Wednesday, July 8, 2026
Once again, we are starting off with no real plan, and with not a whole lot of thought into the trek before heading out the door. I guess that simplifies the preamble to this trek quite a bit. The forecast was for mostly sunny skies through the morning with some clouds developing during the mid-afternoon, turning into storms around dinnertime. Essentially, I wasn’t planning on going anywhere at all. I wasn’t upset with that either since it is really quite hot outside these days. The beginning of the day was kind of spoken for after a headshot session that I did for a new client yesterday. That session went very well, and I enjoyed doing some work in the studio because, as I mentioned….HOT outside. I just had to finish up the edits after sending the proofs to the client which told me which ones were going to be selected for the final retouching. I was able to knock those three out in a few minutes and get the whole package delivered to the client’s email. I do pride myself on being efficient when it comes to my client work.
That left me pretty much caught up by a little after 10am. I was still in a creative space after the very successful trek into Ronda on Monday which was to get me in the photographic headspace for the headshots. I was really wanting to get back out with the camera again and keep rolling with this wave of creative energy and to embrace the fact that I was wanting to make photographs after a while of very little motivation. I just didn’t know where to go.
I was thinking something that I could do in black and white which would work well with the sunlight, but nothing was really coming to mind that sounded fun to me. I had really enjoyed working with the two old cars and kind of wanted to get back into that frame of mind once again. The weather wasn’t going to allow for much scouting though as the sun was going to transition into clouds and then storms in a matter of a couple of hours. I needed some kind of destination to get started so that I might have time on my side.
I spent probably 30 minutes rattling around ideas in my head without any success. It wasn’t until I remembered that a few days ago Toni had mentioned a location in Siloam that she had passed after picking up some decoration pieces for the house. She had just texted me a block number and a road name and later told me that there were three rusted cars in front of the house that might interest me. I had no idea what this location looked like or had to offer, but it was something that sounded promising and would put me in an area that I haven’t really been through all that often. The weather was fluctuating enough to offer some different kinds of light through the middle of the day and that gave me hope that I might be able to do something with the property.
In a few more minutes, I had my socks and shoes on walking out the door to the truck. The clouds were looking nice in the sky, but the sunlight was a little bright for my tastes. However, I had been thinking about pushing myself to do more work in bright sunlight rather than always looking for the cloudy days. Most of the time when I go out on sunny days, I end up impressing myself with the photos that I capture. I really do like the natural saturation of the colors thanks to the sun, but I’ve always been a little reluctant to fully embrace the shadows caused by the sun, especially during the middle of the day. It was going to be an interesting day, and I had no idea what it was going to look like.
I took the back roads to get out to the area where the three cars were located which took me down some very familiar roads. I was able to spot locations that I shot previously and took note of how things had changed over the years. Nothing through here was really surprising me as I do come this way a few times a year at least. That was why it really caught my attention when I saw what looked like a Ford Fairlane sitting in front of a house up against the trees. I didn’t remember ever seeing this car before. After I got turned around, I went to look at it more critically to see if there was a photo there.
Now that I was able to look at the details, I could see that there was a pile of discarded property on the other side of the car which was going to have to be dealt with through composition. The front of the car was also largely missing which took away from the ease of identifying the car. I didn’t really like that aspect all that much but kept looking. The car was largely green which kind of made it blend into the surroundings. There was a house just to the front left of the car as well. I felt like it was going to be the logical choice to shoot this from the shoulder of the road. This meant that I didn’t really need permission, but as close to the house as it was, I wanted to get that permission. The issue here was that the house looked vacant for the most part. It was kind of an iffy location, and looking at the sunlight over the scene I felt that the light wasn’t quite right for the photo just yet. Maybe it would be better under the clouds later on. If nothing else, the sun would be more even on the car later in the day, so the smart money was to come back to this one if I had time later.
I continued on my way, until I got to the road that Toni said the cars were on. She had given me a block number, and I found what I thought was going to be the right spot on the maps. This became my hunting grounds and I slowed to look on both sides of the road to see if I could spot the cars. There was nothing in the block that I was expecting, but I kept looking because directions are not Toni’s strong suit and there were many reasons that she could have gotten the wrong spot. I knew I was on the right road, so I just kept on going.
