Sunday, December 19, 2021
When I went to sleep last night, my plan was simple. I was going to get up around 8 or so and get the Miata washed before the sun was going to come out. Then I was going to get the 4Runner cleaned up in the afternoon. It was going to be about seven hours’ worth of chores, but the way that the weather was looking I was going to have a mostly sunny day after the early morning showers ended. The rain kept creeping later in the morning, but it was looking like I would be able to get started around 9 which was plenty of time to get it all done before the sun went down. Well, that was the plan at least.
When I woke up, it was raining, and the rain was scheduled to stick around now until about 11 or so. That was going to eliminate the chance of getting both vehicles cleaned up, so I started to play favorites for the afternoon. With some partly cloudy days coming up, I decided that I could leave the truck dirty since I would be taking it out for pictures soon enough. That meant that I would be cleaning up the convertible which takes much more time than the small size would indicate. I was worried that the sun would be a problem as I always try to wash it in the shade of the house to watch for water spots. Yeah, I’m that kind of picky with that car.
As I was waiting the rain out, I saw that the clouds were going to be sticking around for a bit as the rain was finishing up. I could see out to the West a hard division line in the clouds with blue skies over the mountains. It was going to be a quick transition from rain to sun and I would probably be stuck washing the car in the full mid-day sun which I didn’t care for. Seeing that the clouds were looking interesting, and the light was pretty decent, I decided that since I was looking at an afternoon wash of the car, I could spend the rest of the morning looking for some photographs. There were a couple of areas that I have been meaning to get into again, but I wasn’t looking to drive far at all since the interesting clouds were right here at the division between rain and clear skies. I was going to have to stick close to home and hope I could find something worth shooting.
I started out the road trip going out towards an area that Toni had spotted an old GMC truck behind a house. It was still raining, so I wasn’t going to stop to work on that just yet, but I could see a composition that was possible with the right sky in the background. While I was going back and forth on the road, I saw one of his neighbors which had a few VW Bugs on the property which were kind of interesting. I wasn’t quite able to figure out which house belonged to that property, but I had a good idea where to go in order to ask permission. That was going to have to wait for when it wasn’t raining though. I just kept on moving down the road on my way to North Wilkesboro. I knew of a couple of places that I might find something interesting to shoot in the existing conditions and wanted to get there before the light changed.
The first stop was a restoration shop on one of the main streets downtown. I had shot an old blue pickup truck there last year and had seen a parking lot full of interesting vehicles earlier in the week. I was hoping that I would be able to get one or two of those photographed in some fashion. When I pulled into the parking lot it was almost as if they had closed up shop. The parking lot was mostly empty and none of the cars that I had seen out there before were anywhere to be seen. There was just one car that was interesting to me, and that was a Ford Torino which was parked by the neighboring building. It wasn’t rusty at all and was actually in decent shape. It just had a certain styling about it that spoke to me. The problem was, I just didn’t really see a composition with it, especially since it was parked next to much newer car which didn’t fit. I considered it briefly and ultimately decided to keep on looking.
I ended up on some back roads between 18 and 268 which ultimately brought me to a location by the National Guard Armory. As I was getting turned around to go back and try another street, I could see what looked like a Jeep sitting in the tall weeds. I pulled into the driveway of the small building where it was parked and looked closer. It wasn’t a Jeep at all, but a Willys which is just that much cooler. It was obstructed from view from the weeds, and generally I would not try for a composition in this condition. However, there was something natural about seeing this off roader in such a location and I decided that it might just be telling the best story like this.
I got out and started to look for a composition which was not very easy because the sky was completely overcast and there was a house with a long driveway right behind the vehicle that kind of was visible through the vegetation. The only way that I could make it work was to get the camera down low and use a bit of compression to help draw the attention directly to the Willys. For that, I decided that I would use my 70-200mm lens which would also keep me right at the driveway and not too far into the property. I got the camera built and added a polarizer to help saturate the colors. I then went about finding the best location that had the most favorable perspective to the composition.
Because I was so limited in how I could compose the shot, it didn’t take long at all to find the right spot and I was done with the capture in a matter of minutes. I didn’t want to overstay my welcome here because I was in kind of a gray area as far as whether or not I really needed permission to be here. I erred on the side of caution and kept my distance which resulted in a pretty decent first image of the day. I was no committed to getting some photographs because I was pretty sure that I was now going to be processing and writing a blog when I should have been out washing a car. Oh well, I could afford to be irresponsible for day and focus on my photography.
