Hang on, I’ll Go Get the Rat Rod

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

I had just settled into photographing an old Ford that was giving me some problems when Slick came over to let me know he was heading over to the shop.  I thanked him again for the opportunity to capture some images of his collection.  He stopped and turned back to me and said quite matter of factly… “Hang on, I’ll go get the rat rod for you!”  Well things just turned interesting, but I’m way far ahead of myself here.  Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

You might remember my last trek which took me into the area of North Wilkesboro where I met a gentleman who was going to let me photograph his GMC truck behind the house.  Those photographs never quite developed because I lost the clouds too quickly.  My plan was to come back out here the next cloudy day that we had.  As luck would have it, the clouds were back in the forecast for this morning, and looking at the cloud forecast, there should have been a mix of high and mid-level clouds which should yield some decent texture.  I made plans to get up kind of early so that I could monitor the sky because I was going to need to call before I went out there to make sure that he was home.  Well, the clouds were there, but it was more of a general overcast than the texture rich clouds that I was after for this particular shot.  There were other subjects that I could work while I was on the property that didn’t need the texture, but I wanted to be able to get the main reason for going out there before I started to work on the other vehicles.  I also didn’t want to keep bothering the owner by going out there time and time again.  I hadn’t really worked out a plan B for the day since I was sure that I was going to be getting that GMC truck photographed.  That was unfortunate because there was really good light and I wanted to make use of it.

I figured that I would just drive out in the area looking for some targets of opportunity as the clouds changed their look through the morning hours.  I grabbed my gear and set out on my way.  I decided to finish checking out the rest of the road that I hadn’t had the chance to drive through yet since I ended up spending so much time at the house with the GMC.  I saw a bunch of new things that I hadn’t seen last winter, but nothing was jumping out at me as a photograph.  I eventually started to make my way back to the area where I was hoping to end up.  If you will recall, there was a property next door that had some interesting Volkswagen Bugs scattered throughout the property.  There was one in particular that had caught my eye the other day and I didn’t need an interesting sky for this one.  I just needed the clouds which I had.  I figured that by working that property, I would be relatively close to that GMC so if the clouds decided to show up the way I needed them to, I would be right there.

When I arrived in the area, I checked out the Bug once again.  It was a beautiful example with lots of patina, and lichen since it had been parked under a tree.  It was in front of a shed and it looked like I would be able to get a composition or two with it, and I knew that I would have no problem finding isolations on it.  I just couldn’t get in close enough to really tell what I was going have to work with.  I needed to get permission from the owner before I did anything else.  The car was situated between a house and a trailer, neither of which were occupied.  There were two houses up the only driveway that was attached to the property.  I pulled into that driveway and started up to the closest house.  I got out and knocked, but there was no answer.  The spider webs indicated that this house wasn’t lived in, so I made my way up the driveway to the next house.  I found somebody here and he was, in fact, the owner of the entire property.  He was happy to let me get some photographs of the car and with that, I was back on my way down to the road again.

I took stock of the cars that I passed going back to the road since there were more potential subjects along the driveway.  None of them had that look that I was after though.  I turned into the old driveway between the house and the trailer which put me very close to the car I was wanting to photograph.  I got out and started to look at the car critically for the first time.  The overall shots were going to be difficult because of how the branches were drooping down over the car.  It could be done, but I wasn’t sure that it would be a strong enough composition to really work for me.  It was the isolations that I was really after on this car more than anything else, so that was what I started to look for.  I could see a couple right away, and it was enough to grab the camera out of the truck.

I moved over to the front of the car and started to formulate compositions growing on what I had learned about photographing these cars here recently.  I knew of several angles that I really liked with these Bugs and that was what I went for.  The patina on this car was fantastic, and actually went far beyond just rust.  The moss and lichen on the car added such great textures to the surface and I knew that by the time I got done with the images, you would be able to reach out and feel that surface texture.  I just looked for lines and visual anchors that I could use to really make the images pop.  Because of the extreme textures, I wasn’t happy with the entire front end as I had done before, so I simplified it even more and focused on just headlight which was balanced out with the bumperette.  The photograph was really looking great in the camera and I was hoping that it was going to turn out that well when I got home.