Before I left Surry County, I passed a field that had an old Ford truck parked by the fence as either yard art or blocking the entrance. Either way, the truck was very interesting looking, and I liked the setting that it was in with the exception of the power lines that were crisscrossing overhead. This was another spot that I wanted to consider returning to after I worked with the three cars that I was driving out to see. That is, if I could actually find them.
I continued down the road and eventually entered Yadkin County around East Bend. I noticed that the address points changed up and there was a high likelihood that the block number that I was looking for was actually on this section of the road. I decided to gamble on that possibility and I continued on. Sure enough, a few miles later on, I saw rust to the right. They weren’t Novas like Toni had thought, but they looked like two Pontiacs missing the chrome off of the fronts which made it hard to identify. There was also a ’50’s Chevy pickup next to them. I didn’t see much chance for any overall compositions of the cars, but I was sure that there were some isolations that would be possible. For that, I was sure to need permission. Since I had driven out here specifically for these three, I didn’t think about it and just pulled into the driveway.
There were no cars in the driveway, and the house had signs about video surveillance all around. I could see several cameras around the house as well. I went to the front door and knocked. There was no answer and the webs that I walked through gave me the idea that this was not a usual entrance for the house. There was a sliding door on the other end of the house which I went to next. That one had webs as well, but I still knocked. With no answer, I peeked around the side to see if I saw any signs of life, which I didn’t. After getting back in the truck, I drove next door to see if by chance they were related to the property at all.
I found a gentleman in the shop behind the house working and stopped to ask him about the house. He didn’t know the owner but thought that he remembered hearing that he had moved to Burlington a while back. The three vehicles had shown up recently on the back of a tow truck, but he didn’t know anything about them. Not wanting to tie up his time, I thanked him for the information and got back in the truck. This was not going to work out at all; at least not today.
The light wasn’t great on the cars anyway, but I was really needing to get permission before working that close to the cars. It seemed as though I had driven out here for nothing. That wasn’t quite accurate though after I gave it some thought. I had passed by two promising scenes that I would not have found had I not been coming out to this spot. I knew that the light was good on the Ford truck so I made a course for that spot to see if it would work for a photo or two.
It wasn’t that far up the road, and I believe it was just back into Surry County. There was a commercial property diagonally across the street that I was able to park in to look at the truck closer. It was parked right at the corner of the fenced field which gave a nice little bit of interest right behind the truck. There was a dense wood line on the other side of the field and there were some very good clouds in the sky overhead. There were a lot of power lines though and that was going to limit how I composed any photos. I walked around to both sides of the truck and looked from both sides of the road to see what my options were going to be.
I felt pretty good that I would be able to get some decent compositions with the long lens because it would minimize the intrusion of the background to the photo keeping the power lines to a minimum. There was no reason to push for any perspective distortion here as the entire scene was actually looking very good through my eyes which are roughly the equivalent to a 35-50mm lens.
Feeling motivated to capture this truck, I went back to my truck and got the camera with the long lens attached. The first composition that I shot was the easy one from next to where I had parked. I was situated diagonally across the street which meant that I was zoomed in pretty heavy to get the truck a reasonable size within the frame. This was by design though as I wanted a longer focal length for the composition. It actually worked out just about perfect allowing me to get a nice scale to each element and layer to the photo. The biggest worry that I had was passing traffic as I was right next to the road and each passing vehicle would cause a good bit of turbulence in the air around the camera. To deal with that, I just timed the exposures when there was no traffic around. The light was bright enough that even with the polarizer, I had a very fast shutter speed which kept any motion in the grass or trees unnoticeable.
I ended up firing off three frames with slightly different depths of field as I wanted the background to go soft while keeping the truck nice and sharp. I didn’t want to obliterate the background in bokeh though, just enough to give some depth to the image. When I was done with those three, I moved my position to the right which put me on the driveway to a farm, but I liked the angle on the truck from here. I made the composition a bit tighter on the truck and fired off another three frames with slightly different exposure settings for depth of field. I kind of liked these, but the turned wheel was giving me some problems, and I wanted to see if I could get a stronger composition from the shaded side of the truck.
