Sunday, April 14th, 2024
If you are expecting a landscape or decay trek to be the subject of this blog, you might be a little disappointed, although there are some decay locations that I will be shooting. This trek was all about playing around a little bit and cleansing the palette so to speak from all of the rusty vehicles I have been shooting here lately. Since returning from the Outer Banks, my primary focus has been that of decay. I don’t have a problem with that at all, but I don’t want to get so niched down in photography that I forget how to deal with other subjects. I do like to keep it fresh to keep myself from burning out and losing my creative urge. This is the time of year that I start to transition to more landscapes and hopefully some portrait work here and there. I do continue to shoot rust, but it becomes a bit more difficult to find and photograph because the vegetation is coming alive more and more every day.
I’m not quite in the place to shoot landscapes just yet as my mind hasn’t transitioned enough to be excited about those types of scenes. I know that it is a matter of having been so hyper focused on the decay work during the last few months, so much so that even on a trek designed for landscape photography, I was pulled towards the subjects that fit in the decay realm more. I know that when it all boils down, it is all about photographing what you are excited about and not fighting that inspiration when it hits. That being said, I see the need to be flexible in my photography and able to move between genres and styles with ease. Also, it is a good idea to photograph different things just to improve on your base skills as I’ve mentioned before.
For a while now, I have had the urge to take the Miata out for a little photo shoot since it has been so long. It is not something that I do often because while I love the car it is kind of difficult to photograph it. But that is actually a good reason to do just that with it. The difficulties start with the fact that the camera bag barely fits in the trunk opening. The tripod fits but tends to move around a lot. This makes it a little difficult to drive the car as it is supposed to, not to mention the extra 25-30LBS positioned behind the rear axle. Then there is the matter of getting the car to a location to shoot without getting a ton of bugs and road dirt on the car. I could do a quick detail of the car when I get to the location, but that would be another step, and take extra time which I don’t really want to do just for my own purposes. The biggest issue that I tend to run into is the dreaded photographer cameo. This is a concern any time I am photographing chrome or something reflective because I stand a very good chance of being included in the photo without realizing it. When I am working with a subject like the Miata, the entire surface is reflective, and I have to be very careful how I position the camera and myself so that I don’t have a large scale cloning fest to get my likeness out of the photo.
I end up doing the funky chicken quite a bit where I wave my arms around while looking through the camera looking for that motion in the frame so I can tell where I am reflecting. I try to move into an area where that is greatly minimized or not a concern at all. Then there is the last major problem that I have with this car. While the color is something that Toni and I both love on the car, it is a bear to photograph, especially with a polarizer attached. The pearlescent qualities of the deep red cause all kinds of hue shifts along the panels which can be rather distracting. I’ve worked on how to process this color in several different ways, and finally landed on doing very little to the RAW image in terms of color work. That has also gotten me to think about the possibility of doing some photos of the car in black and white.
By losing the color, I would be able to concentrate on the shapes of the car which is something that I like even more than the color. The last few times that I have washed the car, I have been looking at the shapes around the headlights and I have been starting to really enjoy how they look. I just knew that the sea of red that they would be in would be way too overpowering for the photo. I think that was the moment that I seriously started to consider black and white for this car as an alternative. It would also ease up the editing process where it is all too easy to get tired of the color quickly and all the photos start to look alike to me. By shooting in both color and black and white, I was certain that I would be able to keep the energy going through the whole session. It would also be a great way of focusing on my goal for 2024 to shoot more black and white photos.
As the temperature started to warm up and I was driving the car more, there were more opportunities to wash it which kept me inspired to go out on a shoot. I just had to focus on where to go and how to photograph the car. This is one of those areas where I don’t get a lot of practice, and that is matching a location with a subject. As you have seen in the vast majority of my photography, the subject and location are pretty much established for me. I am left to figure out the angles that make sense to tell the story. For me, this is easy because I have done it so much over the years. The part of photography that comes easy to a portrait photographer is picking a location that compliments the subject and then positioning the subject within that environment. Having that much control over a scene puts me in a very odd position and I am just not familiar with the concept as I should be.
