Monday, August 24, 2026
I’m hoping that everyone is all caught up with the blogs. There have been some long ones this month with multiple chapters for each trek that I have done. What we will be getting into today will kind of be a continuation of the trek from around the middle of the month into Booneville. That was one that I had titled “The Eyes Have It” since it was the product of several family members having eye doctor appointments, eye issues, and the like. This one is very much related to that one and how it came to be is a pretty standard story for me. I show up at a place to get a few photos of something that I can see from the road. Then, I end up getting a tip for another location close by, or possibly deeper within the property. You might remember several times of that happening in Alexander County a few years back when I ended up working very deep into several different properties that had lots of old rusted cars. Of course, this has happened many times over in the area of Traphill as well, so I am certainly not a stranger to the idea of one simple location turning into something amazing. In fact, I’ve come to count on that happening occasionally and that keeps me motivated to keep knocking on doors.
You might remember the one location that I had shot a couple of weeks ago that started out with a ’32 Ford that I really wanted to shoot but never really figured out how I wanted to make it happen. I was finally motivated to stop because of a 1950 Chevy that was added to the side of the road nearby. After making contact with a resident in a house very close to the cars, I was able to get the permission to get a few photos. There were only two cars, but I still managed to get a ton of photos from them and had the blogs posted within a couple of days. That was when things started to get interesting.
A good friend of mine and the owner of Outlawed Restorations, Dean, saw the photos that I had posted and recognized the cars. I kind of halfway expected that to happen since I was in his back yard in a manner of speaking. Dean knew the owner and the family and said that he knew that there were a bunch more cars back in the woods going out to the old shop. He wasn’t real detailed in what was back there, but I know that he knows what I like to shoot and usually has excellent suggestions for me. He forwarded me the contact information for the family, and I stored it in the phone for the next time I felt like going out that way and getting some photos.
Well, I actually went back out there on my last trek but didn’t even bother looking into the property that Dean had told me about. I was out on a sunny day, and I knew that the lighting was going to be very difficult to work with in a location that I had never actually seen before. This is where the cloudy days really come in handy because I can shoot in any direction and working in the woods is no problem because the light is very soft and even. I ended up working a spot that I felt would work very well in the full sun and it did. Since I also shot a barn closer to Booneville, I also drove by the other location to see if I could get an idea of what I might be looking at in terms of setting. All I could see was deep woods and a Ford truck beside of an old house that didn’t overly interest me. I really couldn’t get any idea about what I might find out there, or if it would even be worth shooting. It was going to have to wait for another day when it was cloudy and I had some time to really dedicate to working the area.
That kind of brings us to this morning. The weather was supposed to be mostly sunny all day, but not nearly as hot as it has been recently. I was looking for something to do out of the house because there is only so much television I can watch and with all the chores pretty much caught up around the house, I was looking for something to fill the day. The weather wasn’t great for photos, but the more I thought about it, the more I started thinking about a different tip that another friend had given me a while back. This was about an old Dodge truck that is inside of a fenced property that I’ve looked at in the past, but never really figured out how I wanted to shoot it. It has recently been moved from the back row out into the middle of the property which makes things a bit easier to deal with, though I still need to get permission and access through the gate of the property.
I’ve figured out how I want to shoot this old truck and have come to the realization that a sunny day will work just fine for it as long as I get out there early in the morning. I was going to be up early this morning and there was sun forecasted which meant that I had a very good chance of getting the conditions that I wanted for the truck. Once I got my morning stuff taken care of, I was out on the road headed North to see if I could make contact with the owners. My friend had told me where he thought the owners lived and I was prepared to knock on the door at a reasonable time in the morning to see if they minded letting me into the property.
When I got up there, the light was actually quite good on the scene. The sun hadn’t hit the truck yet, but there was dew on it which was glistening nicely. The background had been moved around a bit, and I was seeing a very good composition that I wanted to shoot. There had been a part of me that had hoped that the gate would be open, but that wasn’t the case. I got turned around and started up the driveway to where the owners were supposed to live. I could tell that there were three houses at the top of the driveway based on the address markers at the road. The driveway was very long and went through the woods. When I got to the first fork, I could see no houses, but saw lots of signs indicating that they didn’t want to see anyone. With it still being rather early at 8:30am, I didn’t feel like risking upsetting anyone, especially since I wasn’t sure which house would be the right one to knock on.