I continued down the street, still on the opposite side of the road from the truck. I know that there were tons of folks looking at me and wondering why I wasn’t doing the logical thing and getting closer to the truck. I really did look like that would be the logical solution for this photo, but to avoid all the power lines, I really needed that long focal length which pushed my shooting location further away from the truck. I was exactly where I needed to be in order to get the photos that I was wanting.
Now that I was looking from the driver’s side, I was seeing that this offered a whole different perspective of the scene. I still had the fence, but the trees were closer on this side and the clouds were a bit more dense. I liked the more intimate view of the scene, and I felt like this view just allowed the viewer to connect with the truck a bit more than the grander scene. With the front wheels turned away from this direction, I was also much happier with the angle on the truck and the shadows were not bad at all. This is a benefit to shooting around the middle of the day for this kind of subject, and this is a lesson that I have to keep making myself learn.
For landscapes and people photos, this is not good light. It is flat and creates very deep shadows in odd places. However, when photographing automobiles, the sun high in the sky actually provides some very good modeling on the sides of the vehicle giving it depth and showing off the different shapes. Midday light on vehicles is actually pretty nice in a lot of respects, especially when dealing with textures associated with rust. The light was working well for me with this truck and the “shaded” side was actually pretty well lit from the light bouncing up from the ground beside it.
It didn’t take too long for me to get the composition dialed in the way that I wanted it and that was another three frames spent with slightly different depths of field. Like I’ve said before, I can get a decent idea of blur in the image review, but when I see it on the screen of the monitor it might not be enough or might be too much. I’ve learned to bracket the aperture to make sure that I get it right when I am looking for an element of blur in the frame. In most cases it is the last frame that I shoot that becomes the keeper, and that was the case for this one.
It wasn’t until I got home and started to process the images that I made the decision to do this as a black and white photo. There was a fundamental difference on this side when compared to the passenger side. The door was the same color as the rest of the truck on the driver’s side while there was a nice contrast with a rusty door on the opposite side. It was that color balance which made the earlier image work best in color while the one from the driver’s side was just a little heavy on the blues and greens for my taste. By converting it to black and white and working through the tonal contrasts, I was able to come up with an image that had a lot more visual pop to it without resulting to saturation to arrive at the contrasts. I actually really liked the black and white look for this one and with the newly applied door art, it seemed to have a historic feel to it rather than something that was shot in the Summer of 2026.
By this point, I had shot a total of nine frames of this truck and had worked it from one side to another from across the road. With it parked fairly close to the road, I had no problem crossing the road and getting in closer to it for some details. The first place that I went was the area at the rear of the hood on the passenger side because I knew that there was a composition there. This is an area that I have captured many times on trucks around this era and have found that I really like the lines and shapes that this area has. It was this side that had one other aspect that I wanted to use which wasn’t present on the other side. That rusted door provided the color contrast that I was really wanting.
It only took a couple of minutes to frame up the shot with the F-4 emblem holding the visual anchor for the entire frame. Everything else was shape, line, and color. Since I wanted everything in focus here, there was no need to make more than a single exposure. I just stopped the lens down and released the shutter. That was that, and I knew that I had the image that I wanted from here. After a quick review of the photo, I moved on to the next spot that I wanted to work with.
The turn signals on the fenders really stuck out to me. I think that they were new, or newish and there was a good possibility that this truck was a driver or had been very recently. The new lenses did catch my attention being surrounded by the patina of a well-used truck. I wanted to figure out a different way to capture an image here because I’ve done compositions around these turn signals a certain way for a very long time now. I wanted to include the environment with this one while almost making an abstract photo. The first thing that came to mind was the way that I had shot the Dodge hood ornament on Monday from down low using only a portion of the hood. I’ve ended up liking that composition more and more each day and thought that I could do something similar here as well.
