Friday the 13th, 2025
You would think that by this point, I would have exhausted all of the decay subjects in a pretty good radius from home. I mean, Toni and I have lived out here for five years at this point and during that time, I have been really concentrating on my decay subjects and most specifically the rusty cars. Sure, there are several that I have been back to many times now, but I’m still finding new subjects to capture with my camera almost every time I go out. My treks are not that far flung either. Today, I drove a little less than 50 miles out which was maybe an hour away from home. In the grand scheme of things, that is just right around the corner. Now, the question is, what caused me to go in that direction as opposed to all the others.
Well, the answer is pretty simple, I received a tip from a friend that does a lot of traveling in the areas that I frequent. He has a real good understanding of what I like to photograph and will send me messages when he finds something that I might like to shoot. I received one of these messages a couple of days ago, and I think I had just finished working on the most recent photo of my Miata which I shot by the historic Shell station in Winston Salem. The message was pretty simple as he gave the road that he had spotted two different cars on and roughly where I could find them. The first car was a mid ’60’s Galaxie tucked away under a shelter not far from the road. The second was a Plymouth of some sort further North partially covered in vegetation just off the side of the road.
I considered these cars and the locations that he had specified because I have spent a good deal of time on that stretch of road over the years. Something about the Galaxie felt familiar, but I wasn’t able to place the Plymouth at all based on his description. I was just going to have to go out there and check it out sometime. As I’ve mentioned, the weather in the area has been a little confusing here lately because it will be bright and sunny right up until the time the rain starts to fall, and the rains come in just about every day it seems. These are not my favorite conditions because it is very hard to predict the light and harder to work a scene effectively with conditions that will change in an instant.
I had some pretty good luck the other day when I worked a pair of Ford Crown Victorias in an ever-changing lighting situation when it was supposed to be nice and cloudy. This gave me hope that I might be able to pull it off again should I be caught under a brighter sun than I had planned on. I still wanted to get the chances stacked in my favor of having good weather conditions, so I started to look at the forecasts. There was really no good way to tell the weather this far in advance, so I just planned on looking every morning and deciding when it might work out.
This morning, I woke up with Toni at a decent time, but not too early. It was sunny outside, but it was supposed to have been cloudy. As I was doing my morning routine, I checked the weather, and it was still saying cloudy with storms starting up shortly after noon. I knew that the area that I had received the tips in was in Alleghany County and I checked the weather there as well. It was pretty much the same, but it was showing the clouds coming in nicely around 11am with the rain starting at 1pm. That would give me a little bit of time to work, and it should be pretty decent lighting. If all else failed, and the sky was interesting, I could shoot on over to Doughton Park because the new access point for that park was close to where I was going to be operating.
With a plan in mind, I gathered my gear and headed out towards Sparta in search of the Galaxie. It was easy enough to find, and I was in very familiar territory. My hope was that this was a new addition to the landscape and something that I had not seen before. This happens fairly regularly which is why I spend so much time in familiar areas. It was just throwing me that Don had said that the car was next to barn in a lean-to type shelter. Every barn type building that I passed got an extra look from me, but I wasn’t seeing the car. I recognized the area though, and I still felt that I knew the car that he was talking about. It was about then that I came up to a large commercial metal building with a shelter on the front of it. Just in that shelter was a 4-door Galaxie just as I had seen it many years ago. It was an interesting car, no doubt about that. However, it was tucked into a metal cage with a doorway right at the rear quarter panel. There was no way to get a decent composition of the car, especially in the bright sunlight that was blasting down on me. I considered some isolations, but the car was in too good a shape for that with no rust and just minimally faded and oxidized paint. There looked to be a lot of chicken droppings on it, but that wasn’t all that interesting photographically speaking.
After about a minute of pondering the car, I decided that it wasn’t really worth photographing which was the same conclusion that I had arrived at several other times when I had stopped to look at this car. I still had another car to look for a few more miles up the road. While I was traveling, I passed by an old pickup by a small ice cream shop that I had photographed years ago with some moderate success. I thought about doing another photo of it, but the lighting wasn’t nearly as good as it was last time which made me dismiss the idea of getting it again. A bit further up the road I saw a 5-window pickup sitting in a gravel lot right next to a fence which caught my eye. Even in the bright sunlight, the patina was really awesome and reminded me of a Dodge panel wagon that I shot in North Wilkesboro a while back. The setting wasn’t good at all, but I might be able to get some isolations with it. I was hoping that the lighting would get better, so I just continued on in my hunt for the Plymouth on the side of the road partially hidden from view. It was like a treasure hunt in many ways, and I was dead set that I was going to find the treasure.