Trying to figure out where and how to shoot the Miata became an exercise in overcoming that difficulty in planning a session. I already knew that I was going to want to shoot in both color and black and white, and I knew that the headlights were going to be some isolations I wanted to focus on. Up until now, I have only worked the entire car as a composition, not having put much thought into the details. After a long time planning the Art of Decay Workshop, and honing my own skills, I was in the right place mentally to consider the detail shots on this car. As I was going through the creative options along those lines, I started to recall all of the magazine articles that I had read decades ago that had full feature spreads on the cars that were being reviewed or talked about. There was a mix of overall photos, close up shots, detail shots, and interior views. That concept started to appeal to me for the Miata, and a plan was born.
For a lot of the photos that I intended on getting there was not much concern about the location I shot in because that location wouldn’t be a factor except for in reflections. I could have very easily done these photos right after washing the car while it was still parked outside of the garage. I was going to do that a few weeks ago but saw that the garage opening was causing too much of a reflection in the paint which became a distraction. I tried the idea again in the garage but found that even though the walls made a better reflection, there were still distracting elements to deal with, and I would have to be so close that my reflection would be very prominent. Essentially, the car was just too shiny for the concept to work in close quarters.
I knew that I was going to want something that would go with the color of the car for a location, and decided to focus on that and then see if I could get the detail shots while I was there. I would already have the camera out, so it wouldn’t really be any extra time or effort to do those extras on location. Finding a background for this car is not the easiest thing because the color of the paint is so intense. I needed something with a complimenting color that was equally as intense, or a background that was busy enough to create the right visual balance. I knew that blues and greens worked great for this car after shooting it at the farmer’s market in North Wilkesboro shortly after moving into town.
It seemed like weeks that I would go through the areas close by which might offer colors like that. Nothing at all was coming to mind, and I didn’t want to revisit the farmer’s market even though they had redone all of the painting on the wall since my last visit. I wanted something different. Then, one day as I was driving the Miata through the town of Elkin, I happened to see a commercial building that I had used as a backdrop for a traffic barrel years ago. It was a beautiful shade of aged blue and added a bit of texture that wasn’t present in the pristine paint on the Miata. It was further than I wanted to drive because there would be bugs and road debris, but the location was pretty much perfect.
That drive started a planning phase of the shoot that I was looking forward to trying. I had the style of the shoot in mind which was going to be something along the lines of a magazine feature, and I had the location decided on. It was all coming together, I just had to get the car cleaned up and pick the right day to make it happen. That day was going to be a while after I picked the location because the weather never really did work out when the car was freshly cleaned. I did end up getting it all cleaned up around the beginning of April right before the cold spell hit with the rains and wind. However, once that was all finished up, the weather turned nice again and it was time to drive the car. I looked ahead and found a partly cloudy day with mostly sunny skies which I was going to need to make that red pop in the photos. As an added bonus, that day was a Sunday which meant that traffic would likely be a little less of a problem. I knew that I was going to be shooting right on the side of the road as the parking spaces next to the building were done as parallel parking on the shoulder.
I picked right around the middle of the day to go out which is not usual for me as I don’t generally like photographing on a sunny day, much less one where the light isn’t directional. However, for this location, I needed the sun to be overhead so that the building wasn’t casting a shadow on the car too badly. I wanted to make sure that the front of the car was going to be in the light while parked with the driver’s side facing the camera. All that was left was finding the right spot to park the car so that the background worked with it, but I figured that would be the easy part.
A little before noon, I pulled the car out of the garage for the first time in two weeks with the trunk loaded full of camera gear. I drove very slow trying to avoid bug splats as I went down the back roads towards Elkin. I was happy to see that other than a very insignificant bug smear on the windshield, I wasn’t seeing any insect carnage from the driver’s seat. As I was about to hit town, I passed by an old muffler shop which I had been interested in photographing for a while just because of the architecture. It had a 1960’s vibe that I liked, but I could never really make it a photo. However, knowing that I was going to be photographing the Miata today, the location made a lot of sense, and it would allow me to get the parts that I loved about the shop, while not forcing the success of the image on jus that element alone. I would stop back by there on the way back home after the blue building.