Obviously, there wasn’t a metal shelter overhead and this wasn’t about getting low as I had done earlier. This composition was going to be about finding some order around the turn signal so that the entire composition worked together to celebrate the main subject rather than just appearing around it. I looked around to see the angles that I had to work with. The one that really caught my attention was viewed from roughly the center of the front end of the truck across to the turn signal. This put the fence in the background which I felt was a very interesting element and provided some darker tones. It wasn’t long before I started to relate the fence to the trim on the front of the hood. There was a distinct similarity with the horizontal slats which framed the turn signal quite effectively.
This was the basic composition that I started to explore and once I got things all lined up, I started to think about the depth of field. The last thing that I wanted was for the background to compete for attention. The truck, and more specifically, the turn signal was my main subject and that was where I wanted the attention. This meant that I needed all of the truck to be in decent focus with the light tack sharp. The fence and the field needed to be blurred, but not so much as to lose the shape of the fence. This became another string of three bracketed exposures with slightly different depths of field and focus points. It was the last one that worked the best. I found that leaving the actual hood slightly soft made it relate much better to the fence and since I was counting on that similarity in shape to help tell the story, I felt that was an important consideration. I really liked how this one turned out, and I feel that it is as successful as the Dodge hood ornament that I had shot a couple of days ago.
One of the things that I really owe to my portrait photography work is the use of depth of field. Of course, I knew about depth of field and how to control it long before I started really learning portrait work. It is just that with the landscape background, I was used to everything needing to be in focus. The goal was always sharp, front to back. There were even times when I did focus stacking to make that happen. Now that I am working in a field that really benefits from focus providing some separation, I am getting more comfortable with using depth of field creatively in my other photography pursuits. This is just one of those examples where it really helps out and makes the photo much stronger than had I had everything in sharp focus. It is just another tool in my box that allows me to bring my visions to life.
Speaking of portraits, I would like to share a quick word from our sponsor for today’s blog entry. That sponsor, as always is….well…me. If you are in need of headshots, portraits, engagement photos, maternity photos, or even boudoir, I’m your guy. I’m based in Wilkes County, but am happy to drive to you if you are wanting a specific location. I can even do creative sessions that can cover just about anything that you have in mind. Whether we are in the studio or on location, I will treat your session with the care and attention that you deserve. I also am happy to teach photography, and while I don’t do workshops anymore, I am committed to carrying on the educational process through mentorships which are much more specifically suited to the client than a one-size-fits-all workshop. This allows me to teach the individual rather than just the subject. I’ve found that this is a much more efficient way of learning and have seen great results from it over the years. Of course, I also sell prints of all my work to clients who would like to display my photographs on their walls. There is no better way of enjoying my artwork than to see it in a physical form as intended from the moment that I press the button. It is also a great way to support my art and help fund these treks where the photos happen.
Treks just like this are made possible by print sales as well as other client work. It would be hard for me to get out and drive around for hundreds of miles searching out subjects like this Ford without having some income being generated. Just imagine having a print of the above image on your wall. You would be able to really get to know the photo and see all the little details that I saw when I was capturing it. You would be able to see the implied “X” that is running through the frame. The chrome trim along with the panel line of the hood forms one diagonal component while the rust at the top left and bottom right complete a line that goes through the turn signal and the beefier part of the chrome. Little details like that are seldom discovered when scrolling quickly through thousands of images in a feed. You might not take the time to realize that the color palette is in perfect harmony between the orange and the tealish blue. The shadow of the trim shows that it is popping away from the hood giving just that much more depth thanks to the sun right above the truck. If you were to order a print of this, you would also get a page long description of how the image came to be so you would know that it was the second of two exposures made of this composition just to get the exposure perfect in camera before bringing it into post for the final touches. All of these things allow you to get more involved with the photo and really enjoy it beyond hitting the like button. Come on, you owe it to yourself to enjoy one of my pieces hanging on your wall, I know you wanna.
While I did really enjoy the depth from the shaded side of the truck, I wanted to see what the same composition would look like on the opposite side of the truck which was getting more full sun. I did notice that the rust on the leading edge of the fender was providing a very nice vignette for the frame which was lacking on the other side. This side didn’t have the implied “X” visible through the different elements, but there was still a nice flow to the scene. The patina was a bit stronger on this side even more than the rust, as the paint was a bit more faded and had a little more personality.