I decided to play it safe and back down the driveway and come back another time when it was a little later in the morning. I was also hoping that the gate would be opened at some point. I know that it had been late last week, but I hadn’t been able to get out there to check it out. One of these days it will work out and I’ll get my answer. That day just wasn’t going to be today unfortunately. I needed a plan B as there was still a lot of day ahead of me.
I had been trying very hard to remember where I had seen an early ’50’s car sitting up on top of a hill for the last couple of weeks. I knew that I had seen it while out with Toni recently but had forgotten where it was. It was within the last couple of days that I remembered where I saw it, and it wasn’t too terribly far away. Well, it was on the other side of Yadkin County, so it was kind of a drive for me. I was thinking that the light might work for it as it had for the truck that I just saw. It was worth going to check out since I was out and really wanting to create some photos.
On the way out there, I drove by an old barbershop that I had photographed many years ago and have been considering giving it another try. I knew that it photographed well in the morning light and could be done under a clear sky as well. The only problem was that it just didn’t strike me as particularly photogenic as I drove by. It was really no big loss because that would have just been a single frame at best if I had stopped. I set my course to Yadkin County to check out that car that I had spotted from the highway a couple of weeks ago.
In about an hour I was in the parking lot where I had spotted the car. It was still there, and even though the location wasn’t all that great, I was seeing some potential for shooting isolations on it. The business where it was located was closed and there was no sign of anyone inside even though was now after 9:30. There was a number on the main sign for the business which I called and got a voicemail. I left a message and requested that he give me a call back if he got the message and told him what I was looking to do. In the hopes that I would get a call back soon, I decided to stay in the area for a bit as I drove around a bit more. I never did get a call back from him and I found myself on the main route to get into Booneville once again.
There was a performance shop one the main stretch through town that I have had luck with in the past on a sunny day and figured that I might as well go by there and see what they had out front. I also figured that I would slide by the other location to see if I could get an idea about what was in the woods before I bothered calling and wasting anyone’s time. Since that location was a bit further to the East, I went out there first. Instead of just slowly driving by and looking, I pulled into the gravel driveway and inched a little further into the woods than I had done in the past. I was still seeing just that same Ford truck but knew that there was more to be seen deeper in. I didn’t go too far though and actually didn’t have to. Just on the other side of the fence, I spotted about ten different cars sitting in the woods. They were overgrown and appeared to be rather difficult to get to, but they were workable from a photography standpoint.
More importantly, they were actually looking good in the light that was overhead. There were some hotspots from the sunlight, but for the most part, the trees were providing some good cover and pretty even light. The highlights appealed to me and tended to make the light a bit more interesting in many ways. I paused for a bit and thought about the possibilities that might present themselves if I went ahead and called the property owner. I mean I was here, and the light was workable even if it wasn’t my ideal lighting conditions. I knew that the owner was located in Clemmons which was about 30 minutes away and I figured that with my connection to Dean, I might be able to get the permission over the phone and could just explore and scout without causing anyone to drop what they were doing to come out to meet me.
I went ahead and got the number up on my phone and gave him a call. Surprisingly he answered and we started having a good conversation about the property. He said that he wasn’t really responsible for it and that his brother was caring for it since he lived closer. He gave me the name and number so that I could call him and get the needed permission. I made the second call and got another answer and a confirmation that I was talking with the one that had control over the property. He didn’t seem to have any issues with me getting some photos and offered to come out to show me around. I gladly took him up on the offer and he said that he would be there in a few minutes.
While I was waiting, I took advantage of the light that I had seen over the collection of cars at the entrance. I wasn’t sure how long it would take him to get there, and I knew that the light would be changing quickly as the sun continued to rise. For the moment, things were mostly in the shadows, and I liked that for a number of reasons. Because of how everything was kind of packed in together, I chose to use my telephoto lens to help with controlling the background and other elements off to the sides. Once the camera was built I got in closer to the cars and started to figure out what I wanted to shoot first.
