Monday, May 5, 2025
Today’s trek was a bit of an odd one because of how it came about happening. It was one of those days when the weather was looking good and I wanted to go out and get a few photos, but I had no idea where to go. My first thought was to get some landscapes, and possibly a sunrise since there were supposed to be some clouds during the first hours of daylight. The clouds were supposed to build up through the day which would make for a potentially full day of photography if I wanted to stay out that long. I just needed to figure out where I wanted to go. At some point during the mid-afternoon, I had decided that I would head out to Beacon Heights on the Blue Ridge Parkway to get started at sunrise. When I was done there, and if the clouds were still building up, I was wanting to head down to Crabtree Falls for another shot at that waterfall which should be in pretty good shape after some good soaking rains over the past few days. With the hiking, I was probably going to be gone all morning and would get home in the early afternoon which was about perfect. That would allow me time to get the photos edited and the blog written before Toni got home because I was planning on around five photos in total for the day.
By the time evening came, I started to really look at the weather because if I was going to catch the sunrise at Beacon Heights, I was going to have to get up pretty darn early and be on the road around 4am to ensure that I was able to get into position before first light. However, the clouds were looking worse and worse for sunrise and by 9pm, I had pretty much decided that I wasn’t going to try it at all. That worked, because I had a list of YouTube videos to watch and wasn’t quite ready to go to bed just yet.
When I woke up on my own this morning it was about 7:30 and I looked at the weather. Nothing but clear skies all around and the sun was looking kind of bright from what I could see through the window. The clouds were supposed to move in during the middle of the day and there was even a chance of showers in the early afternoon. Fortunately, Toni had persuaded me to not wash her car on Sunday, so I didn’t have to worry about spotting up a clean car if it did rain on her at work. The clouds were looking decent, but they weren’t going to be thick enough to justify going out to photograph a waterfall. If I was going to go out, I was going to need something else to put in front of the camera. Nothing was coming to mind, so I figured I would just go downstairs and get some stuff done at the computer while I thought about it.
I wasn’t really putting a lot of mental energy into thinking about what to shoot because I had no idea what the clouds were going to look like, and I had no real working ideas of things that I might want to shoot. I was kind of stuck on landscapes, but it was going to be the wrong time of day and more than likely not the best light for doing landscapes when I was going to be able to get out with the camera. I was almost to the point of deciding to work on pressure washing the driveway for a good bit of the day instead of going out for photos. Had it not been for the fact that I had said that I would take an Amazon return to the UPS pickup for Toni, I might have just stayed home and done that. However, when I was done with the computer work, I went upstairs and looked out the window.
What I saw was really good light over the yard. Looking up, there were clouds in the sky, and there looked to be texture to them as well. I checked the hourly forecast, and the clouds were coming in and looking to be some decent ones by 11am. It was a little after 9 at this point and I decided to go ahead and take the return and have the camera with me in case I decided to go hunting for something to shoot. I was on the road a short time later and found that the sun wasn’t quite through yet. It got very bright about a mile past the house and the sky just opened up to nothing but blue skies as I headed into town.
When I got done dropping off the return I turned back West because that was where the better clouds appeared to be as well as home. I decided to head down US 421 instead of the back way because there was a car that a friend of mine had suggested that I shoot a few months ago that was located a bit further down the highway in Ferguson. I had been by the car several times and scoped it out while driving the Miata. The car was wonderful and was certainly something that I would want to photograph, but it was situated between a flatbed tractor trailer carrying a bulldozer, a logging truck, and another piece of heavy machinery. There were just no angles that I could see which would allow a good view of the car, especially from the road. I was sure that I could get some detail shots of the car, but I wasn’t sure it was going to be worth the ask which I would have to do in order to get onto the property close enough to really work the car.
Since I was kind of waiting for the sun to go away, I figured I could go out there and scout for a bit to see if there were any subjects that I might want to shoot. If I felt froggy, I might just stop and ask for permission to shoot the Ford. There was really nothing at all definite about my plans, and I had no idea if anything at all would work out. It just seemed like the best thing to do on a day like today. If all else failed, I could still go home and work on the driveway…though I wasn’t really looking forward to that at all.
