Monday, April 13, 2026
In case you missed it, this trek actually started about 50 miles to the West and much earlier in the day. If you haven’t read through the sunrise blog, be sure and check it out real quick. That will get you up to date and you will know that I was still wanting to do some photography when I was done with the sunrise. The colors had stuck around for a while, but I saw nothing else that I wanted to photograph while I was at Thunder Hill, so I decided to work my way back down the mountain while paying attention to what the sky was doing. I had two locations that I wanted to give a try if the clouds held on for a bit. The first was an old Chevy that was parked right beside an older Jeep J-10, or at least that it what it appeared to be when I drove past it a month or so ago. This was a location based on a tip from a friend that always gives me great suggestions for subjects. I’ve decided that the best time to photograph this car will be in the afternoon so that the sun is on the correct side, and under a cloudy sky for very diffused lighting since it is under a full canopy of trees. If I’m really lucky, I’ll be able to do some light painting with it after the sun goes down as well. Of course, for this to happen, I will have to have the permission from the property owners who I have not met yet.
The other option that I had was a scene that I had passed by recently which reminded me of the first time that I shot it. There is this old Volvo, a 1963 as a matter of fact, which I had been in contact with the owner’s relative towards the end of 2022 that was tucked away in front of an old house. It was surrounded by other old cars and I was itching to get a closer view of it. The man I was talking with wasn’t comfortable giving permission to access the property, so for the next couple of months, I made multiple stops by the house at the end of the driveway to try and get permission. I never was able to get anyone to the door and even after leaving my contact information with the gentleman across the street, I never heard anything further about it. By the end of Winter in 2023, I had written this location off, however, I had taken a few minutes to shoot it from the street. Now that I was back in the area again looking for subjects to photograph, I saw the same scene, and it was largely untouched from three years ago. That had gotten me thinking about reapproaching the owners to see if I could get access to the property.
Those were my two possibilities of places that I could go after leaving Thunder Hill. I debated about it the entire way down the mountain. What I came up with was that the Chevy was going to be more difficult to photograph and I was wanting the chance to get out there in the late evening to get both daylight and dark images for light painting. The clouds were not supposed to linger that late in the day, and I would be arriving shortly after 8am which would have the backlighting the scene. This was just not what I wanted for the photos, and that, more than anything convinced me to head back out to Clingman to see about the Volvo.
Both locations were kind of hinging on me being able to get permission to access the property. While I had successfully shot the Volvo from the street once before, I wasn’t convinced that I would be able to do the Chevy justice from the road, even though it was closer than the Volvo. To really make the Volvo photos work, I was going to need to get in closer so that I could concentrate on just that car. It would be around 8:30 when I arrived in Clingman which was a little early to knock on a door, but something was drawing me there and I chose not to fight that urge with any logic.
When I arrived, I slowed down as I began to pass the property. I spotted a vehicle that I didn’t recognize in the driveway, and it looked like the garage door was open. This was a pretty good indication that someone was home and that they were awake. I got turned around and pulled into the driveway and was met by a dog which had not been there before. It was loud and threatening, but had no interest in attacking me, or so it seemed. I went around the car in the driveway to the open garage to announce myself. I did that three times with no answer. Not wanting to linger by an open door, I went to the front door and was happy to see a Ring doorbell. I didn’t recall this being there before, but I rang that and saw motion at the blinds to my left. It was too quick for me to identify what had caused the motion. There was another larger dog inside that I heard moving around and barking. I waited and expected the door to open which it did not. I was hoping that someone would talk to me through the Ring doorbell, but that didn’t happen either.
After waiting for a couple of minutes so as not to raise suspicions, I walked slowly back to my truck. The entire time I was waiting for someone to come around with a gun drawn on me to challenge why I was there. This happens more than you might think doing this kind of photography. I’m prepared for it, and I watch for it, but that didn’t happen either. Eventually, I made it back into the truck and started to back down the driveway. I don’t like doing this because it looks like I’m trying to keep my tag from view, but there was not room to turn around in the driveway with the new car parked where it was, and I didn’t want to risk running over the dog.
When I got back out to the road, I had to make a choice. I didn’t have the permission I needed to access the property, but the light was really good on the scene. Based on history, I was thinking that the folks were home and just didn’t want to answer the door which is their prerogative. I could come back another time, but I would be in the same situation. I knew that I could photograph the scene well enough from the road, and I did have that option. In fact, if the owners were home and saw me at the road, they might come down to talk to me, and I could ask permission then. That wasn’t an ideal way of meeting an owner, but it is a valid option for sure. I just needed to decide what it was that I wanted to do.