I continued working around with the different areas of the car and finally settled on the driver’s side fender where there was a broken parking light.  I love capturing broken lights because it just adds another dimension to the decay of the vehicle.  This one still had a sliver of the lens attached which helped give a clue as to what the viewer was looking at.  The rest of the image was all about textures and the lines of the hood and the fender.  It was a simple composition and one that I had not shot before but is just seemed right with this car.  I only shot a couple here with slightly different exposure settings because I wasn’t exactly sure what would look the best.  I ended up going with the one that was shot at f/18 with the focus on the light housing.  I had some that were shallower depth of field and some that were a little deeper, but I liked this mix of sharp and blur.  It was just enough blur to push your eyes back to the visual anchor, but not so much that the texture was lost.  It was a creative choice that I wasn’t sure how to make in the field because the LCD can only show so much.

When I had finished getting this composition, I moved around and did a few other isolations that I thought might be of interest, but in the end, they were just too complicated with the different textures on the car.  It was these two that I liked the best out of them all.  I did try to get an overall shot of the car before I left though.  I really did love how the car looked there, but I was having a hard time making a compelling image of it.  I tried several different locations to shoot from with different focal lengths.  Nothing was really exciting me until I started to include more of the tree and the pile of wheels and tires over to the left.  That really looked good on the LCD review, and I committed to that composition and really fine-tuned it.  I probably spent the most time on that one composition than I had on all of the isolations combined.  I was actually really excited about it because I had so many compositional tricks included that there was no way I would fail at making an image out of this.

Well, I guess you could say that I failed.  When I finally got the images uploaded to the computer, I saw that there was very little color contrast between the car and the surrounding landscape.  The wheels and tires were much less interesting when viewed in full size.  There was so much going on with the overhanging branches that the car was getting lost in the frame.  In short, it was just no good and there was nothing that I could do to rescue it.  It was just too complex of a scene, and I saw no reason to try to do anything else with it, so that composition was tossed aside in favor of the isolations I had shot earlier.

When I was finishing up with this subject, I stopped to look at the sky.  The textures that had started to appear in the clouds were gone now and there was just too little interest in the sky for the composition that I had in mind for the GMC.  It was looking like that wasn’t going to work out today at all, so I started to set my sights on other subjects.  I knew of an old Ford truck out behind of a house a short distance from here that I thought might make for a great photograph, so I went over there to see if I could get permission.  Well, the house which I thought was occupied looked a lot more vacant when I got up close to it.  I knocked on the door, and it sounded like the house might just collapse in on itself.  There were no sounds inside to indicate that anyone was home, so I just decided to leave this location.  It was a shame too, because from the door I was knocking on, I could just about reach out and touch the truck that I was wanting to photograph.  But there were “No Trespassing” signs all over and I knew better than to try and push my luck here.

I just started to drive aimlessly at this point trying to think of places that I could go that might have good subjects for me.  The only thing that I could think of was to head out to the area of the Speedway off of 115 because there was a large number of old cars sprinkled around that area which I might be moved to photograph.  It didn’t take me long to get out there and I spotted an old Hudson up on a hill with a few old trucks parked next to it.  They were all on the side yard of an old house which also interested me.  I was going to need permission to get up there and do any photography though.  The house was obviously vacant but there was a body shop next door with similar vehicles out front.  I figured that the property owner was probably one in the same.

I drove over to that parking lot and had a hard time determining where the office door might be, but I did see a sign that had the phone number on it.  I did the easiest thing and called that number on the sign and a gentleman picked up the phone. I started off by asking if they were open which they kind of were.  I then went into asking about the trucks on the neighboring property.  He said that he owned all of that and that I could take some pictures up there.  I thanked him and pulled back out from the parking lot to get parked on the shoulder of the road near the trucks I was wanting to photograph.  I already had the 24-70mm lens attached so that was what I left on the camera.  I brought my bag just in case because I really didn’t know what I was going to be able to do with these trucks.  They were all so close together, and there was a trailer blocking the Hudson which prevented me from getting a pretty decent shot of the house with the Hudson in the foreground.