It didn’t take long to get to the location because it was not far from home. In fact, in Southern directions, it was just around the corner from us. The clouds were looking better the further I got to the car, and the light was changing in some very positive ways. I was actually getting excited about shooting something, though I still wasn’t convinced that it would be the Ford. Once I got there, I drove by slowly and looked at the car. Nothing had changed and all the negatives about the location were still valid. However, the light on the car was really good, and it was a coupe which I don’t see that often in my travels. It was unique enough to prompt me to stop and check it out and hope that the owner would give me permission to access the property.
I got turned around and headed up the driveway to the house that looked like it was associated with the field where the car was parked. As I was getting parked, I could see clues that the owner was probably out in the yard, so I got out of the truck and started to announce myself hoping that the owner would hear me and come to meet me. This is exactly what happened, and I had the opportunity to have a very nice conversation with the owner. In fact, he even showed me an astounding restoration that he had in his collection which was the polar opposite of the car that had brought me out here. He had no problems with me photographing the old car and gave me a bit of history on it before I went down to get started.
When I got down to the car, I took a few minutes to walk around it to see what I might be able to work with on it and around it. It always pays to do this before getting started, especially if you haven’t worked the subject before. The location was very difficult to work with as I had expected, but that was part of the fun of this location because I was in the mood for a challenge. I probably should have chosen to mount the telephoto lens, but I decided to go for the standard zoom to start with because I had a wild idea of how to get an overall shot of the car from the rear quarter where only a portion of the logging rig would be visible. I also figured that the close in focusing of the lens might prove valuable. If I had a hard time with compositions, I would just come back and get the long lens. It wasn’t that big of a gamble and the wider angles would let me play with the shapes of the car a bit more.
Oddly, even though I had the idea for the overall composition, I moved into the front corner of the car where the one remaining Starliner emblem was still affixed. This was one of those details that made the car unique, and I knew that I wanted to capture that before the day was done. I just had to figure out how best to frame the image. Since one of the headlights was broken, I really wanted to get those in the shot as well, which kind of forced the issue with including the wheel for balance. It was a pretty standard composition, but there is nothing wrong with going for the expected shot to get started. I just needed to get something in the bag before I tried the more difficult compositions.
When I was happy with that first composition, and it only took four exposures to land on the one that turned into the keeper, I moved my attention to the area around the rearview mirror. It was an interesting piece, and I thought that it would look good in a tight composition with the steering wheel. I framed that shot up and fired off two different exposures thinking that I had the shot nailed. It looked good in the camera and the concept was solid. However, when I got the images home, it kind of fell short because there was no clear subject to the shot the way that it was composed. These things happen, and it was more of an experimental shot than anything.
The next area of the car that I went to was the rear passenger side where I was focused on the C pillar because of the trio of stars that were still present. This side of the car wasn’t in the light, but the patina was better and there was more visual interest to the pillar because of that. I looked at it from the door side, and from the trunk side before deciding that it looked best as shot from behind. I worked on getting the angles right as well as the framing of the shot. I then had to work with the exposure because the highlights were really strong from the backlight, while the shadows were just a tad dark. I had to really push the exposure to get it all in a single shot, but I was able to do it. There were a few little adjustments to the composition along the way, but the concept was pretty solid from the start. This one turned out better than the mirror shot that I had just come from and it yielded my second keeper of the day.
I wouldn’t say that I was feeling confident just yet, but I was finding my groove with the car by this point. I had spotted the Galaxie emblem on the trunk lid during my walk around and decided that I wanted to get a shot of that. There was a covered keyhole right above it that added to the visual interest. I started off by squaring up to the trunk and shooting a very symmetrical shot. It worked, but it was boring. I knew that I could do better than that, and I decided that I was going to spend the time looking for something stronger rather than committing to that composition.
I knew that I needed some diagonals, but the emblem was right at the edge of the trunk with some trim work right below that complicated matters. However, by moving over to the side and letting the keyhole occupy the upper left third of the frame, the Galaxie emblem stretched nicely through the frame with an upward trajectory. This left the trim below the trunk filling just the lower right which balanced out the whole frame quite nicely. This was so much stronger than what I had started out shooting and I was very happy that I had stuck with the subject.
