created a mask over the glass and changed the hue to a bluer tone for the sky. I left it very undersaturated so that it would largely go unnoticed but add some needed cool color contrast to the scene which was mostly made up of warmer tones. In the end, I was happy enough with it and felt that it finally worked as an image.
My next stop on this little car was the front corner. The Triumphs have always had a very identifiable front, and I’ve always liked the deep offset wheels that they came with. While I was looking at the deep wheel with the very deep trim ring attached, I realized that the headlight trim ring was missing. This gave me the inspiration for this next photograph. This one is kind of expected from me these days because it includes the headlight in a very prominent fashion, and I’ve chosen to balance it with the wheel. The amber lights are similarly at odds diagonally with eachother creating another bit of visual tension.
While up at the front of the car, I couldn’t help but notice that the front emblem just said TR6 which identified the car very well. I wanted to get that badge in the photo somehow. I played around with the composition and finally landed on one that I thought would work very well. Even though most of the elements are on the left side of the frame, there is still enough visual balance because there is something to read on the right-hand side which takes longer to process than the shapes to the left. This means that the eyes will linger on the right as long as they linger on the left. this gives the visual balance that I was after for the image.
That pretty much wrapped up the photos that I wanted to get from the little Triumph. I stopped to take one last look around the lot to see if there was anything else that I wanted to photograph. There were a couple of interesting cars at the bay doors, but nothing that I would want to photograph unfortunately. I was about to pack it all in and then stopped and stared at the building itself. This is usually something that I do when I am here because the building itself interests me due of the different shapes that make it up. After many times looking at this building, I finally had an idea of an area that I wanted to photograph.
One of the most complex areas caught my eye. The soft light provided an interesting perspective on the different surfaces that started to play tricks on you. I used the long lens and started to frame up different compositions in an attempt to find something that would work. What I ended up with was a composition that was flanked by two windows and framed at the top by a larger window. The various pipes added to the lines and angles and the trim work at the tops of the walls gave the right amount of contrast. There was a bit of sky that was included for depth and scale, but there were power lines stretching through that section. I worked on getting the lines in a place where they would work with the existing geometry before pressing the shutter. Yep, that’s right…I intended on including the power lines which is something that I hardly ever do. They just seemed to fit in this circumstance and helped establish the shapes within the building. With the way that I included them, you don’t even really see them, but you would miss them if they were gone.
Since the sky was relatively bright and lacked contrast, I decided early on that this was going to be a black and white image. The mass of red bricks didn’t really help the photo either. By converting it to black and white, I would have more control over the contrasts and exposures within the frame. I could make the brighter areas pop with ease by getting rid of the color aspect. I left the windows on the lower floor very dark while the larger window at the top is situated so that you could see through the glass. This helped to open the top of the image up and have the sky make more sense. It was a fairly simple composition, but one that took a while to figure out.
This was the first image that I processed when I got them home because it was the one that I was most excited about. I haven’t been able to shoot angular architecture in quite a while and I have missed it. There is just something about all the hard lines and detail. Of course, I have to put my little decay spin on the compositions when I can. This building is an old car dealership from a very long time ago which is now starting to really show its age. This building has a lot of character and I’m so glad that I finally figured out a way to photograph it.
With that photograph captured, I was creatively spent. I had been teaching photography for hours, and then engaged in my own captures for just about as long. I had really run the gamut for the day. I started out shooting grand landscapes at sunrise, followed by trees and other landscape photos. That all eventually turned into decay photography where I photographed German, British, and American cars, and then rounded it all out with photographing decaying architecture in downtown North Wilkesboro. I shot color and black and white and once again spent more time using my telephoto lens than my standard one. I am slowly transitioning over to that long lens for a lot of my heavy lifting when it comes to this type of photography. Who knows the impact that this might have on my photography in the future. I’m interested to find out, that’s for sure.
I do hope that you have enjoyed this trek. As always, if there are images that speak to you, I would love to help match you up with a print of your very own. These prints can be done on photo paper, fine art rag paper, metal, or canvas. I can have them printed in just about any size that you can imagine so I’m ready to fill that space on your wall with some truly one-of-a-kind artwork. You can order directly from the website, or you can contact me for non-stocked sizes and media.
If you are interested in doing a mentorship session with me, I would enjoy speaking with you about that. I am currently fully booked for advanced mentorships, but I can take on hourly clients without a problem. This is the best way to completely customize your experience and learn specifically what you are wanting to learn. It is efficient education, and you can really cover a lot of material in a short amount of time during these individual sessions. Of course, if you just want a broad approach to learning parts of photography, you can always join me for a workshop. I have a decay workshop coming up in November as a matter of fact that still has a few openings left. There is still time to get signed up for this one and it promises to be a fantastic day.
If you are interested in why I shoot decay subjects, stick around for the next Behind the Camera when I answer that question. I’ve actually been doing a lot of thinking on that subject here lately. It has occupied a large portion of my mind now that the Fall colors are here and I’m just not all that excited to get out and capture them. It was only a matter of time before I asked myself why that was, and then there was a better than average chance that I would come about an answer to that question which I think I have done. Stay tuned to find out that answer in a couple of weeks.
Until next time….
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