With that first image in the bag, I set out to get some more subjects between the light showers that were still happening. I wanted to get back out to that GMC, so I set course back through North Wilkesboro to get there. On the way, I stopped to look at that Ford once again. My thoughts were simple, if I couldn’t get an overall of the car, I could try for some isolations as I had done recently in Ashe County. There wasn’t going to be any rust to photograph with the car, but I could take the isolation concept and work that angle quite well with this car.
When I pulled back in, I decided to just go for it since I was here, and it was a Sunday. This can be a very busy parking lot during the week, so I try and pick weekends to try and do anything here. I looked at the car once again and saw that the chrome was still in good shape which meant that reflections were going to be a problem. To help combat that, I chose to use my long 70-200mm lens once again. This would keep me a little further away so that I might avoid making a cameo appearance in the chrome. If I did, I would have a smaller reflection to deal with which worked out most of the time. I screwed on my polarizer to limit the glare from the sky and started to find the isolations.
Of course, I was interested in the headlights of the old car, so that was where I started out. I tried some different approaches to the compositions than I had used before. Instead of shooting straight on, I decided to go off to the side and have the viewer look past the fender to get to the headlights. The body of the car was basically just a frame for what I wanted you to see. To keep that point strong, I limited the depth of field to make sure that the viewer’s eyes spilled past the fender and went to the shapes of the lights and grill. It was looking like a pretty successful composition as I was looking at the back of the camera as the images popped up in review. I wanted to try and add a bit more drama to the scene, so I decided to create some new angles by elevating the camera.
I took the same basic concept but brought the angle of view much higher. I was also able to include the marker light to help balance out the image. From this angle, I was able to bring in triangles which is usually a very good thing when you are wanting to add drama and visual interest. I had a triangle with the pavement both in front of the bumper as well as under the fender. There was a complimenting triangle with the black panel on the hood. The fender even formed a triangle of sorts, and the body lines went along with that same pattern of angles. This turned into a very fun way of shooting this old car and it reminded me of a similar approach that I had taken with the VW Bug not too long ago. I was starting to feel pretty good about working with this car and decided that I was going to really find something with an artsy vibe to it before I left it for my next subject.
I looked around at all of the body lines and trim but wasn’t able to find anything that really jumped out at me. I wanted to get something that had a bit of an abstract feel to it but could be recognized by those who knew what they were looking at. I was just slightly out of my element with this car since there was really no rust or patina to work with. I also had to be really careful with the red paint as that is a very power color and I didn’t want to overrun the composition with that particular color. I was just about to give up on this idea when I started to look at the hood. There was the typical air intake on the top of the hood within the black panel. I could tell that the glare from the sky was making some great sculpting lines where the hood lines were. Just to see what I was working with, I put the camera to my eye and twisted the polarizer.
Jackpot!!
It was just as I was hoping. The polarizer actually gave two distinct flavors to this scene depending on the effect that I dialed in. I just had to find a composition that focused on the lines that were there as well as the intakes. That was going to be my abstract for this car, and I was excited to figure it out. I started out working on the driver’s side and found the highest degree of contrast to shoot. I worked out a couple of different compositions varying the angle of the camera. When I was satisfied that I had what I wanted, I moved to the other side to see what I could get there. I knew that with the different direction of the camera, the glare would be much different.
I found that dialing in the same kind of high contrast effect with the polarizer really didn’t show off the lines like I wanted it to. It was just a lot flatter in appearance. Just for fun, I twisted the filter around to see what else I could make the hood do and I found a very pleasing effect where the black hood went very bright with glare and what had been the highlights were now shadows. I decided to work this effect into the composition and found that if I overexposed the image by about 2/3 of a stop, I would get an almost negative view of the hood. The visual interest would come from the black instead of the highlights which I really liked. I worked on this composition for a while and found the right angles to get the lines that I wanted. When I was done with that side, I wanted to try something different with the other side that I had played around with on this side but that didn’t work.
When I got back over to the driver’s side, I still had the camera elevated to where I was really liking the lines. I placed the camera in roughly the same relative position and framed up the shot that I had done unsuccessfully on the other side. The biggest difference was the addition of the center splitter between the two halves of the intake. It hadn’t worked on the other side because there was no separation with the background. On this side, the directional light gave me just enough highlight on the leading edge to break it apart from the background. That inclusion just gave a couple more important angles to the composition that helped to isolate the grill within the duct. The body lines from that duct were left to be the rest of the frame within a frame. I didn’t try to do this as I had with the last image and went more with a standard look to the surface. I dialed in about 60% of the polarization effect so that I could get enough glare on the body line to the right to lead your eyes up to the intake. That line worked with the panel lines, and the center splitter of the intake. There was a lot that went into this simple composition, but it is one of my favorites from the day. Both of these were actually a lot of fun to edit since I didn’t have to really worry about total believability, only the visual impact of the composition.