When I arrived at the blue building in Elkin, I was happy to see that there were no other cars in the way, and I saw no distractions that would cause problems. I got turned around and pulled into an area that I thought would work as a photograph. I got out of the car and walked across the street to see how things were lining up. I needed to move the car forward to get it separated from a gutter that I intended on using for a framing element, and that should get the front wheel to rotate enough that the BBS logo was right side up. The car was still idling because I knew that this was going to be a game of inches and I hate turning a motor on and off.
It took a couple of times to get the car positioned just right, and I also pulled it away from the building to minimize the shadow on the passenger side. The logo on the wheel was almost level, but to make it perfectly level, would have caused the rear bumper to overlap the downspout and it would have put the rear wheel at a steeper angle which I didn’t like. Ideally, I would have had a floor jack with me to rotate the wheels as needed, but I didn’t have a crew, and didn’t want to be that much of a traffic problem for the sake of some photos. I was happy with what I was seeing, so I got my gear out of the trunk and built up the camera with the long lens so that I could shoot from across the street. This would keep me out of traffic as well as far enough away that any reflections would be so small as to not be a distraction.
I started out very low to the ground which was a great position for the low car. From the position that I was in, I had to include part of the roof which I wasn’t sure if I was going to like or not. The tin roof was very bright under the noon sun, and I was afraid that it would distract from the car. That didn’t stop me from shooting it this way because the other end of the argument was that it made for a great framing element along with the wall. I didn’t spend that long with the composition and just made a couple of frames as I saw no movement in the reflections of the paint.
Not feeling satisfied with this angle, I moved to the front of the car for a more direct angle. This allowed more of the background to show up in the right side of the image for depth and showcased the headlights which I had turned on for this shot. The little LEDs didn’t make that much difference from the side angle, but looking almost straight on, I liked the effect quite a bit. I wasn’t sold on the way the background looked, but again, I decided to go with it. There are things that are more permissible in a magazine type of shoot that I wouldn’t want in my fine art photographs, and I felt that this compromise was worth a try. I liked the blue of the building and the lighter blue of the sky. The addition of the street sign in the background also added to the story. This composition had a lot more punch and showed an aggressiveness to the car that I thought suited it since this model of car has always been thought of as a “girl’s car” since its introduction in 1990. I think that the design of the fourth generation has a much different appeal and I thought that this composition showed that difference off.
While I was up at the front of the car, I started to look at the headlights which was a box that I wanted to check for this shoot. I found that avoiding the reflection issue was not a problem here which surprised me. There were just a few places that I wasn’t able to stand, but the distance that the long lens gave me to work with kept me out of the photo quite nicely. I worked this angle as both a vertical and horizontal composition in full color, but I was pretty sure that they were going to be black and white because of the vast area of the frame that was red. Over the years, I have mentioned several times how hard it is to work with red elements in a scene since red is such a powerful color. It is one of those colors where a little goes a long way. The last thing I would want to do was to create an emotional response that wasn’t in line with what I wanted the photo to show.
Having shot several versions of the headlights, I decided to go back across the street and position the camera a bit further away in the hopes of getting a tighter view without the roof. The difference in distance wasn’t substantial, so I wasn’t sure that this would work, but I tried it anyway. As it turned out the difference between 105mm and 120mm eliminated the roof entirely, focusing the attention right on the car. This seemed to work out much better than the original shot because it was a good deal simpler to look at. I really felt like this was going to be the one that I ended up keeping out of the two basic compositions that I shot from across the road.
Oddly enough, I ended up keeping both of them, but I treated the processing quite a bit differently. The opening composition was done as a black and white because I could render the car much brighter that way which would compete favorably with the roof that was so bright. I further worked the tones to give a checkerboard lighting from the dark asphalt in the foreground to the lighter strip just below the car, leading into the dark portions of the car, then the lighter paint, and so on as you progressed up through the photo. It gave incredible separation and was an early favorite of the bunch. The simpler composition was done in color because the red and blue worked so well together along with the textures and tonal gradations on the wall. The color set the mood here as well as telling the story while it was the lighting and textures that spoke more clearly in the first composition.
I really hadn’t been at this location for long, but I had gotten pretty much everything that really wanted from here. As traffic was starting to pick up, I decided that it was time to pack it in. I still wanted to get to the old muffler shop and try some shots there. I knew that the sun was going to be in the wrong position before too much longer as I was wanting the car facing to the East. I figured that I had about another 45 minutes to an hour before the sun would shift to behind the car in the composition that I had in mind.