I then saw another GM truck tucked into the woods. It was yellow and surrounded by green trees which looked kind of cool. It was a work truck and had no bed on it which makes compositions kind of awkward. There was also really strong dappled light on the truck which made it all the more difficult to really photograph. I just decided that I would check this one out on the way back later in the day. I knew that I was getting close to the area where I needed to start looking for the Plymouth. I really wanted to see what this was going to look like because cars that are partially covered do make for interesting subjects this time of year because you can really tell how long they have been left sitting. The other end of the spectrum is that they are so covered that there isn’t enough to photograph. Those are the times I have to come back in the Winter when the vegetation has died back revealing the vehicle. I really wanted to know which end of the spectrum this particular car was going to fall into.
After I passed my landmark, I started counting miles which Don is usually pretty good as relaying to me. This time he was a little off because instead of six to seven miles, I think it was like three miles past the landmark before I was surprised to see the nose of a Plymouth emerging from the trees. This had to be what he was talking about. One of the first things that I noticed was that it was bathed in full sun and it was really bright. However, there was an open driver’s door that really caught my eye and attention. I was passing it before I could react and slow down, so I got turned around at the next place I could. When I got back, I slowed and looked at the car again. It was relatively isolated in the yard despite there being a bunch of other cars from the late 90’s scattered about. There was a driveway leading up to a shop and a house which I pulled into. I noticed the “No Trespassing” signs posted and parked in the middle of the driveway to go up to the front door. I wasn’t sure if this was the main house or not because there were actually three different structures on the property. It looked like a main entrance, so I went with that. I rang the bell, and it was a nice and loud bell which made me very happy. There was no movement inside that I could hear and no signs of life around on the property. I waited for the bell to finish chiming and gave the occupants a minute or two to come to the door. With no answer and no noise within, I went back to the truck.
There was no way that I was going to be able to work this car without getting permission because of all the signs posted. Or was there? Rule #1 of roadways is that there is a shoulder that is considered easement and for public right of way. It is usually ten feet on either side of the road. The car was about 30-40 feet off the road and angled in a way that I was going to shoot from near the road anyway. I could do that without technically trespassing, and if the owner did come out, I would use that opportunity to talk with them and try to get permission. There was a gravel pull out on the other side of the road where I could park the truck close by. I like to be visible when I am working around a property that I haven’t contacted an owner about. I want there to be no way that neighbors would question what I was doing there.
Once I got parked, I pulled out the camera and loaded up the standard zoom lens with a polarizer. For giggles, I checked to see what the composition would look like from across the street which would keep me well off of the property. I could have gotten the shot but would have had to swapped out to the telephoto lens. The compression would have flattened the image more than I wanted, so that wasn’t a great option for me. I needed the perspective distortion of a slightly wider-angle approach. With that in mind, I crossed the street and set up right at the edge of the road. The first couple of cars that passed by told me that I was a bit too close, so I moved in a bit closer to the car but made sure that I was still within the easement. I liked the way the car was looking at this distance and framed up a shot that included the small tree to the left for a bit of a framing element within the frame.
When I had the exposure all figured out and was able to move the composition around, I tried a few other approaches as well. I ended up shooting a total of 16 frames on this car with the one you see above being number seven. It was the final one that included the tree to the left and was shot as the clouds were covering the sun to reduce the contrast on the scene. That was the lighting that I had been waiting for, so once I had that, I was free to work on other compositions. I went with a tighter crop and slightly different angles for the subsequent shots. Looking at the rear of the camera I liked these much better than the one that included the tree, and I thought that I had what I wanted after the clouds blocked the sunlight once more.
It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that the closer crops felt too much like a postcard on the large computer screen. The car was filling up too much of the frame which normally is a good thing. I have said many times before to fill the frame with what you like, but there are times when negative space is a much better option. Since there was only the single subject, it looked static when it filled the frame. By having it fill a small fraction of the frame and having the tree (the Power of And) as a complimenting element, the composition became more dramatic and told more of a story. It was still that open door that made the photo for me and if it weren’t for the lush greenery blocking the rear of the car, it would not have been nearly as effective of a composition.
