Friday, November 8, 2024
Yes, I know….today is actually Saturday, but these photos happened yesterday, and it took me till now to get them all edited and processed. You have also probably noticed that this is a part 1 blog entry and are likely assuming that there will be at least one more from this trek. You would be correct in that assumption, but there is just one more that I am going to publish from this trek. I really wanted to do it all in a single blog for simplicity, but with a total of 21 new photos, that was just going to be too cumbersome to work with. What I’ve done is broken them up at the point where my first walk through of the area was done and the next part will be my second pass through all of the cars.
Just a little background to get us started here, I was having a short conversation with my friend Dean who owns Outlawed Restorations a few days ago. During this conversation he let me know that he had pulled out his dad’s 1956 Ford Customline which had been in the trees for as long as I have known about this place. Only recently had I been able to photograph it because the vegetation had died back a little bit during this past winter. As it turns out, a pine tree had fallen with the previous weather and broken the rear window. With the tree gone, he decided to pull it out of the woods and put it next to another tree. After the hard time I had working out compositions with the car in the close quarters of the woods, I was really excited to have another chance to play around with it in a more open setting.
I started to look for a day with decent clouds and kind of had a hard time finding a forecasted day that would work for me. Each day looked like thin clouds at best with rain during the only cloudy day in the near future. As it turned out, I had an appointment on Friday morning that would leave the afternoon open and there were supposed to be some increasing clouds over Yadkin County. It wasn’t ideal, but I thought that I might be able to pull it off with some variable light. I was feeling like creating some photographs and this was a great opportunity to get something new. I also usually have really good luck at this location with all of the other vehicles that are there.
When my appointment was over, I headed East and watched a large area of clouds in the distance. I was really hoping that they would provide the lighting that I was after, but they were looking too far to the North. I hadn’t called Dean to tell him I was on the way because I just didn’t know what the lighting was going to look like. The closer I got, the worst the lighting was looking. It was harsh, and bright which is never a good combination. However, something told me to continue on and give it a try. The sunlight, once it softened a bit would provide some extra saturation to the colors on the car which I thought might benefit it a bit anyway.
I pulled into the driveway a little after noon and saw that the light was very bright. This gave me some time to catch up with Dean and hear about the history of the Ford. The more he told me about the car, the more excited I became about photographing it. It is always helpful for me to understand what the past of the car was like. It helps me understand the current conditions that I find it in. What I did like was that he had placed it close to a tree, so I knew that I had some compositional options ahead of me. On the other hand, with the damage being caused by a fallen tree, I’m not sure that I would have chosen that location for the car. Photographically though, it was one of the better places it could have been placed.
After we had finished talking the light was looking a bit better as the sun was dropping in the sky. There were also some thin clouds moving around overhead that occasionally diffused the sun even more. With this being an entirely new subject for me based on an extreme change of location, I spent some time walking around it to see what the best angles were. I also used this time to check out the potential distractions in the background. There were several angles that looked good for the car, but there was too much that would be visible behind it. I took the time to see what different focal lengths would do and whether or not changing the altitude of the camera would help. In some cases it did, and in other cases it didn’t.
Eventually, I had settled on a few different angles that were going to be dependent on the lighting. For what was going on currently, my best option was going to be working from the driver’s side front quarter. From here, I could get a tight shot on the car by itself or include the tree to the right. I was going to have to shoot low because of the distractions at the woodline in the background. I found the right focal length to enlarge the car to the point where it covered the main group of distractions and then framed the photograph so that I avoided some other distractions to the left, just outside of the frame. From this angle, I could work both the tight composition as well as the larger view, and I could do it all with the standard zoom.
It is worth mentioning that with all the advancements in Lightroom and Photoshop I could very easily remove the distractions that I had tried so hard to mask or omit with the composition. Yes, I could have done this without missing a beat, but I really feel that photography should be an honest pursuit, and I would much rather spend the time in the field making a simple image than spend time in front of the computer fixing what is generally caused by laziness. These tools are nice to have when needed, but there is something elegant about using compositional skills to eliminate distractions while keeping the photograph looking interesting and pleasing. This is how I choose to work when I am creating an image.
