December 14, 2022
It isn’t that I’ve been absent for a long time. I did just do a blog entry last week when I shot an old house in North Wilkesboro. The weather has been pretty good here lately, but I just haven’t really had the desire to get out and engage in photography. This is a normal part of the creative process for me. It used to really worry me because I thought that I had exhausted my creative voice and I started to really struggle to find it again. It would throw me into a huge depression many times as well. I’ve grown since then and I’ve found that this ebb and flow is just a natural part of the process. I’ll be writing more about that in a Behind the Camera which is scheduled for later in 2023. The short of it is, I know that eventually I will get the desire to go out once again and use that creative voice.
Well, I have needed a break for a while considering I have been rolling since the end of September with day long treks, and I’ve seen some of the highest number of additions to the collection during the Fall this year. Ironically, very few of the images have been of the actual Autumn colors though. I have found my happy place with decay and that just fits what I’m wanting to say with my photographs during this current time. With that in mind, it is no surprise that my recent waterfall workshop really didn’t inspire me to go out and capture waterfalls. The workshop went fantastic, and the weather was perfect for the entire day. I just didn’t have the creative urge to work waterfalls afterwards like I was expecting. It did spark that creative energy once again though, and I started to look for something to photograph where I could communicate visually.
The weather patterns have been great here lately, and I pretty much had my choice of where I wanted to go which can be a dangerous thing for a photographer. Too many choices start to overload the brain and with me at least, will cause me to shut down and just not go. I didn’t really have any idea what I wanted to photograph, but I could see that Wednesday was going to be nice and cloudy with a mix of cloud layers. I wasn’t expecting much in the way of sky texture, but I knew that I would have very diffused light which I really love for most of my photography. That forecast was pretty much the same through all areas around, so I had plenty of options on where to go.
Since I had not been thinking about location photography much for the past couple of weeks, I didn’t really have any firm ideas. I knew that there was a location that I had spotted from the highway a few months ago that interested me. It was a 50’s model Chevy sitting in a carport which interested me slightly. There were also a couple of tri-5 Chevys that I had seen off of 268 in another carport that might yield some isolations. There was a yard close to home that had a lot of old cars parked out behind it which I have been tempted to go to for a while now but haven’t quite had any firm ideas of how to deal with the setting which has kept me from bothering the property owners for permission. Also, having just been the back way to Hanging Rock for my last workshop, I had seen a lot of potential out that way in the community of Pilot Mountain that I wanted to explore some more.
Thinking about all of these places, I came up with the idea to head down 268 for the pair of Chevy’s in the carport to get started with the day. From there, I would loop back and try the property close to home since the sky wasn’t going to be an issue for the day. I knew that most of those would end up being isolations, or very tight crops due to the way they were all packed in together. As I went to sleep on Tuesday night, I confirmed the weather and saw that the rain was going to be starting around noon which meant that I was going to have to get an early start. I set the clock for 6am to allow me time to get my morning stuff done before heading out shortly after sunrise so I could evaluate the clouds.
When the alarm rang, I checked the weather and it was pretty much the same, but the clouds were thicker increasing the potential for a completely overcast sky. That wasn’t a problem because nothing that I had planned relied on the sky at all, short of for the quality of light. The rain had also been pushed back a couple of hours which meant that I had a bit more time. I was comfortable and didn’t want to leave the warm bed just yet, so I rolled over and dozed for another hour before getting up.
When I finally did get up, I wasn’t my usual excited self about going out on a trek. Instead, I found myself making all kinds of excuses about why I shouldn’t go. Of course, I know myself very well and recognize an old physics principle at work. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, while an object at rest, tends to stay at rest. Hah! And the teacher thought I wasn’t paying attention in class. I remember this concept very well and have found that it fully applies to me as a creative. If I’m used to getting up and going out for photos, it is a joy to do. If I have been stagnant for a while, it feels more like a chore and something that I just don’t get excited about. This was one of those times when I had been here at the house doing things behind the scenes and taking care of some various repairs that have been needing attention. What I recognized about the situation was that I had come up with a plan and was ready to create again. I just needed to make the moves to get out and let the creativity flow.