How effective was it as a composition you ask? Well, I thought it was very strong, especially after changing the aspect ratio to 16:9 to really direct the eyes to the car. My opinion was a bit jaded since I had come up with the composition. The answer as to how effective the photo was, came when I sent Toni a picture of the screen as I was working on the processing to show her the car that I had gone out there for. Her response was a simple “Oh em gee!” I wasn’t quite sure that that meant and as I was asking for clarification, she came downstairs. I really thought that she was going to tell me something that she had just heard that surprised her, but she started off by saying that the photo that I had sent was officially her favorite of my old car photos. This is significant because she usually doesn’t really care much for my rusty car photos but has found a few that she likes. This one was her absolute favorite and really made an impact. For this simple photo to have that kind of effect on Toni, I have to imagine that it will be a very successful photo in my collection. She is rarely mistaken about the initial impact of a photo. If I’m being honest, her reaction made me like the photo better than I had originally, and I liked it pretty well to begin with. Let me know what you think about it.
With having a limited area to work for the photos of the car which I later was able to identify as a Dodge Polara, I decided to pack it in and check out some of the scenes that I had gone past on the way here. I didn’t want to overstay my welcome here, and I had what I was pretty sure was going to work as a photo. I drove a bit further down the road and got turned around to go and check out the truck in the gravel lot. The sun was still out really bright, and I saw a lot of signs indicating “Keep Out”, “No Trespassing”, and “Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be riddled.” OK, I might be exaggerating on that last one, but there was an indication that they wanted nobody on the property. I looked up at the shop and it didn’t look like anyone was there. I pondered my options with the truck and except for a few isolations, I really saw no compelling compositions. It was not worth going up to the shop and pleading my case for some isolations that would be very similar to others that I had in my collection. If I could have gotten something unique with the location, then I would have given it a try.
For now, I was deciding that the sky was looking better than the light upon the landscape which meant that I needed to focus on photos of the sky. I had been wanting to use my 14mm lens for a while now and I knew several compositions at Doughton that would allow it and give me the opportunity to get a lot of the sky in the frame. I decided to change gears and head out to the park to finish out the day. I guess you could say I started suffering from ADD and started to chase squirrels instead of finding my way to the park. I eventually ended up back on the road I had been on going further North towards Virginia. I didn’t really have a destination in mind, and the light wasn’t really looking all that great either. There was something calling for me, I just didn’t know what it was.
I passed by the Dodge that I had spent time with earlier and went past the area that I had turned around in before. I was in an area that I kind of recognized, but I wasn’t sure if I had been up this far before. I just kept looking for something that might catch my eye. There was a lot of potential out here, that is for sure, but nothing that was presenting as a photograph. I just kept driving and started to really consider how far I was willing to go before turning around. I’m not licensed to exist North of the Mason Dixon line and anytime I start heading North, I get nervous. I just decided to go where the wind took me and however far that might be.
I don’t know how far that turned out to be, but eventually I spotted what I immediately recognized as a mid-70’s Honda Civic sitting on the side of the road next to a building. I know that these are not the most popular cars among those that like my rusty treasures, but I will always have a soft spot in my heart for these early Hondas. You see, my dad had a ’77 Accord when I was still a toddler and he replaced it with a 1984 Accord which I actually learned to drive stick in. A friend of mine in high school had a ’76 Civic that we got running and took it for a few spins around his neighborhood as we planned on doing a restoration on it. These old Hondas are almost an illustration of my childhood and formed my love for Hondas which I have had many as an adult. I talked a bit more about this when I found an Accord hatchback on the side of the road in Yadkin County and photographed it early last year.
Anyway, you can tell that I have a very deep connection with these old Hondas, so I was excited to see this one sitting there. I pulled off into the parking lot to look at the scene critically to make sure that it would work as a photograph. The building that it was parked in front of was kind of bland, but it did fit my definition of a decay subject because there was a large opening beneath the roof where the siding of the building was missing. It was also in a state of decline that fit the look of the Civic parked at the corner. There was enough here to make a story with a photograph or two. I also did a quick look for any signs warning that I shouldn’t be here. After I was satisfied that there were no such warnings, I parked the truck next to a trailer in full view of anyone around and I got the camera back out.
