Thursday, February 13, 2025
Hey, good to see you again. Yep, that email notification you got is letting you know about yet another adventure this month. I’ve kind of lost count of how many times I’ve been out with the camera, but I think I’ve done more in the first 13 days of the month than I did through the three months of summer last year. I’m really enjoying being this kind of busy, and it is great to get some new locations under my belt. Something that I’m sure you will remember from a few years ago is that whenever I start working in the area of Traphill in the Northeastern portion of Wilkes County, I tend to keep working it with great success each time. I don’t know what it is about this area, but each visit will yield additional visits based on tips or just things that I saw while I was out there. That is kind of where this trek got started, but there was a twist to it all.
The last time I was out in the area was a little less than a week ago when I was following up on a suggestion from a property owner that I had talked with a few days prior. This is how things go out there, I can’t deny it. I had stopped at a house to ask permission to shoot some old cars and found out that they didn’t own that property. After getting the right information on the owner, I chatted with them for a bit and found out that they had an aunt that lived close by who had some old cars on the property. They gave me the intersection where it was located and said that they would call her and have her give me a call to discuss coming out there for a shoot sometime.
Well, I hadn’t heard anything further about this spot, though it really hadn’t been that long at all. I started to wonder if it would be worth driving out there and checking it out, just to start getting ideas about whether or not it would be a good place for some photos. As it turned out, after two nasty days of wintery weather, the rain was passing out of the area and leaving a small window of time when there would be some good clouds overhead. Looking at the hourly forecast, the clouds were going to be good until 10am and then they were going to start breaking up quickly.
That wasn’t going to give me much time to work, and I didn’t like stopping to knock on a door before 10am just in case the residents want to sleep in a little bit. There wasn’t any way for me to wait that long if the light was good and the property had some good vehicles to work with. I compromised and planned on getting there around 9am or so, which should be late enough in the morning so I didn’t disturb anyone. That was going to only leave me about an hour to work with should I decide to commit to the location.
Toni was off to work early this morning and I got up shortly after she left at 6am. Looking at the weather, it was looking like the day was going to pan out pretty much as I expected, only the clouds were going to thin much quicker after that magical 10am mark. I had time to get things taken care of at home before grabbing the camera and heading out. I decided to wear my waterfall boots after two solid days of rain because I knew that I was going to be slogging in some soft and wet soil more than likely. In hindsight, that was the best decision that I made all day long.
As I was starting the drive, I could see where the clouds were starting to break up a little bit, but there was still a very heavy overcast which I was happy about. I love working with soft lighting that will allow me to shoot from pretty much any direction without having to worry too much about shadows. This is idea for locations that I am not sure how I will be shooting. If I know the compositions and can plan on the direction of light, things are different, but I had no idea what I was going to be looking at with this location. All I had was a satellite view, but no street view.
When I finally got to the intersection, I turned onto the road and immediately recognized the place. It had been a spot that Toni and I had seen back in 2017 when we went to go and get some parts for the 4Runner when it was still on order from the dealership. I had returned back out there the following Winter to finally get some photos of the cars. Here I was looking at the property again and kicking myself for not remembering the two streets that I had been looking for. I remembered that it was a very hard location to shoot and that the cars were placed in a way that getting overall shots of them were difficult. However, looking at the property now, it appeared that a lot of the cars had been removed, and there looked to be a couple of new ones from what I remembered.
One of the new ones was an early 50’s Ford sitting beside of the shop. When I was passing the property, this was what caught my eye because the building looked like a pretty good backdrop for a shot of the old car. The only issue that I had was the fact that most of the front end was missing. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to stop and make the ask just yet, so I drove slowly by the property and looked at what else was there. There were plenty of subjects to choose from, but I was afraid that there weren’t all that many compositions to be had. I pondered what I was going to do as I continued down the side road in search of something that made more visual sense.
After about a mile or so, I realized that nothing else was really making an impression and that the more I thought about it, the Ford and the barn were feeling like a solid photo. I got turned around and went back to the house for another look. This time, I had some idea of what I wanted to shoot and saw the potential there. It was enough potential to justify the knock on the door and the ask. I pulled in the driveway and got out to knock on the door. I knocked kind of quiet just in case the occupants were asleep. In just a few seconds, I heard someone approach the door and open it. I apologized profusely for disturbing her this early in the morning and even though I had been out here before, I wanted to explain the connection I had with her family to put her mind at ease quicker. I didn’t know how this was going to go until she was well into her response. She didn’t mind if I photographed the cars and explained that many of them had been sold or hauled away for scrap. It was at this point that I explained that I had been out here something like seven years ago and remembered some of the old vehicles.