My next composition was the one that I had chosen the standard zoom for when I was first getting started. I was feeling confident enough to try that composition knowing that it was probably not going to work. What I liked about the concept was that it was from the rear of the car which I don’t usually shoot, but it showcased the more unique qualities of this body over a regular Fairlane. What I wasn’t convinced about was the front end of the trailer with the claw stored right there. It really didn’t fit with the car, but it was a bit of added interest to the frame. There was no way around including it in the composition if I was going to get the entire car in a shot. My only other option was to shoot from the shaded side and get a Kenworth and a flatbed in the background. That was going to be a hard no from me.
I started working out a position that I liked which gave me the right angle on the car. Then I started to move forward and backwards to play with the focal length and see how the scaling was looking. I found a spot really close to the rear of the flatbed trailer which allowed me a nice view of the car with only the interesting part of the trailer visible in the frame. I elevated the camera to give some separation between the car and the heavy equipment, but not so much that the claw became an unrelated distraction. If I was going to have it in the frame, I was going to have to have it make sense or at least look like it was included with thought.
I hear you saying that with the advent of digital tools, I could easily remove that part of the trailer and replace it with more trees, or a cabin, or a fleet of Plymouths. Yeah, the sky is the limit these days with all the editing tools that are at our disposal. The problem is, using these remove tools and generative AI things tends to leave evidence that something else had been there before. If I am getting rid of something small, I am happy to make that compromise and have figured out how to work through the pixels to make it believable. However, when I am looking at something this big, I don’t want to recreate that much of the photo because it just isn’t honest photography. I do want my photos to be honest, and to never look like they were generated on a digital level. I’ll leave that to AI and those photographers to like to “fix it in post.” That just isn’t me.
After some time working with the framing, I was able to get a composition that I did like from the rear of the car. I played with the depth of field for bit to make sure that I had the right combination as I wanted the car in focus but was more than happy for the heavy equipment to go soft. Unfortunately, in order to get the full car in focus, I had to have most everything reasonably sharp which was going to put a load on me when I was processing the photo. I knew that I was going to have to do some things to minimize the impact of the claw in the photo, which was a better option than just removing it.
When I got the image home and started to look at it closely, I saw that the red tones of rust were really pulling my eyes to the trailer which was not what I wanted. I had the brightness of the car working for me which I was thankful for. I knew that the eyes would go to the brightest part of the scene first which was the car. Then they would go to areas of contrast which again was the car. The tripping point was the areas of saturation which would then pull the eyes to the claw and force the question of what it was doing there. To remove that step of the visual process, I wanted to see what this looked like in black and white. That is a great way of simplifying an image and I thought that there was a very good chance that it would do just that.
Once I made the conversion things really started to come together. The only thing that I really saw in the frame was the car which was just what I wanted. The claw was there and did add some visual interest in the negative space, but since it was no longer the reddish rust color, it fell into the background where I wanted it to be. It would have worked in color, but I think that I would have had to make too many adjustments to have the eyes go where I wanted them to go, and then it would still feel like an added element rather than just part of the background. I’m really happy with the black and white processing that I did here, and it is a testimony to how much I learned during my year of focusing on black and white photography.
While I was shooting from the rear of the car, I took notice of the front quarter and how the shapes looked there. I also remembered that this was the side that still had the Starliner emblem attached. That gave me the want to shoot this part of the car once again, but from further back. I knew that the road would make for a nice element to add to the frame, and by concentrating on only the front of the car, I could omit the heavy equipment altogether.
I moved up and got in closer to the side of the car as I framed up a vertical composition that I thought would be the most effective. I liked the framing and decided to do an in-camera crop to 4:3 so that I could get the width looking better. I cropped it in close to right behind the front wheel arch while the road traveled up and through the frame. I thought that it was very effective but wanted to see what would happen if I flipped the camera horizontal and got more of the car in the frame.