If this sounds like a tough situation to be in as a photographer, you aren’t wrong. What would you do in this situation? Are you well enough versed on the laws to be able to articulate a choice that you made? These are things that I have discussed at length during my decay workshops as well as in the blogs that I write like this one. I feel that it is very important to understand where the legal lines have been drawn and what you can do without crossing them. Of course, I have decided to discontinue my workshops, but I am still offering mentorships either for individuals or groups. This is for any type of photography that I am comfortable teaching, but when it comes to decay photography, I cover the aspects that will affect the decisions that I’m making here as well as how to most effectively ask for that permission. If a mentorship is something that you would like to talk about, I do offer free consultations where we discuss what you are wanting to cover and whether or not I would be a good teacher for your personality. It is a great program, and I think it is much more effective than a workshop because a mentorship can be custom tailored to the individual rather than having somebody sign up for a planned outing that has a curriculum already put together.
Speaking of the folks that have taken advantage of my instruction, I have just recently received a comment on Facebook that truly sums up what I strive to accomplish with every participant that I work with. Marc wrote the following comment, and I think that it is worth sharing here to illustrate the kind of instruction that I give to folks. “Greg, your workshop was a turning point in my photography journey. I learned so much from you and I still remember most of your techniques. To this day, I will critique my own work based on your experience.” This was from an experience around four years ago and it still has relevance in his creative process. I would enjoy the opportunity to have that kind of impact in your creative journey, so let’s get that consultation started.
Now, back to the story and time to tell you what I chose to do. Without permission, I wasn’t going to go onto the property, but since I knew that I could shoot this scene from the road, I wanted to give that another try. There was a huge difference this time from the last time that I was out here. It had been Winter that last time and the trees had been bare. Now they were mostly full of leaves with that wonderful Spring variance in the greens. There was also a bush to the right of the scene that was resplendent in pink blooms. The entire scene had a different kind of life to it and actually seemed to be more alive. This was enough to prompt me to pull off the road and get a few frames while I was here.
From experience, I knew that the long lens was going to be the tool of choice for the distance to the subjects more than anything else. I would have loved to pull out the wide-angle lens and try that, or even look for getting some abstracts shot, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I just needed the reach of the long lens in order to fill the frame with what I liked. Of course, shooting subjects from a distance when you can’t get in close is another one of those topics that I teach during the course of my workshops and mentorships. The trick is to treat the composition with the same care that you would getting in close. This makes for the difference between a snapshot and an artistic composition.
Ideally, I would have wanted to isolate the Volvo from the rest of the rusty family, but from this distance, that wasn’t going to be possible at all. I just had to find an angle where the Volvo would be a dominant feature in the frame. Fortunately, the passenger side was still open for viewing with the other cars to the other side or out in front. There was a limb from a tree that was entering into the scene from the left that I had to be weary of as it would block the view of the Volvo. Not being able to eliminate the other cars, I had to figure out how to incorporate them into the frame. Since the two cars closest to the Volvo were similar era body styles, I didn’t really have an issue having them in the scene. There was going to have to be overlap between them, so I go the angle to where I thought the overlap made the most sense. I also creatively cropped the furthest Ford in a way that kept it from being a distraction.
I tried this composition in both vertical and horizontal formats with the vertical one winning out for adding in the tree as another element which pulled the attention away from the background cars. The arch of the limbs was pretty impressive, and I really liked how it helped to define the composition. There was a bit of a breeze, and things were not necessarily staying sill in the trees. I could have sped up the shutter speed to freeze everything, but I chose to go the other way. There was a lot of texture going on in these frames from the distance that I was shooting, so I wanted to reduce some of that texture in the foreground and background so that the cars had a better chance of showing up. I didn’t want the typical “bokeh” look though, just a softening. I kept a moderate aperture and a shutter speed around one second which softened the trees in the background sufficiently as well as the grass up front.
That became the working exposure that I used through most of the photos that I shot which amounted to 13 additional frames from what I had done earlier in the morning. Once I had everything dialed in, I turned my attention to the pink bush. This thing was so vibrant, and I thought it contrasted with the overall earth toned scene very well. The problem with the bush was that it was positioned off to the side of a Chrysler K-car which was parked in front of the Volvo and other friends. I had no problem with the Chrysler other than it was a model from the 80’s and was a good bit newer than the other cars in the frame. It didn’t fit as well with them, but it was rusty, just like the other cars.
I had to figure out how I was going to deal with this and whether the bush was important enough for the scene. I walked over to the right to see if it would be possible to block the Chrysler with the bush and just have the Volvo. That kind of worked, but the angle on the Volvo was terrible, not to mention that the barn was no longer a part of the scene that made sense. For the angle to be flattering on the main point of interest, I was going to need to shoot back closer to where I started out. This meant that the Chrysler was going to be in the picture. I made my peace with that and started to work out the best angle for all of the cars.