I wasn’t going to complain because I had an opportunity to work this scene and I didn’t want to waste it.  I started off by doing some isolations of both the Studebaker and the Ford.  I wasn’t overly happy with any of the photos that I was getting unfortunately.  I tried to work something around the Hudson, but to no avail.  The Chevy pickup didn’t really hold any real interest for me and that left me realizing that it was the just the Ford and the Studebaker that I was really interested in.  They were parked side by side, so the only way to really get an overall capture of them was to include them both in the frame.  That was what I set up to do.

I tried out several different camera locations which effectively cropped out the Chevy to the right and allowed for a good overall balance of the scene.  I was going to have to include the sky in this composition, so I was happy to see that there was some texture to it.  I didn’t need nearly as much as I was going to need for the GMC, so I was glad that I was here under this sky, and not there.  The final piece of the puzzle was to get the hood ornament on the Studebaker positioned within the trunk of the tree so that it showed up better in the image.  Right about the time that I figured out the composition, I noticed that the sun was popping out.  This lit the scene up quite nicely and helped to keep the exposure of the sky under control without the need for any grad filters.  I managed to fire off a handful of shots as the light was changing and figured that I was finally onto something with these trucks.

My phone also rang at this point, and I thought that I recognized the number as the property owner, so I answered it, fully expecting it to be somebody from Medicare USA wanting to sell me an extended service contract for my vehicle.  It was the property owner, and he let me know that he was watching me taking pictures, but he didn’t say it in a way that put me on alert that I might be doing something wrong which led to a bit of confusion.  He cleared that up quickly when he said that he had more old trucks and some cars at his house across the street, if I wanted to come and shoot them.  I looked out that way and could see the back end of an old truck covered in rust.  I was intrigued and couldn’t recall if I had seen this collection before even though I had been up and down this road several times over the last year.  Of course, I was very interested and said that I would be over there shortly.  I also took the opportunity to let him know about the free print that I offer property owners and said that I would bring him a business card when I came over.  Since he said he was on his way out, I didn’t want to keep him waiting on me.  I was pretty well done with this group of vehicles anyway because I just couldn’t figure out compositions that would work with them being in such close proximity.

I picked up my gear and started across the street.  He had gone back inside the house, so I knocked on the door.  He was there in a few seconds, and I gave him my card.  He invited me over to his side yard where his garage was and showed me the really nice collection that he had.  I was already seeing a bunch more possibilities here than I had seen at the location across the street.  I’m sure that I had seen this before driving through the area but just never really saw the potential that I was seeing standing in the middle of it all.  I thanked him profusely for sharing his property with me and I got ready to go to work.

The first subject that I wanted to work with was the early 40’s Ford that was sitting in the middle of the yard.  I loved the look of this truck, and it was by far the best example of a rusty subject that I could see.  No matter what, I was going to have to get this one photographed in some way, shape, or manner. There were some immediate problems with the composition that I had to work out though.  First and foremost was my available backgrounds.  If I were to have shot it from the passenger’s side, I would have had to include a much newer truck in much better condition.  That just didn’t work for me.  If I shot it from the driver’s side, I had a house to contend with as well as several vehicles which were parked on the side of the house.  There was also the garage a bit further to the left with a fence and staircase for a deck between the buildings.  This was equally as disappointing for a composition, but it was easier to deal with.