With the introductory conversation concluded, I went to the truck and turned it off. I grabbed my bag because I just didn’t know exactly how I was going to want to shoot these cars and didn’t know what equipment I was going to need. Instead of walking the property first, like I normally would in order to get a better understanding of what I was working with, I decided to go over to the side of the property where the Ford was sitting. My feet were submerged in water at times up to my ankles which made me really happy I was wearing my waterfall boots.
I found the rough spot that I wanted to photograph the scene from and figured out that the best lens for the job was going to be my standard zoom. It would give me some ability to introduce perspective distortion into the frame and would allow me to get the sky above as well. I built the camera and added the polarizer before starting to figure out the composition. This process went quicker than I was expecting and everything really fell into place nicely with the standard zoom. The only issue that I had was the cloudy sky which was a bit too bright for what I wanted. A simple addition of a grad filter brought that exposure down to something more reasonable for my expectations.
My plan was to shoot this as a black and white and really burn down the sky along the edges. It felt like the best choice given the limited colors and the low saturation from the lighting. As you can tell from the photograph that I shared, I didn’t go with a black and white rendition at all when it came time to process the photo. This actually surprised me because I didn’t care for it at all when I saw it in the default color profile and most of the standard color profiles were just as bad. However, one of my new favorite profiles in the vintage collection revealed itself for a split second as I was going to the black and white profiles. That split second grabbed my attention and I went right back to it and locked it in. This was a good look for this photo and I started to do the processing on it with this profile selected.
The one that I processed was the last of four photos that I had shot of this scene. It took me a minute to get the exposure all figured out and there were some very subtle shifts to the camera position to clean up the edges along the way. There wasn’t much need in lingering here, so I picked up the camera and started to look for some isolations on the Ford. This was more difficult that I had expected because there was no trim left on the car and with the front end removed, I just didn’t see anything particularly interesting about it when it came to isolations.
Not wanting to waste my time on that one car, I decided to move on to see if there was another subject that might work for a photo. I walked around the front of the shop where I remembered a hotrod being built under the shelter. It had been one of my favorite photos from the location all those years ago, but it was no longer there. The place it had been was still open and cleared which made me miss the car that much more. I kept walking around the shop and found a garage section that was opened up on the opposite side from where I had been shooting. Inside of the garage was the remains of another presumably Ford from the ’30’s. This one was missing the front end as with the other one, but the grill was propped up on the frame to the firewall which gave the car a bit of character.
I’ve had some good luck shooting cars within shelters like this and decided that it was worth a few frames to see if I could repeat that success. There was a large stump in front of the car which made thing difficult and prevented me from shooting from down low like I have done in the past. While I didn’t like the obstacle preventing a composition, it was for the best since the car had no front end. Getting down low would have not been flattering for the car, but placing the camera up very high worked great for the car as a whole. It also allowed me to separate the stump from the front of the car for a cleaner composition.
I pretty much embraced the fact that it was in a garage and didn’t mind the clutter that was around the car. I felt that all of the clutter helped to establish the story of this old car. It was also the only way I was going to be able to get a photo of it since there was nothing left to work with in terms of isolations. The establishing shot was the way to go here, and I’m actually quite happy with how it turned out. Even in the chaos of the garage, there seems to be an order that helps the eyes move through the frame, and we can easily fill in the blanks around the frame to make more of the scene make sense to us.
This is another one where the editing didn’t go quite as expected. I started out doing this with one of the standard color profiles, but when I was done with the processing, I didn’t like how the colors looked. They didn’t fit the scene, so I went back to the color profiles and started to look for an alternative. I hovered over the vintage one that I had used for the first shot and found that this looked great with the current processing, so I switched the profiles and tweaked the processing just a tad to suit the profile better. The colors were quite a bit more muted which I thought fit the scene much better than what I had done before which was just a little too saturated and vibrant.
After I shot a five frame of the Ford in the garage, I decided to move on and see what else I might be able to work with on the property. There were several vehicles that I walked past in the middle of things that just didn’t quite hit me as good subjects. It wasn’t until I got to the stream on the far side of the property that I spotted something that interested me. It was a reddish orange Ford F100 pickup without any headlights or grill. It wasn’t so much the truck that caught my eye as it was the fact that I felt that I might be able to get an overall composition of the truck. I have recently realized just how much I miss being able to shoot a vehicle in its environment. There have just been too many situations where that isn’t possible and I’ve been left with shooting intimate isolations. While this is a lot of fun, and it does stretch my creative muscles, there is just something magical about showing the area that the vehicle has been left in. This Ford gave me the possibility to do just that.