What I decided on was an angle that showed off the Volvo to the best while the Fairlane beside it carried enough weight to be recognizable with both taillights visible. The K-car was shot from nearly straight on to minimize its relative size within the frame while concentrating on the rust. I then did some subtle movements to get the (I’m thinking) Galaxie in the background positioned in a way that didn’t crowd either of the other cars. The compositional dance was all about the elements in the scene that weren’t important to me, but by spending the time getting those elements organized, I kept them from being distractions to the rest of the scene.
This is one of those concepts that I feel very strongly about when it comes to photography. Getting your main subject placed in the frame is simple. What makes or breaks the image is how you organize the background and the secondary elements within the scene. That is usually the most important part of a composition because that is what establishes the story behind the main subject. That is next level compositional theory, and I’ve never heard of anyone bothering to mention that aspect of composition, let alone teach it. For me, it all started with edge patrol and has morphed into much more emphasis being made on the relationship between figure and ground. I could nerd out on this kind of stuff for days on end, so I’ll stop talking about it now. However, if you would like to learn more about this concept, we can do it through a mentorship.
It was during this particular composition that I heard a car coming by and slowing down. This is usually a good clue that I am about to meet a property owner, and I was looking forward to that. I turned around to see a car slowing down behind me with the driver looking at me. I watched as he pulled into the driveway across the street. This was when I realized that I recognized him as the man I had spoken to all those years ago and ended up photographing the cars on his property. I grabbed the couple of frames that I was looking to get with the current composition and turned back around. He was nowhere to be seen, so I just went back to what I was doing.
In a couple of minutes, he was walking back out to meet me. I turned and acknowledged him and asked if he remembered meeting me before. He said that he did and that I had photographed some of his cars. I quickly explained that I had been over to the house to see if I could get permission but that nobody had come to the door. Not having the permission, I chose to photograph the scene from the street. He then let me know that he had remembered about asking her if it would be ok for me to photograph the cars and she had said that she would rather not have anyone messing around the cars. I respected and understood that and reiterated that I was staying by the side of the road and asked if that was ok with him. He didn’t seem to have a problem with that and since I wasn’t going to be close enough to do anything to any of the property, I felt comfortable sticking around where I was.
We had a nice little chat about the Volvo and I had remembered many of the points that he had told me about it. I knew that it was a ’63, and the last of that body style before it was changed. It was a very long running body on this car, and he shared that the rear fender was actually off of a ’49 which was the same part. After catching up for a bit, he went back to his house and left me to my devices. I was actually about done, but I wanted to work on another composition that focused more on the Volvo and the barn before I left.
That was where this last composition came from. It is very similar to the vertical one that I had shot earlier, but this time, I went with a horizontal frame with many similarities in how the elements related to themselves. The biggest difference is that the tree is no longer a dominant feature to the composition, though the trunks are still there. I like them on that left side as a framing element with a texture to the bark that mimics the fence slats. The one thing that remained through the entire time here at the property was the need to keep the vehicles visually separated. Of course, this was not physically possible with how close they were and my inability to get in close with a wide-angle lens. However, by watching where the intersections happen, I was able to establish the shapes for each of the cars as their own contribution to the composition. The barn in the background framed them all within the scene of green.
That concluded the 13 frames that I had shot at this location with a total of three keepers from the batch. The last time I had shot this scene, I had left with only a single image. Just playing with the angles and framing gave me more options and there was one other surprise that I found when I got the images home. In that last frame, there is a chipmunk that is on the ground looking at the Volvo. It is just to the left of the leaves and can barely be seen at this small resolution, but in the full resolution file, you can see the stripes on his back and his little eyes. It is all tack sharp and will show up well on a print.
For those of you who enjoy my photography, and if you are reading this far into the blog, I assume that you do; you are doing yourself a disservice by not getting prints of your favorite images. You are missing out on so much detail, like the little chipmunk. Even the textures of the rust show up much better in print, not to mention the accuracy of the colors which can only be truly enjoyed in print form. Selecting a print is as easy as knowing the title, the size you want, and what media fits your decor. With that information, I am ready to help you get the perfect print from my camera to your wall. Just contact me and the ball will start rolling. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you for joining me on this trek. I was originally going to do it all as a single blog entry because there are not that many photos from the day. However, with the vast difference in subject matter and physical location, it just made more sense to do them as two separate blog entries. My goal is to start making things easier to track down in the future for both me and for you. These blogs are a rolling journal of what I’ve photographed and how the sessions went. I think they are just as important as the photos themselves, so I don’t want them getting lost over the years. I hope that you are going back and revisiting some of your favorite treks as well as those where the little bits of teaching happen that I want to be accessible to benefit others.
Until next time…