One of those concepts that I love to teach with forming compositions, especially in this genre is that your focal length can do a lot to make the background disappear.  I still had my 24-70mm lens on which was the perfect lens for the job.  It would allow me to get wide, but not so wide as to distort the shape of the truck.  I started to find that perfect position, and I’ll be the first to admit that it took me some time to work this composition out.  I could tell you about all that I had to do in order to make the truck cover all of the background clutter, but it might be easier to tell you what all is behind the truck.  To start with, I actually cloned out two eaves from the garage to the left because the left frame of the photograph lines up perfectly with the corner of the garage.  The passenger fender is just covering up the front of a white Camaro, and there are two other vehicles parked inbound from that car which are fully behind the truck.  The cab is covering a large house of two stories with the covered porch just barely covered by the trailing edge of the cab.  It took a focal length of 30mm to make this happen, and it also provided a very dominating front end which I was also after with this beast of a truck.  I had no choice but to include the fence, stairs, and latticework between the house and garage, but I was able to have the railing of the stairs kind of frame the corner of the fender so I made it work for the composition.  The bare tree above the truck completed the composition by adding a bit of drama to a lackluster sky.

That composition took a lot of working on to make it happen, and even after I got this one in the bag, I continued to make tweaks to see if I could change up the framing any to make the image any better.  Nothing else that I did really make that much of a difference, and the ones that I felt were better ended up having bits of the house, or of the Camaro peaking around the edges which I didn’t like at all.  This turned out to be the cleanest image of the bunch, but I do kind of wish I had tried it as a square crop now that I am looking at it on the computer.  That might have worked, but I’m happy with this one which is all that really matters.

Knowing that this old Ford was my favorite subject, I decided to look for isolations on it.  I tried to work with the name stamp on the hood, but that really didn’t work because there wasn’t enough contrast to the scene to pull it off.  I did like the wheel that was sticking out from the tire on the driver’s side and I started to look for things that I could do with that.  I ended up trying a longshot composition that included the shaded side of the truck leading off to a pair of trees on the other end of the yard.  The sky looked good in this direction, but I was going to have an exposure nightmare this this composition.  I would have liked to have used a grad filter, but there was just no way to get that applied without darkening the truck.  Looking at the histogram, I was thinking that I could get it all in a single exposure without having to bracket for an HDR blend.  I shot a few test shots like this to see how the image looked from a couple of different camera positions.  I ended up not liking any of them enough to do an HDR blend and decided to just move on.

A quick side note, this is where balance comes in for my photography.  You will remember that earlier I was convinced that I had a great composition with the Bug only to get home and realize that it didn’t work at all?  Well, this time I had a photograph that I didn’t think would work at all and actually gave up on it rather early on, just to come home and kind of like how it turned out.  It was a departure from my norm, and it showcased some of the attributes that I really loved about this old truck.  The trees and the sky became the focal point of the image while the truck was the very detailed foreground.  I ended up editing the better composition out of the group and was happy to see that I was able to recover all of the shadow and highlight detail that the camera had captured. It was at the edge of what I would feel comfortable in pulling out in post, but it worked magnificently well in my opinion which is why this image appears here as a keeper.

Something else happened while I was shooting this subject.  The property owner, who’s name happens to be Slick, came back out to let me know that he was going to the shop to get some work done.  I thanked him for letting me come over and photograph his toys and apologized for keeping him from his work.  He said it was no problem and just as he was turning to walk to his truck, he stopped and said, “hang on, I’ll go and get the rat rod for you!”  He had my attention, but I didn’t want to put him out.  I said that he didn’t need to do that, but I certainly wasn’t going to argue because I did love a good rat rod.  He said he would go get it cranked up and bring it back so I could do a little photo shoot of it.  OK, things were really getting interesting at this point.

While I was waiting, I decided to go ahead and grab some more photographs.  There was a blue truck just to the front of the old Ford I had been shooting (slightly out of the frame to the left in that second shot) which I wanted to try and work.  There wasn’t any real rust on it, nor was there a front clip but there were some interesting angles to it from the rear.  I ended up focusing my attention on a taillight on the driver’s side which grabbed my attention for being a dot of red in a sea of blue.  I got the camera down low to get the angle that I wanted and kneeled down behind it to get things dialed in.  While I was doing that, one of the cats that was responsible for rodent control came over to investigate what I was doing.  This cat had been getting increasingly brave with me and getting closer and closer.  She finally came close enough for me to introduce myself and before I knew it, she was nuzzling me and letting me rub her.  Then came that moment where I was still kneeling behind the camera and she paused, looked up at my lap, and meowed.  I knew what this meant so I patted my leg and up she came.  I now had a purr-box doing circles in my lap and just eating up the attention.  I didn’t let this interrupt my activities and just kept dialing in the camera while I was explaining the process the cat.