I started to look around it and determined that the only side that would really work for this was shooting from the passenger’s side which presented a couple of problems. First and foremost was a tree that was positioned at the front right corner of the truck which would be the angle that I wanted to capture it from. The second problem was the fact that the roadway was right beyond the intended composition with a guardrail to identify it. Directly behind, and to the passenger side of the truck was the front of another truck that was pretty much just frame and suspension. The wheel was actually touching the bed of my subject so I had to take that into consideration. Lastly, there was a steep bank leading down to the stream that limited how far I could get from the truck which took away my best tool for situations like this. Not being able to use the telephoto lens, meant that I was going to have to get in close and wide which was going to show off quite a bit more of the background than I really wanted.
Since I like to turn lemons into lemonade when it comes to compositions, I started to look at the background and found that there was a tree that had an interesting structure which would be just in front of the windshield. It would give a strong point of interest that would hopefully pull the attention from the left side of the frame where the guardrail and a bit of sky was located. I worked on framing this up and paid particular attention to the tree that was basically in front of the truck from the angle that I was working with. I took advantage of having to shoot wide here and eliminated the tree altogether from the composition putting it beside the camera and well out of the frame.
This shot looked decent in the camera and I only ended up shooting two frames with slightly different exposures. I fully intended on doing this one as a color photo to take advantage of the paint color. However, when I got it home and started to look at it, the color palette was not pleasing with the very vibrant warm tones of the paint mixed in with the more muted landscape colors around it. Not feeling particularly happy with how it was looking, I made the decision to remove the color and use black and white to help bring the eyes to the truck by brightening the truck in comparison to the landscape. That worked out well and helped to simplify the composition quite a bit more than I had managed in the field.
The next two shots of this truck were isolations. I did one vertical and one horizontal of the driver’s side front quarter. I liked how the wheel was turned and the badging on the hood. Admittedly, this would have read better had I done the same composition from the passenger’s side, but the hood was lifted off of the fender on that side. I needed the cohesiveness of the body parts to make the photo work. I could have flipped it in post as I like to do, but this is one of those examples of why I can’t do it in many situations. Flipping the image would have made the composition stronger, but the emblem would have read “Ford” backwards, and the silhouette of “F100” would have been wrong as well. This effectively would have destroyed the composition, so I had to leave it in a slightly weaker position for reading the image for the elements that were more important to the content.
After shooting the four frames of the truck and looking around for any other compositions around the stream, I moved across the street to where there was one more car nosed up to the embankment within some brush. The car was missing its front end, but the angle that I was going to be able to shoot it from was from the rear which helped to negate the missing front end. I worked out a composition that I thought would work and shot two frames. Neither of these came out good enough to process, but it was worth the try since I was there.
I was feeling that I was nearing the end of the day at this point and and crossed back over to the original side of the house. The clouds were starting to break up in a big way at this point and I could see that the light was changing quite a bit. I could see that the first subject that I had shot was now fully bathed in sunlight which I kind of liked. The sky over my shoulder was rather interesting with some variable level clouds moving overhead. It was an interesting enough scene and enough of a change from what I had already shot to justify me going back over there for another shot at the old car.
I left the camera set up the way that I had originally used it with the exception of no longer having the grad filter attached. I worked on finding the right position for a similar composition. With the sky looking really nice, I composed the shot with more of the sky included in the frame. Because of the sun on the car and barn, I didn’t have to worry about a grad filter at all this time. The exposure was looking great through the camera and I started making exposures as the light quality changed with the moving clouds.
There was a lot to like about this brighter composition though it had a completely different mood about it compared to the first attempt. I ended up shooting 12 frames of this composition with the new lighting just to make sure that I had the best combination when I got the images back home. It turned out to be the seventh in the series that had the best overall appearance with the lighting. I resisted the urge to really saturate this one which would have been fine because of the direct light. It would have felt way different from the other images of the day and I did want to keep them all related to each other. I did use one of the standard color profiles, but then worked the saturation levels of each color pretty thoroughly. The colors ended up being rather desaturated, but still vivid which I liked. The sky was pulled down quite a bit and made almost a steel blue which complimented the warmer tones of my subjects.