Now that I had the angles right and could work two different compositions relatively easily from this spot while waiting on the light, I started to dial in settings to protect the highlights while getting as much shadow detail as I could. What I found was that the car was just not going to get enough light, even though the sunlight was shining on it in several areas. I needed to back the sky down a bit, and that was done with the use of a graduated ND filter. This gave me a much easier exposure to work with. Now, all I had to do was wait for the sunlight to soften a little and the clouds to provide a bit more coverage in the shadows.
I didn’t have to wait too long as the clouds were passing over the sun with some regularity at this point. I would fire off a few shots as the lighting changed and then wait for the next occurrence. After a little while, I changed up the composition and went for the larger view and repeated the game with the changing light. With more of the sky involved, I made one HDR series just to make sure that I had the details in the shadows. As it turned out, I didn’t need to do that because with the grad filter, I was able to get all the detail that I needed in a single shot. It was also for the best as the clouds were moving very fast and there was a lot of ghosting in the sky even though the bracketed images were fired off very quickly just to try and avoid any motion like that.
When I felt like I had the images that I wanted, I started to look around for something in a bit better light. Dean had told me that the Hudson that he had recently acquired had been relocated to the other side of the shop and I hadn’t seen where it ended up yet. This Hudson has been a thorn in my side for quite some time now. I had recently shot a few frames of it when Dean had it in the parking lot, but they weren’t all that great. Even before this, I had attempted to get a shot of it while at the original owner’s garage before Dean got it. In both locations I was only able to get a few detail shots, and even those were hard to come by since the car had no trim, and it was all a uniform shade of rust. I also had come to the conclusion that this car was just a huge subject to work with that didn’t really have a lot of great lines to add interest without showing some unique texture. Because of that, I really wasn’t looking forward to my chances with the car.
Before I got to the car, I realized that Dean had moved the shell of a rusted hotrod to behind Ole Rusty which is another one of my favorite subjects to photograph. I had only seen it here once before, and that was so long ago I was sure that I could do better with it this time. I could see the Hudson where this car used to be, but I wanted to spend some time here before I became frustrated with the Hornet. For me, the grill of the shell was my favorite part. I really liked how the bottom had been cut off to allow it to ride right at pavement level. The rest of the car was interesting but was missing some key features to pull all the sections together from most angles.
In many past attempts, I had tried to capture just the grill from an elevated as well as very low position. I haven’t managed to get the right angle on it yet, so I figured I would start with that concept this time. I got in very close and then elevated the camera to the top of the travel of the tripod. I framed up an image that was vertical and showed off the shape of the grill. Something that I noticed this time which was different from previous attempts was that the fallen leaves around the base of the car added some interesting textures that the grass never did, and the colors were very much analogous to the rust which added to the overall effect of the scene. I immediately liked what I was seeing through the camera and spent some time getting the positioning right, as well as the framing and depth of field. While I liked the grill, I recognized that it was not going to be the focal point in this composition because it took up too much of the frame. I wanted to keep the focus on the emblem which was still attached to the grill. That was where the story was with this car.
In short order, I had an image of this that I really liked and finally felt like I had accomplished something. This stoked my creativity, and I started to look for other ways that I could work this grill. Something that I am always talking about in my workshops is to change the height of the camera to keep it from always being right at eye level. With this car being so low, it was almost expected to photograph it from high up because that is the angle that most would see it from anyway. While it worked very well for the grill as I was shooting basically straight down, I felt that getting low with this car was going to be the ticket. it would also showcase the clouds in the sky along with the tree behind the car. The only problem was the red ford pickup that was parked off to the right side. There was just no angle that I could shoot this car from where that truck wasn’t going to be a problem. The fact that it was parked so close to Rusty, kept me from going with a longer focal length to compress the background. I don’t think it would have worked anyway. I was at kind of an impasse as to what could be done here to compose a simple photograph. I then remembered a recent blog I read about creating images that ask questions. One of the points that was made was to compose images that provide clues, but not answers to everything. Hey, that is pretty good advice, and something that I decided to do here.