I started off with the standard zoom and a polarizer to get things rolling. I moved over to the far side of the car which had the best patina on the paint for the most interest. It also allowed me to include the side of the building that most interested me with the missing siding under the roof. I worked out a basic overall composition and then opened up the zoom a bit more to allow for some perspective tweaking in post because I was seeing some really bad converging verticals that I didn’t like for this composition. I knew it would be an easy fix in post, but I needed to shoot with that in mind which meant overshooting the composition for cropping room after the transform tool was used. It is all about getting it right in the field for how you plan on working the image.
I ended up shooting five frames of that composition as the lighting and clouds changed up within the frame. I liked the photo, but I felt that it was just a tad boring as it included the full length of the building. Not only did that make it a little stagnant, but I also felt that it took away from the importance of the Civic in the frame. I knew that the yellow color was going to be a saving grace for the car as that color would pull the eyes to it easy enough. I still didn’t want to have a confusing composition which meant that I needed to streamline it a bit. Zooming in wasn’t the answer as I was missing out on the portion of the building that I thought really told part of the story. I had another idea that I thought might work though, so I flipped the camera on its side for a portrait orientation and framed up another composition. I liked how this was looking but I was having a hard time getting the perspective that I wanted.
At 24mm, (the widest for that lens), I could only get the perspective on the car that I liked by getting in so close that I was clipping the front and rear of the car. In order to have it all fit in the frame, I had to be too far back, and the car lost the impact. This was a simple fix, but one that I usually won’t do with automotive photography. I went back to the truck and grabbed the 16-35mm lens and swapped that onto the camera. I placed it back on the tripod which was still in the position where I liked the perspective, but the crop was too close. With the wide-angle lens on, I was able to rack it out a bit more than the standard zoom and fit the whole car in the frame while keeping the perspective. This was looking fantastic, but I was seeing some exposure issues with so much of the sky in the frame. That was another easy fix as I went back to the truck and grabbed a 3-stop soft ND grad to help control the sky’s exposure.
I also changed the aspect ratio of the camera to a 4:3 which is something that I have started doing with all of my vertical shots because the standard 3:2 aspect ratio is usually not flattering for a vertical composition. This allows me to better gauge where the frame is so that I can compose more efficiently. This little trick has worked wonders for my vertical compositions since I started doing it a while back. I highly recommend that you give it a try when shooting vertical.
There were another six frames shot with this composition as the lighting changed, and the clouds moved around. I was really loving how it was looking in the image review and felt that this was going to be a much stronger composition than the horizontal one. In the end, I think it was my favorite shot of the day, and it was well worth the two trips to the truck for gear adjustments that were needed to get the shot. Once I had it in the bag, I went back to the truck to switch out lenses one more time because I knew that I wanted to get some isolations which were going to be better with my telephoto lens.
As I got back to the truck there was a Honda SUV pulling in and the lady driving it started to engage me in conversation about the car. I was pretty sure that this was going to be her car by the way she was talking, but her tone and body language didn’t indicate that she was concerned with me being there, so I just rolled with the conversation and told her about my history with these old Hondas. As it turned out, this was her late husband’s car and the one that she had learned to drive stick in many years ago. It had remained in the family all these years and there had been talk about her kids getting it and doing a bit of a restoration on it. One of her daughters was top on the list but has been so busy that the car has just sat there waiting patiently. Pam has no intention of selling the car because she is still very much attached to it. She would be happy to see one of her kids take it but is very hesitant that another buyer would treat it right. I have to say that I completely understand where she is coming from and I would be the exact same way.
We had a nice conversation about how I like to take photos of cars in this condition not because they make great photos (they do), but because it brings to mind all the history that brought them to where they are at the moment that I am shooting them. I got to explain my connection with Wabi-sabi and found that she understands the concept fully because she had fallen in love with a scene that included a mailbox with some tall weeds around it. We agreed that most folks would see it and dismiss it as needing some lawn care rather than appreciating it for the atmosphere that the scene created and the different stories that came to mind with such a simple scene.