When I did that, I liked the composition but felt that it wasn’t quite as effective as the vertical one had been. I did work through it for a while and actually shot more variations of the horizontal one as I searched for the right depth of field and the right relationship between the elements. When I finally landed on a shot that I liked, I decided to move on to something else figuring that the vertical would win out between them anyway. Oddly enough, when I got the images home, the vertical composition only made it through the first round of culling, and it was the horizontal one that I felt was the strongest of the two. That was the one that I decided to process and I’m actually quite happy with how it turned out.
By this point, I was starting to look for those last-minute details that I might want to shoot on the car because I was pretty sure that I had shot everything that I wanted to. I knew that the rear taillights had some interest for me, so I went back there and started to look around to see if there was a composition that I might want to try. The passenger light was the one that was the most interesting, and I really liked how the lines and curves flowed when viewed from the middle of the car. The colors of the car worked well with the grass, and I felt that I could shoot it from this side and have the contrasting colors of the grass showcase the curves of the car.
The next trick that I decided to do was to frame this vertically so that the angle of the rear corner came in like a triangle with the taillight being the punctuation for the whole composition. If memory serves, this is the first time that I have done this kind of shot and it was looking really good with the lines of the Starliner. I decided that I was going to do this as a 5:7 crop and extended the tripod a bit to fill the frame even more than it was. This felt very good to my eyes, and I could see it working fantastic with that slight adjustment to the aspect ratio. I do wish that Canon would offer a 5:7 as an in-camera crop mode because it is just different enough from the 3:2 aspect ratio that the camera shoots naturally.
My last shot on this car was from the driver’s side door where I was going for the opposite side of the rearview mirror than I had shot earlier in the day. This offered more visual interest as I was able to get the steering wheel in shot as well as the dirt on the glass. The perspective offered some great diagonals and triangles as well which I particularly enjoyed in the frame. There was a bit of time working with the height of the camera, but I continued to improve through the different frames until I was happy that I had what I wanted for the shot.
That pretty much brought my time with the Ford to a close. I had shot all that I could think of, and realized that at 40 frames, I had shot waaaay more than I expected to be able to with the car in these surroundings. I had been thinking for probably two months that I wasn’t going to be able to do anything with this car unless one of the surrounding pieces of equipment had moved. While it would have made it much easier, there was a certain sense of accomplishment to having shot this car from so many different angles and to have actually come away with seven keepers from the experience.
The clouds were really starting to come in at this point and I decided that I wanted to find just one more subject to photograph before going home. I loaded my gear back up in the truck and headed out on the road. I made the right turn at the corner of the property and started up the hill which I have driven a time or two in the past. There was a red barn at the top of the hill that I had seen before but dismissed it because there wasn’t much there for a composition. It had an odd shape to it that at the time didn’t seem to help its cause. This time, there was a field of yellow flowers all around it that added so much to the visual interest of the scene. It was enough to kind of spark my creativity, but I was not sure how to get a composition put together with it. It was behind a tall electric fence which was up an embankment. There were trees and bushes alongside of the road which would cause me issues with angles as well. It didn’t quite seem worth it to me, so I kept on going up the road.
There was an old store just beyond the red barn, but there was no composition at all with it even though it was really interesting looking. I just kept driving up the road and seeing other potential, but nothing was quite as interesting as the red barn in the field of yellow. By the time I had reached the end of the road, I had pretty much decided that I should go back and try to get a shot of the barn. The sky was looking really good at this point, and I thought that would bring yet another element of interest to the frame.
When I got back to the barn, I could just about see the property that I had shot a short time before. It was quite literally right around the corner from where I was sitting currently. I could tell which house was attached to the barn and decided to drive up the driveway to ask for permission because it was looking like the best shot which would allow a view of the sky was going to come from the driveway and I wanted to get permission to be there. Getting deeper into the driveway, I started to get a bit confused about where to find the house and I didn’t want to just go on a tour of the property looking for the house, so I just got turned around and went back out to the street.