There was a Dodge parked at the far end that caught my eye. It was backlit by the sun, but it was kind of isolated from the other vehicles which I thought would make for a good first composition. I only had to worry about an old bus that was parked to the side and some building materials which were right in front of the car. The long lens did help out quite a bit in isolating the car among all of the extra elements in the scene. The first composition that I did was a horizontal one of the car to eliminate some of the sunlight through the trees. I liked this, but it did show a bit more of the bus and other distractions than I really wanted to have. I did like the idea and after I was sure that I had the shot with minimal movement in the vegetation, I rotated the camera to a portrait orientation and reframed the composition once again.
This actually worked out a good bit better because the composition was more about the car and the trees and less about the setting. I did keep the tire in the foreground as I thought that worked well for the composition wither horizontal or vertical. I had already pretty well got my settings figured out with the previous framing, so this one didn’t take long at all to capture. It was more about controlling the breeze than anything else. The light would shift from sunny to slightly diffused as thin clouds moved overhead which offered me some different lighting looks. I was very fortunate that I had this variability and wished that it would have continued through the entire time here.
After looking around to see if there was anything else that I might want to shoot, I turned my attention back to the Ford by the house. This truck didn’t interest me all that much, but I did like the fact that the vegetation had grown up to nearly hood level on the truck. That really spoke to my decay eye, and I thought that I would look for a composition that would highlight that aspect. This turned out to be a bit harder than I had expected, but once I decided that I liked the little while flowers to the front of the hood, the photo started to come together for me. The focal point turned out to be the FORD letters on the front of the grill which divided the scene from greenery to the blue patina of the hood. The rust gave just enough warmth to the scene which was actually quite cool due to the shade. I could have warmed the image and actually started out that way, but the neutral colors seemed to rob the image of part of the setting. The same applied to the earlier ones of the Chrysler sedan. I ended up making the colors true to how they appeared at the time of the capture for a bit more detail to their story.
It was while I was working on the photo of the Ford that the property owner showed up. He got out of his car and introduced himself and we had a brief conversation before he took me on the tour. Now, I had only seen this little bit here at the beginning and other than what Dean had told me about the property, I really had no idea what I was getting ready to find. As we were walking through the property, I learned that at one time there were as many as 400 different vehicles here and that it had been a towing service for many years. The further into the property we got, the more cars I was seeing until we got to the main even where the cars stretched as far as I could see through the woods.
There is a little term that I learned as a police officer in Greensboro years ago when I was in the academy. This term is the “Plus 1 Rule” which means that if you find a weapon or drugs, keep searching because there will be more if you look deep enough. I’ve found that this same theory holds true with decay subjects. This all started with a single ’32 Ford and grew into two different cars on the side of the road. Now, I was looking at a couple hundred old vehicles that I had never known about or seen until now. I was really starting to feel bad about picking today to give this property a shot because I knew that the sun was going to give me a hard time. However, I was here, and after talking with the owner for a while I learned that many of these cars were going to be hauled off to the crusher soon. This is another familiar situation for me, and I’ve managed to get lucky several times finding a property right before the cars get removed. It is always a good idea in decay to shoot it if you have the chance because that chance might very well be your last.
I was here, I had permission, and I had the time, so that meant that I was committed to doing all that I could while I was here. There were two huge hurdles that I was going to have to get past in some way or another. The first was the sun which I had already started working around. It was just going to make the angles a little more complicated as well as restricting some of the compositions. This is something that I have been getting better with over the last couple of years. The second hurdle and the one that was going to cause me the most problems was the fact that the vegetation was so dense. This was going to make it hard to move around and to get clear shots of the cars. There was no doubt about it that this was a much better winter location for photography. I had already confirmed that I could come back and work the area some more at a later date, so that wasn’t really a problem. It was the threat of some of the cars being hauled away that prompted me to try and get all that I could reasonably get to today.