I convinced myself to go out and didn’t waste any time in getting my stuff for fear that I would talk myself out of it. I didn’t, and I was on the road headed East. It only took about 30 minutes to get to the house that I was interested in. It looked pretty much like I had remembered it from all the times passing it in the past. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do with the two cars parked together, one up on ramps, but I felt like I was being called here for some reason. There were two houses on either side of the structure where the cars were. The house on the right looked more like storage, while the one on the left looked like the one that was being lived in. That was the house I knocked on. Several dogs immediately forwarded the knock through the house so there was no question that if anyone was in there, they heard me. I waited for a couple of minutes but never heard anything on the inside other than the dogs. I slowly went back to the truck and hoped that the door would open as I was walking. It didn’t, and I got back in the 4Runner to contemplate my next move.
The original plan was to head back in the direction of home to try shooting the cars in that back yard. That was going to require permission and contact with property owners which was not a guarantee. On the other hand, I was about half-way to where I had spotted the other Chevy from the highway. I wasn’t exactly sure where it was, because I could only see the back of the house on one of the roads off of the highway. I figured that I might as well see if I can figure out where this car was in actuality and see if I could speak to the owner. The worst that could happen would be that I didn’t get permission, and I had already experienced that disappointment with my current location.
I continued to head East and jumped on the highway which took me into Yadkin County. I went one exit past where I had seen the car and got turned around. I watched over the trees in relation to the GPS map on my dash to figure out what road the car was on. Once I had had that figured out, I made a mental note of the colors of the house so I could see it from the front. A few turns later, I was in the driveway of the house where the car was parked. There would have been absolutely no way to see this from the road where the house was, and I could only see it through the trees when they had lost their leaves. It was a lucky find for sure, but now I had to get permission to photograph it.
I went to the front door and knocked. It was a quieter knock that I had expected since it was on a glass storm door, so I knocked a little harder to make sure that I was heard…although I didn’t do my police knock which could scare somebody inside. I could see movement coming towards me through the window in the door and I moved back from the door, so I didn’t scare anyone. I was greeted by a very pleasant lady that informed me that she was a bit hard of hearing as she invited me in closer to her. I introduced myself and told her why I was bothering her. She seemed excited that I was interested in the old car, and she gave me the quick rundown of its story.
It had been her late husband’s car which he had bought new. He had last registered it in 1984, and he had died at the age of 84 which gave this car a strong sentimental link to her. It has since been passed down through the children with the intentions of it being restored at some point. The car has been sitting in the carport for a number of years still with that 1984 tag attached to the rear. She also pointed out a number of old tractors that were parked in shelters around the property. She had no problems with me photographing these subjects and I gave her my card explaining how I am happy to bring out a print if any turn out to be good.
I got the truck parked out of the way and started to walk around and look at the subjects to get an idea of what I was going to do with them. The ’52 was parked next to a newer Chevy within the open carport so there wasn’t much sense in concentrating on an overall photo of the car. Having just seen the truck from the highway, I was expecting it to be a partially enclosed structure which would have given me several options. Those were no longer in the cards, so I was looking at things from an isolation point of view. The car was actually in quite good shape with minimal rust. The black paint is not one of my favorite colors for photography because it seems to weigh the images down a good bit and tends to remove the color aspect from the photos yielding a monochromatic look which I might not be interested in capturing.
I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to proceed with the car, so I moved over to the tractors and looked at them. There was a single International Harvester and two Allis Chalmers to work with. They all exhibited some really nice patina and evidence of use. I wasn’t really seeing any clear views to get overall captures of them though. This was probably going to be another situation where I was looking for isolations. My initial excitement over the location quickly wore off and I started to make excuses about why this wasn’t going to work as well as I had hoped. I remembered back to my physics class and immediately knew the answer to my conundrum. In order for me to get back on the creative horse, so to speak, I had to get the camera out and start actively working through compositions. In these situations, I always go for the low hanging fruit first which in this case was going to be the hood ornament of the Chevy.
As Toni pointed out when I was going through the edited images, “this is one that I have shot a number of times.” Yep, but that means I know the composition works and even if I am not feeling particularly creative, it is easy to frame up and shoot. I did debate over which lens I wanted to use after having so much success with the long lens lately. In the end, the standard lens won out because I was going to be working in close quarters. I figured the wider angle would help me out. I got the camera all built out and went into the carport to frame up that first shot. It seemed all too simple and the slight patina on the hood almost wasn’t enough to pull off the shot.