I framed up a similar composition but taking into account the key differences that I have mentioned, the aspect ratio needed to be different for this one. I don’t like one over the other, but I feel that they both say very different things. This is the more or less typical composition that I will shoot when faced with similar subjects. I know that it works and have done them enough times that I can easily put the composition together. It was the one shot from the inside angle on the light that really stood out for me though. I’m very glad that I stepped out of my comfort zone to get that one which I think pairs very well with these two taken from the outer corners of the truck.
No matter how often I photograph a certain type of vehicle, I will always find time to work the scene as much as I can with the access that I have. This truck was parked really close to the road and there were no indications that I wasn’t able to be around it. This gave me plenty of time to work everything that I wanted to with it. By this point, I had shot 18 frames of the truck, though it didn’t feel like that many. Of those 18, I ended up with six keepers which really surprised me. This was not my favorite light to work with, but I was able to find compositions that worked with what the sun was giving me and used the shadows to my advantage. You might remember me talking about just that kind of thing with the last Behind the Camera that was published a week ago.
Feeling that I had all that I wanted from the truck, I went back to my truck and put the camera away. It was time to get rolling again and see if I could do anything with the Fairlane that I spotted on the way out. Of course, I kept my eyes open for anything else that might make a good photo. There were several locations, but the light wasn’t really playing nicely with those subjects. I was going to have to come back again to work with those with some more clouds. Speaking of clouds, the ones that were supposed to be showing up were not really appearing. There were clouds overhead, but it was still very sunny, and it didn’t look like rain. The hourly forecast had suggested that the rain should be starting within about an hour from this point, but I was doubting that was going to happen.
It didn’t take too long to get to the other Ford, and I knew exactly where it was. I just pulled right into the driveway and got out of the truck to go and knock on the door. I pretty much knew that there would be nobody home, but I did see current registration on the SUV parked in the driveway. Who knows, this could be like the property that I shot many years ago that I swore was vacant, if not condemned. While doing some of the earlier photos, I saw smoke coming out of the chimney and eventually a guy came out of the front door. He lived there, even though I could see clear through the foundation of the house. Strange things can happen on these treks, so I don’t take anything for granted anymore.
As I figured, there was no answer at the door, and I was presented with many more clues that nobody actually lived there. I looked around and I didn’t see any indication that this property was maintained by anyone close by. There was a house across the street where they were working out in the front yard. Nobody was paying me any attention, so I really didn’t think that it was going to be a problem to get a few photos. I knew that I was going to be close to the road, so that wasn’t going to be a problem. There was really no safe place to park the truck except for the driveway. with no answer at the house, I just left my truck in the driveway and went to the back to get the camera.
Since I knew that I was going to want to include the vegetation around the car, I wanted to get a wider-angle lens than I had used for the truck earlier. I didn’t think I was going to need a very wide-angle, so the standard zoom was my choice. I knew that I was going to have to get low to mask the clutter behind the car with the car, so I dropped the tripod to the ground and started to frame up a composition.
What I found out was that with the front end missing from this car I didn’t want to have much perspective distortion because that would make the emptiness of the front of the car dominate the frame while the interesting shape was the side of the car. I needed this to be closer to a natural perspective which meant that I definitely had the right lens. As it turned out, I only needed to get to 33mm in order to get the right perspective while making the car large enough in the frame to block things like the lawn mower and other clutter. There was a small tree to the right that I used to frame the image on the right which allowed me to get the car pushed over to the left of the frame. This gave me plenty of nose room in the frame for the car to breathe.
The exposure was a little more difficult than I had expected. While the sun was further to my back, it was still quite bright. Even though the scene was pretty evenly lit, the grass was picking up a lot of light, and I could see that it was wanting to clip in the highlights. I kept my exposure slightly underexposed so that I didn’t lose the green color in the grass which I have done before thinking that the highlights could be controlled in post. Having learned that fixing that issue is a pain, I opted for a slight underexposure at the time of capture. It is all about getting it right in the field to make it easier when it comes to working in post.