I believe that this is one of my favorite photos from the day for how it turned out. I like the more upbeat look with the addition of the sunshine, but am very happy that I didn’t let the colors take over the image. The more subtle color palette just felt right for the subject matter and set a better mood for the photo. This choice ended up having a bit of significance, and actually it can be said that most of my choices for this set of images apply in the same way.
When I started writing this blog, one of the first things that I did was locate the original visit to this spot so that I could link that entry to this one. Of course, I looked through it to refresh my memory about what had happened all those years ago and to see what the differences were with the cars. A few things came to mind while looking through the entry. The first thing was that I had to shoot a lot of isolations that day. The handful of establishing shots that I had done were not all that strong for the most part and I could have done much better. The biggest thing that I realized was the differences in processing between the two sessions. While I had been using Lightroom for over a year at that point, I was still creating images that were more warm than they needed to be. Everything that was shot that day had a warm cast to it as well as having a bit too much saturation. The current images were all edited quite a bit differently with cooler tones and much less saturation.
As I get more mature in my photography, I am finding that I’m liking less saturation in more and more cases. This allows me to add contrast through colors where I hadn’t been able to do that before. I’ve learned the power of subtleties in colors over the past three or four years and it is really showing here considering that the lighting was about the same when I got started, and the time of year was also the same. It is a lot of fun looking back over my old photos when I can directly compare them to what I’m shooting now. This is the only comparison that really makes sense for a photographer by the way. It serves no purpose to compare our work to that of another, but we can gain valuable insight into our own development by comparing to the photographer that we once were.
Not wanting to get too far off track, I wasn’t quite done with this trek. With the sun now out, I wanted to see what changes to the landscape were happening. I went over to the middle of the yard where I had passed by a few times and started to look at the vehicles there. There was an MGB that I wanted to photograph, but just couldn’t get a composition that I liked because of the location it was in. There was a panel van which I liked, but again, there was no composition. There were a couple of Ford sedans by another barn, but once again, the location was unworkable. That left me with a Ford truck which was missing its entire front end and a Willy’s parked right behind it. They were both next to the shelter that the MGB was parked in which made working either vehicle difficult. On one side, I had a full structure with a bright yellow car in the background, while on the other, I had no room to work.
When I decided against photographing the Willy’s in favor of the partial Ford truck, I had to consider my options. The only option open to me was to photograph the truck from pretty much dead ahead which I didn’t like the idea of at all. Maybe there was an isolation that I could work with because the patina of the cab was pretty nice. There was no trim to be had, and most of the distinguishing body panels had been removed. What I found that interested me was on the cowl of the truck. There wasn’t necessarily a strong composition to be had here, but I had a stamped shape of a triangle that framed up elements that formed a triangle within that stamping. The entire scene had great textures and colors, so that became the basis for the next composition.
I ended up shooting just two frames with a slight change in where my crop was. What you see here is the first of the two and the one that I think defines the shapes most effectively. This was the only time that I used a bit of extra saturation in my edit during this session. Since I was going for a bit of an abstract image, I wanted the colors to be intense, but not over the top. I needed this in order to get more color contrast within the frame which had been done previously through reducing the saturation levels. Now, I was boosting certain color channels and shifting the hue and luminance as well in order to get the right balance of color tones within the frame.
One thing that I really liked about this one was the fact that the sunlight was casting some deep shadows which helped to define the shapes and make the image look a bit more three dimensional. Had it not been for the sun, this photo would just not have worked out. The highlights and shadows make this image what it is, and the processing keeps the excitement for the viewer. If I’ve done my job right, the viewer will be left looking through this image for clues as to what exactly they are looking at. Since this part is usually behind the hood, most probably won’t be able to recognize what they are seeing, but that will make it more interesting. The content of the frame rewards those that continue to look around and investigate. That alone, makes this one of my signature compositions I think.
I guess I was starting to feel a bit more confident about this subject after working the isolation. I backed away from it and started to look at that straight-on shot once more. I still didn’t like the idea of photographing a truck without a front end from the front, but the tree beside it was quite impressive. The blue was starting to show up in the sky as well when looking at this direction and I felt that there was a photo to be had here. I really started looking at the possibilities and discovered that I could mask the Willy’s behind the Ford if I got low enough to the ground. That would allow me to inch over to the left and still keep the other vehicle out of the shot. Of course, there was no way to avoid the shelter that was next to the truck, but having the tree towering overhead helped to minimize that structure.