It was a gimme composition though and it was something in the bag at least. As a side note, when I was editing this one, I started out with a black and white version that I thought was too boring. I then went with a color version that kept feeling too warm because the chrome ornament had taken on a yellow tone that just went with the rusty patina too much. I ended up doing a slightly different approach to this one in the edit that I think works very well for it. I added warmth to the scene and boosted the saturation on the orange to get the rust to really show up. Of course, that made the chrome very warm in tone and it left me with no color contrast to speak of. I ended up masking the ornament and I cooled it, but that didn’t effectively kill the yellowing, so I pulled all the saturation out of the chrome leaving it basically a gray tone with white highlights. I then added a color tint to the chrome to give it a slight cool feeling which looked exactly how I had pictured it when I started the edit. By removing the natural color and adding an overall tint I arrived at the color balance that I was after. It might have been a simple composition, but there was a good bit of work that went into how the colors were represented.
At any rate, I did have that first one in the bag with only two frames shot. My creativity wasn’t back by any stretch, but I had put myself in motion and I knew that the momentum would grow the longer that I was at it. I moved to the rear quarter panel of the car and worked out a composition that I liked. I fiddled with that for a bit until I thought that I had something worthwhile, but I was still hesitant to commit to anything with it because of how the framing was looking. It was something else in the bag though which felt good. As I continued to look over the car, I wasn’t seeing nearly as many points of interest as I had thought I would. Interestingly enough, it was two oil cans in the back window that caught my attention and I started to frame up a shot that included the lines around the windows and a portion of the roof all framing the cans. It felt a little forced, but it was showing me another way of looking at this car which I was appreciating. I still hadn’t got “the shot” yet though. Everything that I was shooting just felt a little too obvious and I wasn’t excited about anything. I couldn’t give up though because I knew that there was good potential here if I stuck with it long enough.
Feeling that I needed to let the car ruminate in my mind for a bit longer, I decided to move over to the tractors. The first one that I went to happened to be the newer Allis Chalmers sitting under the overhang of a barn. This was a very blocky design, and I didn’t see much that I wanted to photograph at first. The barn wasn’t something that I would typically shoot either so I wasn’t sure if I would do anything with this scene or not. The other two tractors were sitting under the shelter of the barn next to it. Both of these tractors were very nice designs and visually interesting. There really wasn’t a way to get an interesting overall shot of either of them because of where they were sitting and the things that were near to them.
The tractor with the best patina on it was the older Allis Chalmers, so that is where I went first. I looked around to see what the best potential for a composition was. I really liked the way the rust gave way to the green moss near the exhaust. The colors and textures were interesting, so that was where I started working. I could tell early on that I had the wrong lens because the framing and perspective were off from what I was looking for. Just in case, I looked at a more inclusive frame that would take into consideration a cool tree that was growing through the wall of the barn. All I could see was the overhead signs on the highway in the distance which killed that composition immediately. I went back to the truck and swapped out the lens for my telephoto. Of course, I recalled doing that before and how it opened up my possibilities. I was hoping that I was going to see a similar result today. It still felt funny getting the long lens here, but I had to do something because nothing that I was shooting was really working out. One of those tips I have heard recently, and have proven it many times before hearing it, is if you aren’t liking the compositions you are seeing, go with a different lens.
I moved back over to the AC with the green moss and almost immediately fell on a composition that I thought worked. I shot the frame and started to tweak the positioning to fine tune what I was seeing. A few shutter activations later, I was happy with what I had in the camera. This was the moment that my creativity clicked if I’m being honest. Changing to that 70-200mm lens made all the difference in the world. I looked around that tractor once again to see if there was something else that I was wanting to shoot, but nothing was jumping out at me. I moved over to the International that had some of the same colors going on, but the green was actually paint on the fuel tank which I found to be kind of interesting.
That green also gave a nice color contrast to the overall red which was filling the scene no matter how I shot it. Even the side of the barn was red which forced me to consider a black and white presentation. That green kept me interested in doing color though which was how I started to look at the tractor. It seemed that the best point of interest was right in front of the seat where the controls were. I was able to get a lot of different shapes and lines with a splash of contrasting color to make the image pop.