I could crop the car on the side with the Ford which would eliminate the driver’s side wheel and the edge of the grill. Having everything present on the passenger side, the shapes would be able to be imagined, but without the Ford there. The visual tension that was introduced here drove the attention to the grille emblem which was very important to me. There was no way that I would have been able to shoot this had the car not been laying on the ground like it was. Imagine seeing a single wheel levitating the entire car in the air. It would have been far too awkward, but the low stance of this one gave me a great opportunity to get an unexpected composition that asked a lot of questions of the audience while showing them specifically what I loved about this car. The tree and sky in the background completed the entire scene both in color and content.
By this point, I was feeling pretty good about the photographs and figured now was the time to go and look at the largest blob of rust I have come across. I walked over to the Hudson and looked at it once again. It was unique in shape and design, but completely uninspiring as a subject. However, the location was really nice compared to where it had been the last couple of times I had worked it. This was the old family home that Dean had moved to this property long ago. I have used it successfully with the car that I had just photographed when it was situated here. I felt that there was a good chance that I might be able to do the same kind of thing with the Hudson. I started to look at the scene and immediately saw the Halloween decoration on the door. My first thought was to remove it in post which would be very easy to do. That was no longer a concern, but what did concern me was the background. There were several different cars and even a tractor behind the Hudson which were going to overly complicate the composition.
For once, the size of this car was going to come in handy. I moved around until I found a focal length that would allow the background to be largely hidden by the car and placed the camera very low to the ground to make this happen. The choice was made to crop the edge of the house off just to the left of the window for balance to the scene. With the barn cropped on the right side, I needed the left to kind of mirror that for a bit of symmetry to keep the focus on the car. This went well and I had a composition that I really liked but the lighting was terrible. The sun was too strong coming over the scene and was making everything much too deep in shadow. Photographing the shadowed side of the car didn’t bother me as that was going to give me the most even light on it. I just needed the light softer so that I wasn’t blowing out the sky above or the rim lighting on the car.
As I was waiting on the light to work in my favor, I was looking at the decoration on the door. There was something about it that I liked, and I spent some time thinking about it. Ultimately, I realized that the front of the Hudson looked kind of like a jack-o-lantern with the empty eyes, but open nose, and oddly curved mouth. I realized that I actually liked having that element in the scene and figured that I would probably end up keeping it if the photo worked out. As you can see, that happened.
I was lucky to get a few seconds of soft even light on the scene thanks to the clouds moving around just right. During this time, there was also a good breeze that sent a ton of leaves falling to the ground. I tried to capture this, but the shutter speed was too slow for the leaves to register any more than faint blurs. I changed up the settings and had a shutter speed that would have worked, but the wind didn’t repeat itself again. I waited for a few moments before moving on to something else. That something else was working details on the car once again. Until today, that has been the only way that I have been able to photograph the car.
I walked around and looked for a point of interest to focus my attention on. What I found was the fender right behind the right headlight bucket that was bent in. I have seen this and tried to photograph it before without success. This time, there were leaves collected in the bend which I thought were rather interesting. The light was also very soft which was a first with this car. In the past, I have always had to shoot it with bright sunlight and heavy shadows. The softer light worked for this view, and I put a composition together quickly before the light changed.
Just to give the scene a little bit of visual interest, I included the wheel with the moon hubcap which was of similar size and shape to the headlight. This ensured that the eyes would travel back and forth between the two objects so that the bend and the leaves would be more visible to the viewer. To keep things from only working in that line, I made sure to include the lower marker light for a third point of brighter luminosity which created a triangle. The bumper mount was placed right at the lower corner to establish the frame and to fill that bit of space with an interesting shape. I think that this is one of the most successful attempts I have made at a detail shot of this car.
Now I was really feeling empowered with my abilities to capture this car. I started to look for something not so expected. I knew that there had to be an abstract image here because everything was just so similar in appearance. If I looked hard enough, I should be able to find something completely unexpected here. What I was drawn to was the body line on the hood that swept back to the cowl and windshield. I tried to get a composition of that and managed to fire off a few frames, but didn’t really like them. I liked them less when I got them home on the computer. Fortunately, I didn’t spend a lot of time with that part of the car, but it did lead me back to the cowl which deserved some more attention.