Not only was the car special to her, but the building was as well. She had been in the area her whole life and this was a gas station that her late husband had run some 50 years ago. She went on to tell me that after she had graduated beauty school, she had opened up a salon downstairs in the building. It really was amazing that she had so many different connections with these two subjects that I had been working with. Having that knowledge allowed me to more effectively relate the car to the setting and it all really made sense to me in a way that I hadn’t been able to articulate before.
It was such a nice talk and by the time we were done she gave me her full blessing to photograph the car and actually thanked me for loving it in much the same way that she did. The talks with the owners are often some of the best parts of the trek for me. Not only did I get a bit of insight into what I was shooting, I was able to connect with it on a deeper level because I actually knew some of the background. This always motivates me to capture more of the essence of the vehicle. That was just what I was wanting to do at this stage because when it comes to the intimate captures of a subject, that is where the stories really get told.
There were a few details on the car that I felt defined the car more than others. These were the signal lights on the front bumper and the CVCC badge which indicated the combustion technology that Honda was using. These were the things that always caught my eye with these Civics. I also liked the hood vents which were rather unique to this model as well. The funny thing about the car was the 5-star wheels which I didn’t really care for, and Pam let me know that they were put on against her better judgement many years ago. We both agree that the stock steel wheels would have been better, but at least these were period correct for the car in the late 80’s or early 90’s. That was generally when these cars were getting modified by their owners. All of these little details were things that I wanted to focus on with the car, and they would drive the compositions to follow.
It is worth noting that after dismissing a horizontal composition with just a section of the building behind the car. Since I now knew the importance of the building, I felt more compelled to include it with the car. I went with the same angle, but I increased my distance away from it to make use of the perspective of the telephoto lens which did wonders for how the elements interacted together. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized why I wasn’t overly satisfied with this basic composition earlier on in the day. Looking at it on the screen, I was seeing lush green grass with a vibrant yellow car parked in the grass. The wall of the building was white, but reflecting the blue of the sky, but not in a way that really provided enough color contrast. Essentially, the photo was very heavy at the bottom with all the color which was not balanced at the top of the frame. It was a very simple fix to deal with that as I just converted the photo over to black and white. This changed the balance of the image and brought everything in line with what I would want to see in terms of that balance. Black and white also gave me the chance to really work on the contrasts with the patina of the car which gave it so much personality.
There was no doubt about it that the passenger side was the best side for this car. I tried a few compositions from the driver’s side, but it was rather boring in comparison with very little patina showing. It was just a nice little yellow car sitting at the corner of the building. While it was the scene that had drawn me here in the first place, the view from the passenger’s side was much more compelling of a photograph with a lot more story within the frame.
After a while I had exhausted what I could come up with to photograph with this car. I was very satisfied with what I had captured and that translated into 41 frames for the day. From the Civic alone, I had only shot 25 of those frames which resulted in a tremendous hit rate considering the light. The Dodge that I had shot before was not nearly as prolific in keeper images, but my overall hit rate was still quite good. With the rain starting to fall, I decided that it was time to head home and see what I had. My thoughts as I reconsidered what I had shot were that I was going to have three to four keepers, but I was essentially twice that upon completion of the session.
It had turned into a great day in the field, and it was all thanks to a tip that put me back in an area that I had been before and then took me a little beyond. I can’t discount the importance of tips in what I do as far as locations and subjects to shoot. Even though only one out of the two tips panned out, it put me in an area with lots of potential as well as finding this little Civic which I’m still very excited about. I hope that you have enjoyed the little journey through Alleghany County and the images that I have shared here. As always, if any of them speak to you and you would like a print, please let me know as I would love to match you up with the perfect print either through my gallery store, or through a quick discussion for larger special order prints on a variety of media.
I actually had the opportunity to do some printing this morning of a couple of my photos in a 13×19″ size. It was so satisfying to see them come off the printer and looking so much better than they do on the computer screen. I’m telling you, there is just no substitute for having a physical print in your hands to look at. The photo just starts to take on a life of its own. It really is amazing, and I love being able to share my visions in that format whenever I can. I can assure you that any print that you select from my catalog will impress you and provide many years of enjoyment and conversation as it hangs on your wall.
If you have any tips of locations around Western NC, let me know. I’m always looking for new subjects to photograph and as we have seen here, once I get into an area, I am likely to find even more to work with.
Until next time…