Ironically, I ended up spending a bit more time here than I normally would have and really figured that I had gotten a good image or two.  However, when I got the photographs up on the computer, none of them really looked all that great.  Oh well, I actually enjoyed the cat and that made this subject worth my time even though I didn’t get any photos of it that were worth keeping.  It was time to move on, and one of the cars that had caught my attention was the Camaro which had been carefully blocked from view by the old Ford truck.  This was a bit newer of a vehicle than I like to photograph, but there was no denying the shape of the plastic bumper that defined the entire generation of Camaros.  The car was white, but there was gray primer on the metal parts and a bit of rust shining through that primer which caught my eye.

I framed up the camera so that I had a nice composition with lots of diagonal lines that centered on the headlight opening.  I wanted to include the marker light which was still there for that added warm tone to balance out the blue hues of the primer and match the rust at the top of the fender.  I also wanted to get the fender flare right at the wheel.  To help bookend the composition, I included the wheel and the grill openings in the bumper for a bit of dark edging for the image which also helped draw the attention to the holes where the lights would have been.  It was the first time I’ve photographed a Camaro of this generation and I have to say that it was more fun than I had thought it would be.

I tried some compositions on the back of the car, but those were unsuccessful, and I ended up abandoning any further attempts on that car.  It was a beautiful car but there was very little of it that would work photographically in its current state.  I wouldn’t mind seeing this one when it gets restored though.  I’m betting it will be a nice one.  I was starting to wonder when Slick was going to be back with the rat rod and hoped that he hadn’t gotten sidetracked or run into problems with it.  I guess, even if he had, I had no right to complain because I was getting the best images of the day right here with what was present.  I was on a roll and having a blast.

Near the Camaro I found my next subject.  It was a Chevy pickup that looked to be the shop truck for his body shop.  It was red with a black hood and while it was in good shape was showing some signs of age which appealed to me.  I looked around the truck to see if there was a particular view that I really liked.  The part that really caught my attention was the emblem on the front fender with the double marker lights, and I liked the headlight with the black trim.  The black hood was also interesting as a contrast to the rest of the paint.  I started to work out a composition that featured all of these things and ended up including the wheel which I used to balance out the shape of the headlight.  That put the emblem just off center to the right, and I had a nice triangle with the black hood.  I really liked the composition but was a little concerned with the amount of red that was showing up and filling roughly a third of the frame.  It looked fine in camera, but I would have to see it in full size to really make a call.

When I got this one home, the red just overpowered the entire image.  There were really no cool tones to balance it out, and the chrome and black were just too neutral under the cloudy sky.  I wanted to have more contrast to the image as well, so I thought about doing a black and white presentation.  I applied a red filter during the conversion which lifted the red tones and started to work on the contrasts of the entire photograph using all of the tools available to me.  In the end, I had an image that had the right blend of tones, and I was able to pull out much more detail to the fender than the color image would have allowed.  In fact, you can make out paw prints on the fender which I kind of liked seeing here.  What started out as an image that I really liked, turned into one that I was not thrilled with, and then ultimately liked it once again, but for different reasons.  Losing the color really allowed me to focus on the shapes of the truck which I think were much more important than the color ever tried to be.

My next stop was a ’64 Chevelle which was the first year of this car.  It was also in quite good shape and had been primered at some point.  There was rust coming back through that primer which caught my eyes.  It happened to be on the front fender right around the name plate which reminded me of the composition that I had just shot.  It was a good time to give that one another try so I moved the camera into position and concentrated on the “V” shape of the front of the car using the headlights and the wheel as boundaries for the image.  The name plate went off in a strong diagonal highlighted by the surface rust which was just perfect.  The gray primer had shades of blue to it, which complimented the rust quite well.  The chrome just blended in with the cooler tones but was largely a neutral color in the composition.