To make the most out of the composition that I had figured out, I decided that it needed to be a vertical shot. This would make the tree a very dominant element and it would help make sense of the fact that the truck had a narrow angle of view. I dropped the tripod to the ground and flipped the camera on its side to get the composition framed up. I moved in and out until I had the right perspective to mask the Willy’s and have the front of the Ford flow with the scene. Then I moved to the left as much as I could so that I kept the other vehicle masked, but allowed the tree to start relating visually with the truck. I was actually surprised at how good the composition was looking in the viewfinder. I had to remember that I was going to be cropping this in post, so I went ahead and shot it knowing that I would be clipping a bit off from the bottom to make it a 5:7 more than likely.
This gave me the ability to extend the sides of the frame and slightly overshoot from what I had been framing up. This gave some much needed breathing room to the truck while not overcomplicating the scene. I ended up shooting eight frames here as the clouds changed along with the intensity of light on the truck. It was that final frame that checked all the boxes for me with just enough blue in the sky and a nice warm light on the truck. It was one of the last images that I processed from the session and I wasn’t all that hopeful for it when I saw the RAW. I just didn’t really like the angle that I was forced to shoot it from. However when I started with the processing, my opinion changed for the better rather quickly.
Once I started getting a handle on the color grade here, I started to really see the positives of the composition. It wasn’t a matter of looking at the composition and being happy for what I had been able to do with a very rough setting, the composition was actually standing on its own. It made sense and even the wheels being turned towards the camera worked for the composition and framing. The wheels were upright and narrow, as was the cab of the truck. The tree continued the tall and narrow approach and everything just fit into the frame. I don’t think that this would have worked had the front of the truck been present. I think that the vertical frame would have just been too narrow. For the first time, I was actually happy that the truck was missing the entire front clip, and I think that omission really made this photograph possible.
The more I look at this one, the more I really like it. I love the colors, which were again desaturated a good bit, and the way that it all flows. It has character and I think tells a great story for the viewer. What had started as an experiment and ended up as one of the last images to go through processing, has wound up being one of my favorites from the day. The truck’s unique appearance is much more engaging than I had ever suspected, and the way that the sky had developed just sealed the deal for me.
That las frame that turned into the keeper was the 37th frame that I had shot in 59 minutes of exposures. I had been working the location for just a bit over an hour from getting out of the truck. That first frame was shot at 9:06 with the final one at 10:05. The weather had been dead on accurate with the clouds forecast as they were breaking up very quickly now that it was 10 o’clock. With the sun getting high in the sky and the light getting harsh, I decided that I had plenty of photos to go home with so I packed everything up and put it all back in the truck.
As I was driving home, I was going through the different compositions in my head and figured out that I probably had four or five keepers out of the bunch. That was more than enough for such a quick session. However, by the time I was all done, I had seven keepers from the day. After the time I had last year with creativity, I will not take days like this for granted. It wasn’t an easy day by any stretch, but it was one where the ideas flowed and I felt good about what I was shooting. I wish that it could always be like this, but there are just times when I can’t “see” the photo that is right in front of me. I’m sure those days will return, but hopefully not for as long as the last time. In the meantime, I am really enjoying the photography that I am doing. This truly is my favorite time of year to be behind the camera. There is just something special about the way winter images look.
Thank you for joining me on this short trek into the area of Traphill. I hope that you have enjoyed it as much as I have. Don’t forget that if you are interested in learning how to photograph these types of scenes, join me for my upcoming workshop in East Bend, NC when we learn all about the art of decay photography. There are still slots left and I hope to see you there! If you would just rather enjoy the photos that have been captured, might I suggest supporting my photography by purchasing a print of your very own. These are all limited editions when you think about it. Only a handful of my photos get printed more than a few times before they replaced by newer photos in the rotation. There really is no better way of enjoying photographs than by seeing them hanging on your wall in a large size. They make great conversation starters as well as expressing your own tastes and individuality.
Will the Traphill routine continue with my next trek? We will find out soon enough. There are a few other areas that I want to explore and a couple of spots that I still need to get permission to access, but I don’t think I’m done with the area just yet. I’m still wanting to get back out to Taylorsville again for the property that has a Chevy sitting in a small barn and a couple more cars sitting in the field behind the house. I’m still working on making contact with that owner who does not live on site, so I don’t know if that will ever pan out, but my fingers are crossed.
Until next time….