After the owner left me on my own, I started looking for the really special cars that I had seen. The first was a Buick LeSabre, at least that is what I am thinking I was looking at based on the trunk design. The colors were amazing on the car with some fantastic patina and rust. There was also a healthy blanked of fallen leaves on the large trunk that I found quite interesting. I already had the right lens for the job mounted and started to work out compositions that showed off the areas that I really liked about this rear end.
While I was shooting this car, I couldn’t help but remember photographing another LeSabre years ago in Yadkin County. It was one of my first really good finds after transitioning into a more dedicated decay photographer. The trunk was very unique compared to the other vehicles that I was photographing and the design kind of stuck in my mind ever since. I was excited to find another example and for the part that was accessible to be that trunk was a stroke of luck.
While it was the trunk that had really drawn me in, it was the colors on the quarter panel that I found to be most interesting. It seemed like there was a complete roster of warm colors that were all just randomly applied to the gorgeous shape of the car. The trim was still in place that gave a gentle curve through the scene and framed the taillight which made for a fantastic visual anchor. The lighting was also quite nice on the side of the car with the sunlight shining through the trees just enough to give some shadows on the car. These shadows were just dainty limbs with leaves that just added to the abstract nature of the way that the colors were shown.
I will admit that I spent way more time with this part of the car than I should have. I do have a habit of lingering too long when I really like a scene. I try a bunch of different ways of capturing the compositions which usually ends up in a plethora of options to pick from during the culling stages. Yeah, I did that with this Buick and I’m not upset about it. I still think that the colors on this car were just perfect and the shapes that the rear of the car possessed were nothing shy of fine art in their own right.
In typical fashion, I kept working in closer and closer trying to get the composition as succinct as possible. I really thought that I was just working my way in closer until I got to the composition that I was after. I had no idea that I would find one from pretty much each stage of the journey that I really liked. The really surprising part here was that I only shot seven frames as I worked through my ideas around this one area of the car. Of those seven frames, nearly half of them turned into keepers. I wish that I could have paired them down even further, but these are actually some of my favorites from the entire trek, so I would have been doing myself a disservice by culling any more of them out. I’m happy with the three that I have chosen to keep. They represent each transition for composition that I made with the other four frames representing different light qualities based on how much sun was shining on the scene.
When I come back out here in the Winter, I am really hoping that this car will still be here. I think that I can do quite a bit more with it under softer light and with less vegetation around. In fact, I am pretty sure I can do much better with all of the subjects that I shot today under a more forgiving light with better visibility. This is, after all, just my first visit to this location and I am just getting familiar with it. For locations like this, it usually takes me a visit or two before I really start to understand how it wants to be photographed. It is very much like a location that I have worked a couple of times close to home. It was on the second visit that I really was able to get some great photos because I knew more about what to expect and how to get the best angles without having to really hunt around for the right shot. I have no doubt that will happen here as well. In fact, now that I’ve had a chance to digest what all I have seen, I already have some different ideas for the next time I’m out there.
It really is worth mentioning here once again that when I photographed my first decay subject probably in 2007 or so, I really thought that finding subjects was going to be really difficult. I never saw these old cars when I was out and about, and the few times that I did find them, they were usually out for sale and didn’t last very long. These days, my entire thought process has changed when it comes to decay subjects. I can pretty much point the truck in any direction and within 50 miles be able to find something worth photographing and even after all these years, I’m still finding brand new locations to work like this one. I’m sure I’m still just scratching the surface of what is around me because after a decade of being primarily a decay photographer, focusing on old, rusted cars, I’m still finding brand new locations within a short distance from home.
If you are interested in doing this kind of photography, don’t let a lack of subjects deter you. I’m willing to bet that finding these old cars is actually quite a bit easier than finding great landscape scenes, especially when you are looking for those scenes that nobody else has photographed before. Even though I’m about 20 minutes away from the Blue Ridge Parkway in several different directions, I still can find rusty subjects more frequently and generally closer to home than a scenic view over the mountains. It is something to think about, and if you would like help learning decay photography, I do offer mentorships for all experience levels.