I had only worked on this subject for a short time when I heard what I assumed to be a rat rod cranking up from across the street.  I was comfortable that I had the image that I was going to want from this car, so I moved over to the main yard and waited.  Sure enough, here came a truly badass rat rod turning into the yard.  It was a beautiful blend of ingredients with that perfect patina on it.  I was truly in love with this truck.  I was hoping that he was going to park it in front of the trees that I had shot from the side of the old Ford, so when I saw that was where he was going, I got even more excited.  This was going to be epic.

After he got it parked, he and his son gave me a quick tour of the truck.  There was so much to like about this one, and I was so happy that he had brought it by.  As we were talking about it, Slick’s wife and daughter came out to visit for a few minutes.  As it turned out, Mrs Slick was also a photographer and we talked shop for a few minutes.  It is always nice to run into another shutterbug in my travels and I have to imagine that it was her interest in photography that helped get my foot in the door when I made that initial phone call an hour or more ago.

I was looking forward to getting started on this subject because it was definitely ready for a photoshoot.  I could not have asked for a better parking job because there was a house next door that I didn’t want to include in my photograph.  He had parked the truck right in front of a trio of trees which allowed me to use all three trees while centering the truck cab right over the house in the background.  In order to do that, I was going to have to get really low which worked out just fine for this particular subject since it was quite low itself.  I still had the perfect combination of lens and filters on the camera which I had been using all day long.  I was able to get the shot framed up rather easily, but I had to go horizontal with the tripod neck and really spread out the legs to get the camera low enough.  Because of this extreme upwards angle, I was looking at a very bright sky in the background.  I was pretty sure that I was going to be able to pull the detail back out, but I wanted a bit of insurance for this one.  I went ahead and added a grad filter to bring the sky down a little bit.  That was the only change that I needed to make to the formula that I had been shooting all day long.

The exposure was looking fantastic, and the composition was very strong I thought.  After I had gotten several frames that I felt comfortable with, I started to look at other ways of composing this scene.  There was still one more tree to the front of the truck which I thought might fit into the composition.  The only problem was that even at 24mm I wasn’t able to get that tree in the frame.  I back up from the truck, but that didn’t give the right look.  I decided to swap out lenses and put on my 16-35mm for a bit more range on the wide end.  That worked out, and I was able to move in closer once again to get the right perspective on the truck as well as include the extra tree.  I shot a few frames like this and then the sun poked out a little more and gave me some wonderful light on the truck.  I thought that this was going to be the keeper image from here, but when I got back and looked at the image on the computer, I didn’t like how the extra tree looked…. well extra.  It just didn’t fit the vibe that I was going for and the more intimate capture with the three trees won out overall.

I was really loving this truck and while I was confident that I had a keeper image already, I wanted to get some isolation shots of it.  I started to look around to see what was available for me.  There was so much that really caught my eyes, but sadly most of those things were very shiny chrome. This is really problematic to photograph so I didn’t do a lot with that.  I did take a few interior shots that didn’t turn out because of the stubby nose on the truck.  The scaling just looked off, and I didn’t like any of those images.  I did pause at the tailgate because of the stamped Ford badge.  The white paint on the script had started to fade off, and there was a really interesting pattern that was developing in the paint on the tailgate that I saw a lot of potential with.

My concept for this image was really quite simple.  I was going to pretty much center the emblem and the frame up the rest of the image to include the blue background that would I adjust to a more teal look in post which would go with the very interesting rusty designs around the script.  I was going to let myself have a lot of fun with the editing here and there was going to be a bit of creative license taken with the processing of it.  I just needed a simple capture to get started and that didn’t take me long at all.  I just had to make sure that the camera was exactly perpendicular to the surface so that there was no perspective distortion or anything else wonky about the image.  Depth of field was very easy to achieve in this manner which I always appreciate.  The only filter that I used was my polarizer and I had switched back over to my 24-70mm once again which is great for this type of detail work.