The sky was really looking great at this point, and I decided that it was worth stopping and trying to shoot the barn from the road. I just pulled off on the side of the road and grabbed the camera. Once again, I went with the standard zoom because I knew that I wanted to get a lot of the sky in the frame which meant that the telephoto lens wouldn’t be wide enough even though I was working at a distance from the barn. I decided to take a chance by going back into the driveway where the mailboxes were which I felt that I could get away with in terms of not being too deep into private property. The barn looked really good from this angle, not so much for the shape of the barn, but the way that the sky was looking overhead. The problem was the fence was too close to the barn and there was no angle that I could get where the fence wasn’t in the shot. Since it was a wire fence, it wasn’t one to look really good in the photos, so I needed to figure out a way of omitting the fence from view.
Figuring that the driveway shot was out of the question or at least was going to take too long to figure out, I moved back out to the shoulder of the road and walked up the embankment to the fence. From the angle that I was feeling would give me the best shot, I found that the fence was too tall to shoot over. I had to shoot between the wires to get an unobstructed view. The issue that I ran into with that was the tree that was right at the fence. There was a limb that was stretching across the frame which was just floating in the air with no trunk. I didn’t like that in the composition, though the limb looked great in the shot. Overall, though, this wasn’t going to work out as a composition.
I had to go along the fence for another angle of view that omitted the tree. I probably walked about 75 feet before I found another clearing that would work for me. The fence was also shorter so I could shoot over it as opposed to through it. There was another benefit that I was able to get the shelter that was attached to the barn in the view from this angle which I really liked. This barn was interesting looking and that was partly due to that shelter which made for some interesting angles. Both views that I had worked with also had a great view of the barn quilt which might not be quite a typical quilt in design as it had a cow right in the center which again made this look unique from other barns in the area. It was the yellow flowers and the dramatic sky that I loved the most about this view and decided to stick with it for a while as I tried different points along the fenceline.
What I kept running into was the different buildings in the background on the other side of the driveway behind the barn. If I got too far off to the right, those buildings came into view, but too far to the left, and the barn lacked structure. I found myself working in the sweet spot for a while and eventually figured I had what I had wanted to get. The clouds were now looking like rain, and I figured that meant it was time to head home. After getting back to the truck, I started to break the camera down but started to hear a small motor coming down the driveway. I figured that this might be the chance that I had been hoping for.
Sure enough, the property owner was coming down the end of the driveway. He might have been coming to see what I was doing, or he might have just been coming to check the mail. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I waved and crossed the street to talk with him. He was a very nice man, and we chatted briefly, and I let him know what I had been doing and that the better angles were probably inside the fence. He was more than happy to let me into the field and said he would open the gate for me. I ran back to get my camera and had to put the polarizer back on it again as I had just taken it off. I locked up the truck and went back up the driveway to meet him at the gate.
Once I was inside of the field, I started to walk around to find what angles I had to work with from inside. The first one that I set up to shoot was the one that I had tried to do through the fence with the tree in the way. Now that I could get in closer, the tree was no longer an issue, and I didn’t have to worry about the floating limb entering the frame. The barn wasn’t as interesting from this angle, but the sky was looking really good, and the yellow field was still a big draw to the scene for me. I didn’t spend too much time with this shot because I had convinced myself that the better angles for the barn were found further out in the field.
I did get into position where I could use a bit more of the wide angle of the lens to capture something similar to what I had shot from the other side of the fence. I really liked the wide-open look of the scene from this location which was about 20 feet closer in to the barn from where I had been shooting before. It made a lot of other parts of the composition more possible as I was able to position in a way that blocked the view of some of the distractions that I had been dealing with earlier. I still had to be careful with the area behind the barn as that was where the other buildings started to come into view.
The composition was really looking strong but seemed awkward in a lot of ways. I fiddled with the framing and scaling of the barn within the scene so that it didn’t get lost and there was a suitable balance to the composition. The sky was starting to change up again with the dark clouds passing by giving way to blue skies bleeding through the white clouds. It was a completely different look from earlier and now I was getting the benefit of the sunlight really shining on the field. I wanted this one to work, so I stuck with it for a very long time as the sky changed up.