When I was done with the hood, I took my time and looked around at the different areas of the car but found nothing else that interested me. I had started to attract a good bit of attention here as well, so I figured it was time to pack it up and head on. The sky was looking fantastic at this point, and I was ready to get some photographs with the sky for once. I knew just where to go, and it wasn’t too far from here.
I made my way back to the old GMC truck that I had looked at earlier in the day. It was perfect under that sky. The lighting was great, and I could see the composition developing right before my eyes. I was going to have to have permission to go and shoot it though since it was well within the property. I couldn’t tell if there was anyone home or not because there was a two-car garage with the doors shut. I had to try since the light was so good, so I pulled into the driveway and started to look at the porch to figure out how to get to the front door. There was no apparent access to the front porch which kind of confused me. It could be that they just used the entry off of the garage to go in and out, but I had no access to that door. I didn’t see any doorbells that I could get to from this side of the porch and I didn’t feel comfortable opening up a gate to get to the front door.
As I was sitting there pondering how to get to the front door, the door opened, and a gentleman came out on the porch. Well, that was easy enough. I put the truck in park and climbed out thanking him for making this part easy. I introduced myself and asked for permission to go and photograph the truck. He let me know that he had seen me driving through earlier in the day and had recognized the truck from earlier as well. I let him know that was the way that I worked a lot of the time. I had to figure out how I wanted to shoot a subject before I ever thought about knocking on the door and bothering somebody. I had finally figured out the composition and I had the perfect light to work with. He hadn’t said that he would let me photograph the truck, but he did say that he would like to show me more things that might interest me in the back yard. He went in to get his shoes one and came back out and said that I was welcome to photograph what I wanted to, and he was going to take me on a tour of what was back there.
I grabbed my camera and tripod, and we went on a little walk through memory lane in his back yard. I have to admit, he had some really fantastic subjects that were right up my alley photographically. There were quite a few other trucks out there as well as tractors. None of that could be seen from the road and I just kept thinking about how glad I was that Toni had pointed out the truck when I hadn’t seen it yet. I was going to be here for a while getting photographs because there were three scenes that I already knew I wanted to work.
We kept going from vehicle to vehicle and I was getting some incredible stories from each of them. We started to work our way back around to the GMC and I could see that the clouds were starting to move out of the area. I had some left, and I was pretty sure that I could make it work, but I was going to have to get working quickly if I was going to have a chance. Well, that didn’t happen and before I knew it the sky was far too clear, and the sun was too bright for my composition to work. I was going to be limited to working isolations on the truck which worked as well because the patina on it was amazing to say the least. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen either as we continued the tour. The good news was I had gained permission to come back another time when the clouds were favorable again, so the pressure was off. I would have someplace very close to home to go the next time that we had good clouds. That would also give me the time to really process the available compositions that I had seen.
I was happy to forfeit the scene that I had wanted to shoot for the ability to come back again knowing that I could get a lot of images from this property. As we were wrapping up the tour, I noticed that he had a Dodge under cover which was in the shade. It wasn’t what I had stopped to shoot, but with the light that I had available, it was my best chance at a photograph at this time. I went ahead and started to set up for a composition on the center part of the grill which was a very iconic design. It was really the only part of the car that jumped out as an isolation since the front of the car was all that was visible.
I worked several different compositions thinking that they would be done in black and white. I looked for symmetrical compositions which I though suited this better than any other form. I did try something a little different to start with though. I normally try to keep the lines parallel by keeping the camera at the same height as the center of the subject but this time I shot from a slightly elevated view. This gave for a bit more drama to the image and forced the verticals apart at the top of the image. It added a bit more of an abstract quality to the lines and it worked very well as a square image. I ended up leaving it as a color image because there were complimenting colors present which I brought out in post to really pull the eyes in. The other was left black and white because it was a study in shapes more than anything else.
With those images shot, I was done with the day. The sky was totally clear at this point and the sun was much too harsh to do anything with. I thanked my host and we talked about my return visit in the future. I’m really looking forward to coming back and working with several of his vehicles. I like that I have a bit of a chance to really figure out how I want to work them before going out there. It will make things go much quicker than if I had started shooting right after I figured out what was there.
I hope that you have enjoyed this quick little trek, and I hope that nobody minds that I am still driving around in a dirty truck. I’ll get to the washing later on. This was actually a bit better use of my time because as you well know, we have had very limited clouds recently. I was happy to make use of the great light while it was there. Maybe tomorrow I can get out and get the vehicles cleaned up. Toni’s car will also be here for a couple of days this week so I can get her’s cleaned up as well.
Until next time…
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