Saturday, March 19, 2022
I had a great time yesterday in the area of Clingman and Eastern Wilkes County. I had plans of getting up early and taking advantage of the early clouds to do some landscape work at Stone Mountain, but when the alarm rang, I just didn’t have it in me to go out on a trek. It was around midnight that I got to sleep after getting everything done with the website and getting notifications made of the new blog entry. When I did wake up there was a nice bit of fog around and I really wished that I had gone out. Instead of thinking about what could have been, I went downstairs and took care of some things that needed to be done and then I came upstairs around 10am to find that the clouds were still looking good in the sky. The forecast had them fading away by this point in the morning, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that the sky had some great texture to it. That got my mind to racing to see if there was somewhere I could go to take advantage of the skies. I thought about going to Stone Mountain, but the length of the hike would take me well into the clear skies. I needed something that I could get to and react to quickly. That meant another trek driving around and looking for targets of opportunity to shoot.
Remembering some of the potential that I found yesterday, I decided to set a course to the East and work my way back out to Clingman and the surrounding areas. As I drove out that way, the sky started to lose the definition as I was getting back into the cloud cover that had just passed over the house. I knew that the good stuff was right behind me, so I needed to find something to put in front of the camera before the clouds caught up with me. There was no real destination, but I ended up in the area of Shepherds Crossing finding new roads to turn down. The further into the community I got, the more potential I saw, but nothing was jumping out at me. I only had a short amount of time that I was going to have good light, so I was feeling a little pressure to get something figured out soon.
As I came to the end of one of the roads that I was on, I saw a field behind a fence and what appeared to be a 50’s model Ford sedan and a 50’s model pickup sitting by the trees at the end of the field. There was a house right next to the field and without thinking I just pulled into the driveway. As I was parking, a rather large dog came towards me from the carport. I didn’t feel overly threatened by the dog, so I just started to talk to him and asked him if his people were home. Of course, he didn’t answer me, but he gave me a quick sniff and walked with me to the front door. I knocked on the screen door and waited for a minute. Just as I thought there was nobody home, the door opened up and I was greeted by the property owner. I made a quick introduction and explained why I was there. He had no problem with me going over into the field to get some pictures so I left him my card and let him know that if something good turned up from the session I would be happy to bring him a print.
I got down into the field and got a better look at the subjects. This was the first time that I had looked critically at them since seeing them minutes before. This is not normally how I work as I like to have something figured out before I ask permission, but with the clouds clearing, I didn’t have that luxury. The main hurdle to get over was just getting access to the property which I had done. I walked around both vehicles for a few quick minutes to figure out what there was available to shoot. I found that the best candidate was the sedan which was parked behind the pickup. I was going to have to be careful with the camera placement so that the truck would be blocked from view by the car. It was a situation that I was very familiar with and have done it many times before. I selected my standard lens which would give me a mild wide-angle capability that I was going to need to make the pickup disappear behind the car. It was then a matter of deciding where the trees looked the best in the background to provide the needed balance to the scene.
Once I had all of that figured out, I started to look at the exposure of the scene. It was cutting very close with the bright sky and the shadowed car, but I was thinking that I could pull it off. I started making exposures with the polarizer attached, but the changing light quickly altered the exposure. I was having to reduce the shutter too far to keep the sky from blowing out. My only option was to add an ND Grad filter. I opted for a soft edge 3-stop filter for a gradual transition in the trees. It was something that I had done many times before and knew that it would work. For that filter to fit on the lens, I had to swap out my 82mm polarizer for the larger 105mm version that fit on the filter holder. I missed having the lens hood, but this was giving me a much better exposure which was the main thing.
I started to make exposures as the lighting changed and the sky moved around. I made very small adjustments in the composition as I went along as well. The area that I was paying the most attention to was the area just above the rear quarter panel. I couldn’t decide if I wanted it above or below the horizon so I shot it both ways. I ended up liking it slightly above the horizon to make the car stand out a bit better and to break up the large part of the sky behind the car. The rest of the trees gave a great sense of location to the shot and the one large tree just in front of the car made for a very nice framing element.