It wasn’t until I got home that I realized what had been wrong with the composition. The barn was too close to the edge of the frame on the left and felt crowded to my eyes. There was no way to give it more room when I was composing the scene because of the distractions behind the barn. However, an element that is this close to the edge of the frame is much more effective on the right side than the left because it is used to give the eyes a landing point within the photo rather than using it as an introduction to the scene. A quick flip of the frame confirmed my suspicions that this made much more visual sense. Now, I will say that I had my reservations about doing this for this photo. There were no elements within the frame that would have prohibited me from flipping it such as signs, or other recognizable and directional elements. What was causing me a bit of hesitation was the fact that I had spoken at length with the owner and had offered a free print should he like any that I shot. This barn means something to him, and I didn’t want to fundamentally change a view that he is used to seeing by making it a mirror image. However, there was no denying that flipping the image made for a much stronger composition than the original. I decided that should he want this as a print, but didn’t like the mirror image version, I would do a one-off print for him with it positioned the way it actually is in the field. For myself, and for other clients that might wish to have this as a large print hanging on the wall, I will be leaving it like this which reads so much better from left to right.
This shot was actually the end of a series of 77 frames that had been shot for the day. They were pretty well broken in half between the two locations which really surprised me. Out of the first 40 frames, I had come away with seven keepers, while the next 37 frames only brought me three of them. It wasn’t that I got less effective with the camera with the second location. The reason that my hit rate was much lower for the barn was because I spent a lot of time searching along the fenceline for a good angle and then was also shooting repeated compositions as the sky and lighting changed. These things will always increase the number of frames that are made, and none of these factors had any bearing on the Ford that I had shot earlier. The lighting was pretty constant with that one, and I was able to really dial in the shots that I wanted which reduced the need for making additional exposures.
Looking back on the day, I’m thrilled at how many photos I ended up getting. Probably my favorite aspect of the whole day is that I had never shot either subject before, even though I had shot a scene where the Ford was years ago, long before the Ford was there. That was made even more special because of the fact that I wasn’t too far from the house, quite literally right around the corner in mountain navigation terms. The two locations that I ended up shooting were essentially next door to one another which puts them both well in the realm of close to home. It just goes to prove that there is always something to shoot close to home, even if you have lived in the area for a while and rightfully should have exhausted all the possibilities. Conditions change which can create magical scenes like the barn situated in the yellow field underneath a dramatic sky, or new elements are introduced to the scene over time like the Ford Galaxie. At one time or another, and actually multiple times, I had dismissed both of these scenes and didn’t think that they would work in a photo. With the right conditions and mindset, you can see that not only did these locations provide great photographic subjects, but I also ended up with a variety of compositions from each spot. For not having the slightest idea of where to go when I left the house, I have to say that today was a fantastic day behind the camera.
I do hope that you have enjoyed the photos as well as the story behind them. As you read through these words, I want you to keep in mind that AI generated images might look more impressive and be more perfect in terms of artistic attributes, but not a single AI image comes with a story like this to go along with them. These blogs used to be more or less my dear diary approach to remembering what I went through during a trek, but more and more I am relying on them to set me apart from computer generated imagery that you can find online. It is all too easy to describe a scene to a computer and then pick through several generated versions until you find the one that works for your preconceived ideas. Yes, it is easy to do that, and you can do it from the comfort of your own home. What you see throughout my blogs and in my galleries are photographs taken during real conditions with important compromises made to provide you with a concise visual story of something that actually exists in the world. I take pride in my ability to locate these scenes and then interpret them through a camera taking into account all the limitations that location and conditions dictate.
Many of you have shown your appreciation and support of my art through print purchases, hiring me for a photo session, workshop attendance, mentorships, and even some very generous donations. No matter how you choose to support my art, it is very much appreciated and continues to show me that there is value in work created by a human for human enjoyment. There is so much negativity these days when it comes to AI generated images and how the technology is going to replace photographers eventually. I don’t think that will ever happen because there is a human aspect that I truly believe can never be recreated through software. I’m banking on that hope and continuing on with my photographic journey. I’m very humbled that you all are joining me as I find more and more to put in front of my camera. Thank you all, and I appreciate you being along for the ride.
Until next time….