Organizing the gaggle of elements in this scene was kind of difficult. I did both vertical and horizontal compositions in an attempt to get them all organized. I tried different framings to them both as I worked through how the edges were looking and what background entered into the scene. I wasn’t convinced at all about how this was looking as it just appeared to be too cluttered to me. However, there was something about the images that was interesting to me, and I was committed to making it work out. I found that the vertical and the horizontal compositions said different things, and I really liked the volt gauge in the vertical composition for a bit of high contrast. However, I liked the emphasis on the green in the horizontal composition.
Because these images were not quite my normal compositions, I had a hard time culling them and then processing them. I ended up just going with my gut on them and at the end of the process I asked Toni to look through them. As I mentioned, she thought the hood ornament was fairly unimpressive, but really liked both of these compositions from the cockpit of the IH tractor. She found them interesting for their complexity. I was still waffling about whether or not I liked them, but having her vote convinced me to keep them both in the collection. We did decide that the complexity of these two images appealed to her ADD and there was enough there to keep her attention. I can’t see that as a bad thing and figured that these might appeal to others as well. With that, both of the images were kept in the collection with some slight further tweaks to them.
Things were starting to move along at this point. I was feeling like I was again in my element which felt good. It is not a fun feeling as a photographer when you feel like you just don’t know what you are doing with the camera. That was how I had started out the day, but things were now getting easier. I had shot some complex options for compositions and was feeling good about how it was all going. I was still kind of slow in picking out the points of interest, but the new lens was helping out quite a bit. I had shot three of the four subjects at this point and felt that I needed to try something with the newer tractor that I had dismissed earlier.
There were no isolations on the tractor that I felt were overly compelling, so I started to look at the overall composition to start with. I know that this sounds odd since I was shooting with a telephoto lens, but I was seeing the only potential composition being one where I cropped into the barn itself to get the scale right for the tractor. I started to focus on just the wall where the tractor was and found that the support beams seemed to get in the way which forced me to include the roof. With the roof included, the crop felt strange and very flat. The front of the barn had a star on the wall which happened to be a similar hue to the tractor. It would create a reason to include that front wall with a door. That gave the scene depth and helped to take the focus off of the supports that were blocking the tractor. The composition was actually looking quite good at this point. The lighting was such that I didn’t need to worry about extreme dynamic range as the light was all very flat through the scene. I just shot a few variations on the composition before deciding that I was happy with how things were looking.
While zooming in to look at the images to check for things like sharpness and small details that I might have missed, I ended up looking at the headlights on the tractor. Oddly enough, these were mounted over the rear wheels instead of on the front of the tractor. This was an interesting detail that feeds into my love for headlights. I had noticed this before, of course, but zooming in on it, I was seeing a composition that I might like. There was something about having lights right above a big agricultural tire like this and the hard lines of the fender wrapping around the circles of light. I went ahead and moved in closer to the tractor to work out the composition.
I thought that I might need the wider lens, but as it turned, out the compression of the long lens worked very well here and allowed me to get the scale that I was after. It was certainly a vertical image so that was where I started. The problem came in where the edges of the frame were going to go, and what was included and what omitted. I ended up liking the wires that were acting as a framing element on the left side of the frame along with the tire. The hood over the lights established the width of the image and the top edge. I knew that I would be cropping either to a 4:5 or 5:7 in post, so I was happy to leave the bottom crop point up in the air.
When I was starting to make exposures here, I noticed that the sun was starting to peak through the clouds slightly which was adding a slight shadow behind the tire which I thought added to the mystery of the scene. I embraced the shadow and waited until the sun was bright enough to give that depth that it needed. Only a few shots later, I was done with this composition. When I got it home and started the editing process, I immediately knew that I didn’t want bright colors with this one. It felt moodier and needed a more subdued look in my mind. I didn’t want to go with black and white though because that seemed to overly simplify the image and it took an emotional reaction away from it. Normally when I am feeling this kind of way about a photograph, I will use one of the color profiles that really desaturates the scene and gives it almost a washed-out appearance. This worked very well for this one and kept the reddish tones in place where I needed them.