I knew that the colors were going to be an issue and had been contemplating that since I had first saw the scene. With everything being green, I was going to have a hard time showing contrast within the frame to make the subject pop out. I could have gone with a black and white presentation, but that felt almost like a cheap trick to make the photo work. I could really do the same thing in color because it would largely be a monochromatic photo with the green surroundings and the green car. The gray would just be replaced with green, so I decided to go with full color, but handled a slightly different way.
I wasn’t looking for saturation here because if I saturated the green, the entire frame would be nothing but saturation and the green would take over the entire frame. By keeping the saturation in check, I would be able to give the scene a slightly vintage feel that fit the era of the car. The green would set a mood for the image and make it calm. The lack of chrome on the front of the car calmed the car down as well. What I was seeing was a restful image and one that didn’t need a lot of color to communicate the story. It wasn’t like the photos of the turn signals on the truck from earlier where I wanted that excitement brought about through the use of color. This time, the color was setting a quieter mood and one that was more in line with a black and white image.
Speaking of black and white images, I did shoot one of those of this car while I was here. I can’t say that this one was really designed as a black and white photo, and if I’m being honest, I am still not sure if my concept even worked now that I’m looking at the finished product. It has been said that there is nothing worse than a sharp execution of a fuzzy concept. This might actually fall into that category, I’m just not sure yet. One of the aspects of the car that I found interesting was how the front end was missing, but that there was no damage to the surrounding panels. Obviously, the chrome was pulled to be fitted to another car that was being restored. This left a gaping maw on the front of this car which just hit me as interesting. Having photographed the front of the car in the overall and establishing shot that I have just shared, I didn’t want to just get a detail shot of the missing pieces. I wanted to do something different to showcase that aspect.
Going back to my goals for this year, I wanted to try and see this car differently than I would have normally. I didn’t want to do a typical composition from the corner which would have worked with the chrome bits still in place. I felt that looking at it as an abstract of sorts might work better. Without having permission to be here, I was very careful about how close I got to the car and decided that I wasn’t going to go any deeper into the property than the car was which meant that I was limiting myself to only certain angles to the car.
Walking around it I found that I liked the small bits of trim that matched the angle of the marker light on the leading edge of the fender and I liked the curve of the fender where the bumper had gone. As I moved to this area, I started to see the awkward angle of the opposing fender which gave an uncomfortable feeling when matched up with the fender that I was looking at. This was the spark of the composition that I started to work towards. I worked the camera around until I had a relationship between the two fenders which put them on different levels for a bit of extra visual interest. I could see that it was actually looking like two cars coming together at an angle. It was interesting because it forced me to really ask questions about what I was seeing. If I was asking questions knowing what the scene was all about, I couldn’t help but figure that others would be asking even more.
There was also the tree that was in the background which I found offered a nice element for depth. The angle of the trunks was also similar to the trim that was on the fender so graphically, the two elements were linked. This made me look at the scene as a vertical composition which appeared to work out. I shot two different compositions here to try and find the one that worked the best.
When it came time to pull the photos into post to see what I would be able to do with them, I was kind of stumped. I started out looking at it as a color image and actually processed it that way to start with. The colors were just too overbearing here and I didn’t like it. After switching it to black and white, I felt that furthered the abstract idea behind this photo and forced you to look deeper into the image than the color one. I’m still not sure if this works or not, but I do think that the black and white version is the better of the two and holds true to my intention for the photo. Time will tell if I continue to think that it works, or more accurately if I fully decide that it works.
That was my last shot of the day because I didn’t want to press my luck at this property. I was already closer to the car than I really wanted to be, and I wasn’t seeing anything else that would work as an isolation that I felt comfortable getting in position for. I was happy with what I had from the day though. Even though I struck out at the intended location, I still found two other spots to work with and had shot a total of 25 frames for a total of eight keepers. Not too bad for not really having much of a plan and not having the light that I was used to working with.
Thank you for joining me on the trek and I do hope that you enjoyed the photos. It really is nice to be getting back out regularly again with the camera. I’ve missed it, but I didn’t want to force the motivation when it wasn’t there. It just took some time for it to return, and I am hoping that this is a good indication that it is here to stay for a while. I did see some other spots that will be worth revisiting again in the future, so I’m already looking forward to my next trek which is really nice.
Until then….
