Tuesday, June 15, 2021
This is going to be a pretty quick entry as it is not really pertaining to the gallery too much. I have been itching to get out with the Miata and get some new pictures of it but have been running into some creative problems with it. The problem that I am having is that this car really isn’t suited for the surroundings of Wilkes County. Sure, it is fun to drive around in the area and makes for a great mountain ride, but when it comes to photographs I need some modern buildings to really pull it off. Ironically, I would have an easier time back in Winston photographing this car, but that would mean driving it through swarms of bugs in order to get to the shoot destination. I’ve tried going as far as Taylorsville without success at keeping the front of the car free of bug guts. It would seem that I am limited to this immediate area for photographs unless I wait for Winter when I can go down the road with no bug issues.
I have been looking for some places that I think suits the car here locally and have found a few locations that might work for it. The intention was to go out early this morning before the sun came up to capture that golden hour light. I had a couple of places in mind which could possibly work out and I had the clock set for 5am. Well, the alarm rang and I didn’t think twice about it before rolling back over and trying to go back to sleep. I just wasn’t all that excited about any of the places that I had figured out and it wasn’t worth getting up quite that early. I slept in for another hour or so before waking up and seeing the sun starting to come up. I was needing to get the car out and stretch its legs again anyway, so I decided to go for a drive and see what I could find that would suit the car.
My first destination was an old restaurant on Hwy 18 which I had been wanting to photograph before but there just wasn’t enough interest there to pull it off. I figured that the car would make a good focal point and the repeating shapes of the awning supports would be a good background. When I got there I saw the roof that I loved so much, but when it came to fitting the car into the scene nothing made sense. When I got the car in a good position, there was too much clutter around the parking lot and if I moved to a cleaner area, it no longer fit with the building. I tried for about 10 minutes to get the car in the right place and ultimately decided that it just wasn’t going to work out. The sun was a bit too harsh at this point anyway and I wasn’t liking anything about the potential image.
The next place that I went was into North Wilkesboro around the Farmer’s Market where I had been with the car last November. I wasn’t wanting to have a repeat performance, but I knew that the wall had some different elements that might work out well. Nope, nothing jumped out at me and I saw no more potential here for this car. I drove around the area and ended up down at the old warehouse where I had just done some photography thinking that I might be able to make something work here. Nope, that was a failure as well.
I was starting to think that I just needed to abandon this hunt and get to driving before it got too hot outside. I went to one last location where I knew there was some wall art on a retaining wall in a parking lot. It was an Italian flavored piece and I thought that the colors would work well for the car. I pulled in and started to get the car positioned. It was working better than before, but I was going to have to be careful not to include above the wall since that would add clutter quickly to the image. It was looking like this was going to be as good as it was going to get, so I got the tripod and the camera out of the trunk and built the camera with the 70-200mm lens so I could compress the background sufficiently to avoid the area above the wall. I went back to just about the edge of the parking lot and started shooting. When I landed on a composition that I really liked I saw that the exposure was a bit wide in latitude so I did a three image series for an HDR blend later on just so I would be able to get all of the detail through the scene.
From here, I started to move in closer and decided that I needed to swap out the lens for my 24-70mm for a bit of perspective change with the car. That worked well and I found that around 35mm in focal length worked well for the shape of the car. I continued to change my position as I found new compositions, or at least variations on the idea. I was trying to be very cautious about how I was including the background to the scene. It was interesting how it was starting to look like an actual background and gave a completely different feel to the scene I was in. From the images, you just can’t tell that I was in North Wilkesboro at all.
When it was all said and done, I had a total of 15 frames with about four different compositions. I wasn’t thrilled with any of them, but they were going to serve the purpose that I wanted. I needed more practice in this type of photography and that was just what they provided. As part of the practice of this, I new that I was going to be going into Photoshop and doing a few things that I have never done before. I had purposely left the center caps unleveled for this shoot as I was determined that I was going to learn how to adjust that in Photoshop from this series. I was also looking at doing some different techniques for removing my reflection in the corner of the car. Those two tasks went a bit easier than I had expected and I was able to add some new tools to my tool box. Additionally, I did a few things differently in Lightroom with this set. The end result wasn’t all that different from my other attempts with this car, but the amount of time that I spent working the images was greatly reduced from previous attempts.
As I said, this entry was a bit shorter than normal because it truly was a “dear diary” moment as these images don’t really resonate with anyone outside of myself. That is OK though because I am learning a different style of photography with this little car and I hope to be able to put it to use on client vehicles at some point in the future. I’m always looking for new ways to grow as a photographer and I figure that this is a logical progression for me. I’m also working on doing portraits and people photography which will be a slower process to get proficient at. I have done a couple of paid sessions now which is good and has allowed me to invest in some more equipment to further my ability to capture that perfect image. I’m still not sure how I will be marketing my people photography, and I don’t know how much time and energy I want to put into it, but I am building a pretty flexible lighting kit that should serve me well and allow me to get images that otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get.
I’ll just leave you with this. If you are interested in me doing a photo shoot for you or your vehicles (or both combined), let me know. I will do a reasonable amount of travel to get to you and I can shoot in a variety of conditions and scenery. We will work together to get the best possible results for your vision.
Until next time….
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