There were some very interesting shapes just in front of the windshield that seemed to work very well together. Just beyond them was the sweeping line that I had focused on right before. It seemed like a good opportunity for a composition, and I got the camera in position to capture what I thought was going to work. It was just too symmetrical the way that it was framed, but nothing else seemed to work. I started to look at creative crops and found that a 16:9 aspect ratio did wonders for the composition. I also shifted things down so that the main chevron shape was not completed at the top but had a framing shape below it leading into the curve. The windshield was retained as a triangle to introduce the image. The composition looked to be a success, but I didn’t like the colors at all since it was all very monotonous with the uniform reddish orange.
When I got this one home and started to process it, I went with black and white almost immediately because I wanted to focus on the shapes and textures mostly. The textures were all brought out with some careful contrast adjustments, but it still wasn’t looking right. I needed more definition to the shapes. That was when I decided to do masks around each shape and then process them in slightly different ways to really add some visual interest to the scene with some extra depth. By the time I was done with it, I absolutely loved how it turned out. This is one of those photos that when I shot it, I knew that there was something there, but the RAW photo was really quite boring. Since this was always designed to be an artistic piece, I had no problem doing a bit of creative processing with it which is what allowed it to become the image that it is. Abstract photography is quite fun when you can allow yourself to really play with it in both capture and in processing.
Even though I was doing really well with the Hudson, my fortune wasn’t going to last. I turned my attention to the rear of the car and tried to do something with that, but the proportions were all off and the composition was just not there. Looking around the car, I found nothing else to work with. Considering the issues that I have had with this car in the past, I was really happy to have gotten what I figured was going to be at least two and possibly three keepers.
As I went back to where my bag was, I passed by the old hotrod once again but saw it from a different angle this time. This time, I was seeing it at roughly eye level from the front corner. The fallen leaves around the car really set the rusty colors off and made me think of the season. The wheels were providing just enough blue tones reflected from the sky to make for a well-balanced color palette as well. It was worth taking a quick shot of before I moved onto something else.
That quick shot turned into something a bit more involved as I started really playing with the altitude of the camera as well as waiting for the sunlight to hit the leaves just right. I think I ended up shooting eight frames with slightly different positions and depth of field before I landed on this final version which turned into the keeper. I was very happy that I stopped here one last time because this is another unique photograph that has been made of this car which I have photographed many times over.
What struck me as odd was that I had so many different photos of this car from today, and they were all focused on the grill, but from different angles and elevations. They were all extremely different from each other and told different stories. In the three shots, I had included no wheels, one wheel, and two wheels. In all cases the compositions made perfect sense and seemed very logical which I was really surprised with. Normally when I try to focus on this grill, the images seem like they are missing something. That was just not the case this time, and I am very happy about that. I’ll have to say that I think that this shell of a car was my favorite subject for the day, but that might be because I was really feeling like a minimalist and kept trying to reduce the number of elements in the photos that I shot.
When I got my bag, I looked around to see if there was anything else that I wanted to photograph over here. There was the Olds 88 that I have loved photographing in the past which was looking as awesome as ever. However, I had shot it plenty and didn’t really feel the need to try it again. What did catch my eye was the fact that it appeared that Dean had been cleaning up his storage a bit since the last time I had been out here. It seemed that things in the shelters were more visible than in time past, or maybe I was just paying more attention to the shelves of parts. One area that really caught my eye was a section that had multiple fenders stacked up. They were fitting very close to one another, but the patina was different on each which made them stand out as individual parts. I loved the shapes that I saw as well as the textures of the surfaces. The colors weren’t bad either, but I didn’t know if there was a way to get a photo.
My first problem was going to be getting in close enough to get the shot. There were several obstacles in my path blocking access, but after ditching the camera bag, I managed to find a way to get in close. Even as close as I was, I was using every bit of the zoom on my telephoto to get a composition that I liked. Since it was the repeating shapes that interested me more than what they were, I focused on an area that gave me the most curve. I framed it in a way that there was not much way to know what was being looked at and knew that I was going to be rotating it vertically in post for a bit more confusion as to the subject. The last decision that I made that made this an abstract about shape and texture was to remove the color. Seeing the rust and the remaining hues of the paint gave too many clues and made the image boring. In black and white, however, there are way more questions than there are answers which is just how I like it.