Packing up the camera in the bag which was crammed in the trunk was not the easiest of tasks, but I managed to get it all put away and the lid closed again. The car had been idling for the 15 or 20 minutes that I had been parked there and the heat was intense inside of the cabin. Having the exhaust right underneath with very little insulation was having a huge impact on the temperature so I decided that at the next stop, I would turn the car off once I got it situated.
The muffler shop was only a few miles down the road and when I pulled in, I started to imagine how the photo would be organized before I got out to look at the elements together. With the general understanding of how I wanted things laid out, I was quick to see the error in my parking job. I pulled up about a half a car length and looked again. That was much better, and I just had to go another quarter of a revolution to get the wheel emblem level. Once I was happy with the placement, I turned the car off and went back to the trunk to get the camera. I left the bag in the trunk, but grabbed the standard zoom since I knew that I was going to be getting a much wider shot than the long lens was capable of at the distance I was going to be working.
Once I had the camera built, I started to find the spot where I had the right perspective on the car and the elements lined up as I wanted them to. When I found it, I locked in the exposure and focus in preparation for the shoot, I then went to turn on the lights to give life to the headlights. Knowing I only had 30 seconds before they cut off, I ran back to the camera and shot the photo. To my surprise, the LED lights didn’t even show up at this angle. I could see the headlight glowing but decided that I liked the darker center of the headlight cone. The parking light didn’t make any difference at all. To avoid any extra electrical drain, I just turned the lights off and went back to shooting the photo without the lights. Looking back through the images, I can’t even tell enough of a difference to have mattered either way.
When I was happy with the overall shot that I had previsualized, I started to move closer to the car to get some more detail shots. This was when a truck pulled into the parking lot. The driver was looking at me and I could tell that this was probably the owner. I quickly went over and introduced myself and asked if he minded if I got a few photos of the car using his shop in the background. He agreed and I handed him one of my cards. Now I had the full blessing of the owner which makes things much easier for me. I didn’t feel rushed, and I had time to really work the scene at this point.
I moved around the car with the standard lens and decided that I needed to get further away to get the shots that I was interested in. I went back to the trunk and swapped out my lens for the telephoto once again. This allowed me to get shots of the wheel and brake caliper, as well as detailed interior shots. It was easier to look at the interior photos from a magazine standpoint rather than a purely artistic point of view. There were many compromises that could be made that didn’t pose a detriment to the photo. Two of my favorites were a composition showing the maker of the seat framed between the window frame and mirror, and the other was a full interior shot from the driver’s side where I had my driving gloves laid on the console covering that stupid infotainment panel which reduced the elements of the photo to those driving points of contact. I was so happy with this photo that I really worked it out in post processing and gave it a beautiful black and white conversion to celebrate the long history of the manual gearbox which I am such a fan of. The gloves have that worn look to them that only 14,000 miles could give them. They complete the story that this is a driver’s car and is used as such.
From there, I spent more time going around the car and picking out other points of interest while trying to find some artistic compositions along the way. By the time I was done, I had shot 44 frames of the Miata at two different locations. I think it was the most I had worked the car in any of the shoots that I have done with it. I truly believe that the inclusion of the black and white photos into the mix helped to keep the entire thing fresh because the red was just too intense to be in every photo. I also liked the mix of overall and detail shots which I had not done previously. It was great practice for me since I have a client shoot coming up soon with a ’57 Chevy and a ’63 Chevy truck where I will be working in this same style of photography.
I do hope that you have enjoyed this atypical trek. I know it wasn’t my normal type of photography, but it still is a part of me which should provide some similar visual cues. It was all just an exercise in stretching my creativity as well as gaining tools to overcome obstacles caused by high gloss subjects. If you would like to learn more about this kind of photography, I would be happy to work out a mentorship session with you dealing with this style. If you have a special vehicle and would be interested in this kind of treatment, let me know. I am always happy to do client work and will do everything that I can to create the photos that you are looking for of your own ride. Being a car nut makes this kind of photography fun for me and is something that I would rarely consider work. Just give me a call and we will talk though the options.
Until next time….