This was one of the first photos that I had shot that I was genuinely excited with for the day. I had found my human quality in an inanimate object. This was my style, and I was slipping back into that creative place once again. I really wanted to do something else with the other AC tractor which was at the corner of the barn. This tractor was more visually appealing to me, and I really wanted to do more with it. The isolations weren’t speaking to me though, and I decided to not force the issue. What was hitting me about the scene was the tree growing through the slats of the wall next to the tractor. I also liked the way the tractor was sitting there with the nose out from the barn in the grass. The colors all worked together, and I liked the whole setting. The only problem that I had run into was the fact that the highway was just on the other side of the ridge, and I could see traffic and several overhead signs when I tried this composition before. Now, with the telephoto lens, I had compression on my side, and I wasn’t going to get as much of the background in the view.
I started further back than I had been before and let the lens do its thing. With a good amount of elevation, I was able to eliminate the highway and signs from view behind the scene. To further reduce the background impact, I used a limited depth of field to focus the attention on the tractor and the gnarly tree which I thought really pulled this image together. As far as framing, I had to make a decision to crop at the upright beam which took the rear tire out of the frame. I didn’t like that too much, but the alternative was to include white bags that were placed next to the tire which would pull too much attention in the frame. The beam also blocked the view of the tractor, so I decided it made more sense to make that a natural cropping point. To keep the image balanced, I did the same thing on the other portion of the barn and cropped right at the beam eliminating the clutter that was on the other side of that beam. The ending composition focused on both the tree and the tractor as complimenting elements which was my intention all along. The angle that I shot it from had one of the limbs of the tree outstretched over the tractor almost as if an embrace which linked the two elements together nicely.
When I was done with that composition, I checked the tractor out one more time and then decided to turn my attention back to the Chevy that I had started with. In fact, it was that Chevy that brought me out here in the first place. Now looking through the camera with a longer lens, I had a different perspective on the car than when I started. As I have come to realize, this lens is a very powerful tool with doing detail shots. Those compositions that I had been struggling with earlier seemed to just fall into place with the compression that this lens offered.
I started on the passenger side rear quarter that had some slight damage to it that made the metal more interesting. I hadn’t been able to do anything with it from that side earlier because of the lens and the fact that the car was parked close to the low wall next to the parking pad. With the long lens attached, I was able to stand outside and shoot in. This allowed me to get the squared-on look that I was after for this design. This composition was all about the lines and curves of the chrome trim and the name badge. I was thinking that this would be done in black and white because color didn’t really play that much of a roll, but when I was doing the edit, the same treatment that I had used with the lights on the AC tractor seemed to work very well for this photo as well. The desaturated look left the color cast over the scene and allowed a more natural look to the image which I thought was appropriate here.
Feeling pretty good about the straight on shot, I moved to the driver’s side where I had tried a few compositions at an angle of that rear quarter as the wheel was more interesting there. I hadn’t liked how they turned out, but now with the longer lens, I was able to get a different perspective on the image that seemed to work quite nicely. I just had to figure out how I wanted to crop the right side of the image because if I included the entire tire, I needed to cap it with the rear fender to make it make sense. I ended up keeping the shape of the wheel, while cropping the flattened tire to keep from having to include that rear fender. The left side of the frame was all about the leading line into the curves and the badge. This was a more dramatic take on the other compositions and one that I thought suited the car very well.
I was having so much better luck at this point with the various compositions on the car, I decided to go back to the oil cans on the back deck. I had kind of liked the concept, but the end results of the photos I had shot were not all that great. Having the ability to make the background a bit bigger in comparison allowed me to balance the scene differently. I was able to compose where the steering wheel played a part in the scene. With the windows providing the framework for the interest on the inside, I was finally able to get a scene that made sense to me. I found that working at an angle allowed me to introduce the curve over the rear wheel which added another dimension to the scene. The small triangle of roof offered up a contrasting white color with a nicely framed patch of rust to link it to the patina on the quarter panel. The orange rusty tones worked so well with the orange on the logo for the cans that I made that orange a main part of the edit. The black paint of the car was given a slight teal look to go with the orange as a complimenting color. The end result is a photograph that I really love and might be one of my favorites from the day.