When I was finally satisfied that I had what I wanted from the overall view of the car, I started to look at the details on it. The patina was awesome on this car, and the front right had the best look to it. Coincidentally, the car had most of the chrome parts still attached on that same corner. There was no hood for a complete front end, but I kind of liked the exposed radiator support as an element in the photo. I framed up a dramatic shot looking from above down to showcase the lines of the front end. It is a composition that I have been having really good luck with here lately when photographing these old cars. I tried a few different variations on this in both vertical and horizontal compositions. In the end, I liked the horizontal version because it had enough room to breathe all the way around the image.
After I had that corner locked down, I started to move around the car to see if there were any other angles that might work out. I loved the rear of the car with a broken taillight on the passenger’s side, but the patina wasn’t all that interesting, and the picture would lack interest overall I was afraid. The more I looked, the more I realized that my favorite parts of the car were that front right corner which I had successfully photographed several different ways. I did go back to that overall view and backed away from the car for a more telephoto look which I thought suited the car nicely. I was wrong with that assumption though and trashed those images when I saw them on the computer. It was worth trying, but I just liked the distortion from the wider view better.
Since I was pretty sure I was done with the car, I moved over to the truck and started to look at it critically. There wasn’t much in the way of an overall composition because the truck was missing some key pieces. For me, the most interesting part was the grill and the emblem up there. That was where I focused my attention with the camera. I have always loved how the V8 emblem sits atop the chevron grill, so I started to focus that feature. The hood was missing, and the motor was gone so there was a lot of light coming into the engine compartment. This affected the contrast that I usually like here, but I wanted to give it a try anyway. My goal was to deepen the tones behind the grill and to focus on the shapes there at the front. I went with a very symmetrical composition for this one which turned out quite nice. I didn’t have to shoot many frames as the composition was straightforward and the lighting was consistent.
Of interesting note with this image, I actually did a good bit of post processing with it. I did the standard stuff in Lightroom and darkened all the elements behind the emblem to make it stand out. The few remaining pieces that could be seen were cloned out. At this point, I was really liking this as an art piece, but the emblem was not square with the chevrons, so I had to consider my options there. My history told me to leave it because fixing it would be heavier post processing than I like to do normally. On the other hand, I had created a lot of negative space behind the emblem that was already quite a bit different from the scene in its natural view. The levels of the two main elements were a distraction at this point and it was very noticeable thanks to the negative space. I made the decision to rotate the emblem within the negative space until it matched up with the chevrons. Once that happened, I had to rotate the entire image to get it all level again since the emblem was exactly level to start with. The rotation of the image left blank areas at the corners which I didn’t want to crop in closer for. I decided to use the content aware fill for the areas that lacked picture information. This worked amazingly well thanks to the fact that it was all just texture and solid black which was being filled in. It was a simple adjustment, and one that I’m happy that I did. While I was at it, I moved the emblem up slightly to balance it better in the negative space.
With nothing else on the truck to shoot, I packed up my gear and loaded it back in the truck. From here, I was off driving around to try and find something else to photograph before the clouds cleared off. It took longer than I expected for the light to change for the worse, but in that time, I was unable to find anything else that I wanted to photograph. It had been a quick trek, but one that I was happy that I had taken. It allowed me one more location that fit in with the theme that I started with yesterday. It also filled that last little bit of creative itch that I had so I feel complete at this point.
I hope you enjoyed this trek and the resulting images I brought back. If there are any of my images that you are interested in having prints of, just let me know, or order directly from the gallery store. There is just no better way of enjoying a photograph than holding it in your hand or having it up on the wall. This is the presentation that I intend for all of my images, and I love seeing prints getting made. If you are more interested in creating your own images, I can certainly help with that as well thanks to my new mentorship program. I have different plans available to help with whatever you need in your photographic journey.
It feels odd being done with the blog and it still being daylight outside. Normally, by the time I’m to this point, it is nearly the next day. I guess I’ll have a relaxing evening ahead which will be a nice change of pace from a photo day.
Until next time….
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