When I got done processing this one, I sent a quick screen grab of the computer to Toni because I was so happy with it. She liked it too and I think that it became my favorite image of the day in short order. I just can’t quit looking at it, and even though I know what the photo is of, I can’t pick out the actual subjects anymore. I’m only able to see the shapes and textures which just captivate me for longer than I care to admit. This is really one of those photos that I would get lost staring at on the wall. It very well may end up becoming a print in the Kiser household. If you would like to beat me to it, I would love to create a print for your wall. I can do several different types of media as well as multiple sizes to fit every need. Just let me know what you are wanting, and I will do everything I can to make it happen.
I wasn’t sure exactly how the stack of fenders was going to turn out, but when I was done with them, I realized that I had a change of heart about photographing the Olds once again. The leaves on the trunk added to the mystery of the car and I liked the dappled light on it as well. I took a few minutes to work the car to see what I liked the best about it this time. There was nothing from the front that really stood out to me as I have shot that angle many times before. Because of the surrounding elements, there are just a couple of compositions available from the front. It is the back that offers more options and that was where I ended up focusing my attention.
I started off with the passenger side taillight which included the “88” badge that helps to identify this Oldsmobile. I also like including the trunk emblem along with those two elements. What I did differently this time from what I normally do was I cropped off the corner of the bumper for simplicity. I used the reverse light for the lower framing element instead which I kind of like better. To further simplify this composition, I decided to go with black and white to focus the attention on the shapes rather than the color of the patina. This gave me more opportunity to adjust the contrast to my liking which I always enjoy going with black and white images.
This wasn’t the only view that interested me with this car. It was the leaves that had caught my eye in the first place, and I felt that I needed to capture those leaves in at least one shot before I moved on. The problem that I was running into was how to frame the image. I didn’t want to do the entire rear of the car because that was going to get too complicated. If I was going to do a section, I needed to figure out where to put the edges of the frame so that it all made sense without the full context of the car. I had to do all of this while keeping the leaves in the photo for the way that the light was hitting them.
What I ended up doing was using the taillight as the visual anchor for the image. The “88” badge was included because I find it very interesting, and it allowed the light to be placed a little higher in the frame making sure it was viewed as an anchor and not just a framing element. On the opposite corner, I included the unique window panel that pointed to the leaves. The composition was effective, but I still thought it was overly complicated with all the textures and luminosity changes on the leaves. In order to make this work, I had to limit the depth of field, but which way made the most sense. I was shooting the photo for the leaves, but if I focused on them and let the taillight go soft, I would lose my visual anchor, and the composition would fall apart. I chose to focus on the light, while the leaves went soft. This allowed me to keep the color of the sunlight, and there was enough detail in the leaves that we have no question that is what we are looking at. The benefit is that the texture is greatly reduced which simplifies the image overall, while pushing the attention to that visual anchor. It is the sunlight and the shape of the rear window that pulls the eyes through the frame to complete the visual story that I was going for. The last concern that I had to deal with was the direction that the photo was read in. My eyes just stopped at the taillight because in the original photo, this was on the left side. To correct that, I flipped the image horizontally because the only visible element on the car to indicate left from right was the “88” which was the same in both directions. The flip made the photo read much more effectively and added to the success of the image.
After a quick attempt at the broken window on the passenger side, I decided that I had all that I wanted from the Olds. It was time to go back to the side where I had started and go back over those subjects with a more seasoned eye. I also had changed the lens since being over there and wanted to try the telephoto lens out with the Ford that I had started with. This is usually how I proceed here as the property takes so long to work my way though that the light changes significantly from start to finish. I will usually see things completely different on a second pass through, and I was counting on that to happen this time as well.
You will have to wait for the next blog to see how the second half went as I am too tired to continue typing on this one at the moment. Hopefully this one has given you some new images to look over and a good bit of the story to contemplate as you consider how it will all end. I starting to think about workshops for 2025, and this is one of the best workshop locations that I have come up with. If you would like to join me for a decay workshop, let me know so that I can accurately plan for the scope of the workshop.
I’ll be back soon with the second part and some more new images to look at. You can check out the second part to this day by reading this blog entry.