OK, back on track again. I didn’t want to get bogged down with that Buick any longer because there were still many cars to work before I called it a day. The next subject that I chose to work with was a ’55 Chevy which was parked near the Buick. This car wasn’t nearly as interesting, but there was no denying that it was easier to photograph because it was set off on its own. I liked how the driver’s door was opened and there was a bit of sun on a small cluster of leaves near that open door. It had just enough character to convince me to spend a moment or two getting a photograph of it.
I’ve shot many a tri-5 Chevy over the years, so these don’t really hold that much interest for me anymore unless there is something unique about them or their location. This one was just interesting enough to photograph, but the colors really did nothing at all for the scene. By changing it up to black and white, I was able to focus the attention more on the light and the way the car was shaped rather than just looking at a rusty car in the woods. This is part of the power of working in black and white. It is a great chance to remove the distraction of color and to create something that will immediately get a little extra attention as our brains try to decipher what is being seen. For me, black and white really worked well here because of the light coming across the hood and hitting the vegetation on the ground. That detail would have been lost had I left the color in the frame.
A real problem that I was running into with this location was the overall green tone of everything. After years of tree sap falling on the cars and the moss developing, the cars had started to take on a very woodland color scheme. This was being amplified by the light which was being filtered through the green leaves causing the overall lighting to have a green color cast. While I did fight with this in several images where I thought that the colors were worth saving, there were many other photos where there was no real point in saving the colors as I had done with the Buick. That is why I chose to do many images in black and white. It eliminated the overly green look to the images and allowed me to work more on tonal contrasts rather than fighting with color contrasts.
There was one car that I really liked sitting over by some other ones, but it was falling into this same issue of being too green to really stand out in the surroundings. This Fairlane wasn’t really unique in comparison to the other Fairlanes that I had photographed over the years and there was really no good angle to shoot it from where I wouldn’t get other vehicles in the frame which I felt would distract from it. I really wasn’t even thinking about photographing it, but as I was just taking it in and enjoying the shape of it, I saw an angle that really worked well for it. This was an angle that I don’t usually shoot with it being almost directly from the side giving nearly a profile view of the car. It wasn’t the car I was really interested in though. What I was liking here was the shape that I was seeing with the front of the car in profile.
Now, normally, I would have taken the time to figure out how to include the front wheel which would have forced me to bring in the hood and more of the background. However, because the car was sitting low to the ground, I really didn’t need the wheel to ground the car. Think about it…if the car was sitting the standard foot or more off of the ground it would look odd to see the bumper just hovering there. However, since the bumper was just a couple of inches off of the ground, there was no need to have the wheel involved in this composition. That allowed me to really just focus on the extreme front clip of the car
I liked how this was coming together and I used the trim around the grill to be my frame for the image as it brought the eyes to one of the interesting lines through the scene. The angle that I worked from had the headlights on a slightly different line from each other with the hood ornament framed within the distant fender for a bit of contrast. I chose my depth of field very carefully so that the background cars wouldn’t really complicate the scene. Black and white was used here again because of the green colors that were all around as well as simplifying the scene so that the eyes would land on the brightwork of the car rather than the background.
The black and white presentation of this photo did the scene justice and I felt that it set the proper mood for the image. There is a human quality that can be seen here that I think would have been lost had I left it in color. It is true that black and white photos are a better way to see the soul of your subject, and I think that works equally as well whether the subject is a person or an inanimate object. In a perfect world, I would shoot more black and white, but I know that generally speaking, my color images are better received. While I am not capturing images for the express purpose of appealing to the masses, I do have to realize that when it comes to print sales, color is king and that is where 98% or more of my print sales come from. I do like color, and I do agree that it is usually better for rusted subjects because the rust colors add to the experience. There is no denying that black and white is still a very valid type of photography even in the current day and age.
I’m going to take a quick break here and start again tomorrow with the next chapter. That will give you time to get all caught up with this entry and allow you to enjoy the photos in a smaller grouping so that nothing gets lost in the reading. I’ll be back here at some point tomorrow with more photos from this adventure. Just keep in mind that this was basically just a scouting trip to see what this property had to offer. I think we can all agree that it is a great little place for me to be with the camera, even under difficult lighting conditions.
See you back here again tomorrow at some point…
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