As I finished up photographing the tailgate, I made another look around the truck to see if there was anything else that I wanted to capture.  As I was looking, I noticed that the sky was starting to blue up a little bit and that the sun was shining on the truck once again.  I still wanted to figure out a way to include the fourth tree, so I thought that I would try again.  This time, I left the standard lens attached and tried to elevate the camera a bit from where it had been.  I had to worry about the house that was in the background though which dictated a lot about my height.  What I found out was that even without the wide-angle lens, I could stretch out to 28mm which would make the house small enough to fit behind the roof line of the truck cab.  That was what dictated my shooting height, and it worked quite well.  The only other concern that I had was the house and power lines in the background behind the bed.  Again, the wider angle came in good here because that background was shrunk in comparison which made it much less obtrusive into the composition.  I was able to get all of the elements arranged in the frame in a way that I thought I had a great relationship between them, while still including the fourth tree.  Looking back on the image review, I was pretty sure that I was going to like this version better than the original one done with the 16-35mm lens.  As an added bonus, I had a taller perspective which helped the truck look lower than it had looked from the grass’ perspective.  The blue in the sky helped to bring the exposure down a little in the sky which meant that I didn’t need to slide in a grad filter as I had before.  This was just a much easier image all the way around to photograph.

I like this composition and the one that I had shot with just the three trees.  They are both similar, but I think that they have completely different vibes which has prompted me to include them both in this collection.  I like the in-your-face look of the first composition because it is just a direct way of conveying the story.  I also like the more open look of the second one, and with adding the higher perspective, there is a bit more emphasis on the entire build rather than just the motor and the chrome wheels.  I really love both of them and could see them both being equally good prints at some point.  By the time that I had captured this image, the clouds were thinning out too much for me to continue with any other photographs.  I was creatively tired at this point as well.  I had left the house with the intention of working on a shot that I had already figured out, and maybe a few others.  The reality of the day was I had shot 89 frames ranging from isolations to overall captures, with only one subject having been considered before I left the house.

It was an awesome day, but it had been taxing on me.  Remember, I had gone nearly two months without any real treks to speak of.  Here in the last week, or week and a half, I’ve been out on more treks than I can count and have come back with an enormous number of photographs.  These times are exciting and really fulfilling, but they can really wear me out when my creative mind is out of practice.  I know that this won’t last because either the weather will change, or I will lose my creative flow once again, so I will gladly ride this wave while I have it.  I am really loving the fact that I have been photographing so many new subjects here lately.  I’m making some great connections and can see so much else developing from these last few treks.

I do hope that you have enjoyed this trek and the resulting photographs.  Remember, if you have seen an image here, or anywhere else on this site that you really love and want a print of, I would be happy to make that happen for you.  You can either order directly from the gallery store, or we can discuss it over the phone or by email.  The latter option is the way to go for prints larger than 13×19″ as those are special order.  No matter what size you decide on, rest assured that you are going to get a print that represents the exact way that I wanted the photograph to be enjoyed.  There is just something beautiful about holding your own photographic print in your hand.

Don’t forget that I am now doing portraiture and would love the opportunity to work with you to get the exact style of photograph that you have always wanted.  Whether it is a simple headshot that you are after, or more of a fashioned themed shoot, I am ready to put all of my skills to work for you.  I’m still looking for some test shoots, so depending on you project, I might very well be able to do your session for free, or heavily discounted.  I’m ready to discuss these options with you, and to get the concepts for your photo shoot on paper, and eventually into the camera.  Just let me know what I can create for you.

If I don’t get a chance to come back here in the next few days, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.  We are just a few days away from it now, and I have a feeling that this will be my last trek before the Holidays.  I’ll be back on Monday with my top 12 most significant images of 2021 which should be a lot of fun to go through.  I’ll be honest though, there have been a few of these recent images from the last week or so that I really want to put in that list, but I just haven’t had the opportunity to live with them long enough to accurately make that call.  There might be a late in the game substitution though, so be sure to check out the list next week when it gets published.

Until next time…