When I was satisfied that I had what I needed from here, I decided to make one last look around to see if there was anything else that I might have missed. I had roughly 35 photos in the camera and was pretty sure that I had at least four or five keepers so far. I’ll save you the hassle of looking back over the pictures so far. I have a total of ten keepers from those 35 frames. My hit rate was phenomenal once I got rolling. Of course, I was being very particular about what I released the shutter on because I only wanted good photos from the day, and I didn’t feel like just shooting to shoot.
I was feeling like I had everything captured that I wanted, but there was another small section of the middle barn that had a couple of wagons and a carriage in it. It was the carriage that really caught my eye. It was teal and rusted which I love that color combination. It wasn’t quite like anything that I had shot before, so I wasn’t really sure how to approach it. Looking at it, I found that the manufacturer had affixed an emblem on the side with screws. This is a testament to how even toys were made back in the day. That became my story and what my focus was. I would have loved to have shot the entire carriage, but there was no way to make a simple composition with the other two wagons touching it on either side. There was also some trash in the carriage which I didn’t like. Not wanting to manipulate the scene any, I just chose to go with the isolation on the element that I found most impressive.
The shot was actually quite difficult to figure out because the one wagon was so close to the emblem on the more interesting (more patina) side. I had to get up high and shoot down to the emblem while keeping the script visible. It was the handle of the carriage that offered up the complimenting element to the scene and gave a bit of a framework for the emblem which I placed in the upper left of the photo. There was a strong diagonal aspect to the scene that I really liked.
The surprising part of it all was that when it came time to edit the image, I didn’t embrace the teal and rust like I thought I would. In fact, I went right to black and white to concentrate on the textures of the scene first and foremost. I went with a high contrast look and made sure that the emblem was the brightest thing when I was playing with the tonal values. To further simplify the scene, I went with a 16:9 crop that cut out a bit of the trash inside and left the rail as the framing element at the top. For kind of a grab shot, I was really happy with this one and kind of wish I had spent more time with it before leaving. However, I had been here long enough and had gotten a good many photographs. I was ready for the next stop, so I packed up my gear.
When I got done, I saw the property owner back at the door, so I went over to talk with her. She asked if these photos would be up for sale and I answered honestly that they would be, although print sales are not a big business these days. She explained that the subjects that I had been shooting belonged to her children and she didn’t want to get into any issues with them over giving me permission to photograph them. She also didn’t want folks showing up at her door asking about them. I reassured her that the photos that I shot were not revealing as far as the location I was at, and most of the compositions were more abstract in nature anyway. That seemed to make her feel better, but I did assure her that I would not reveal the location to anyone.
With that, I was on my way. I thought about heading back towards home since it looked like the rain was going to be holding off a bit longer still. However, I was already all this way out here, so I thought that I would jump up on 268 and go out towards Pilot Mountain to see what I could find of interest in all that potential I saw last Saturday. As I was driving out that way, I recalled another trek that I had done in the area a couple of years back where I found this great barn to work. Ironically, this was a trek when I was trying to get out of a creative slump, and it worked very well. I was hoping that my luck would continue out that way. One of my favorite photos came from that trek and this particular barn. It showcased an approaching rain squall in the distance and the sky had been wonderful. This time I was considering the very overcast and flat sky as a potential benefit for a black and white photograph making the focus the barn and not the sky.
It didn’t take too long before I was in the community of Copeland and I started to look for the barn. I found the background silos first and knew I wasn’t far off. There it was off to the right down a side road which I turned on. The sky wasn’t looking all that great, but I had a plan for how I wanted to edit the image where this sky would actually work quite well. I pulled off on the side of the road and grabbed my gear. I knew that the 24-70mm lens would be perfect for this as it wouldn’t include too much of the sky, and would allow me to keep the scale appropriate with the background to the foreground. I fought the urge to add grad filters as I knew the sky was bright. It wasn’t the kind of bright that would cause exposure problems, but I knew that I was going to be darkening it down quite a bit in post. For that reason, I just wanted a very flat image to work with at the beginning and adding an ND Grad would cause me problems later on.
I worked on finding the right spot to set the tripod up and found that sweet spot where everything fell together. I set the camera picture style to black and white and found a nice flat exposure where there was still detail in the sky. It wasn’t dramatic detail that I would have usually liked, but this felt right for the scene. Since the barn was a white barn to begin with, too much texture would start to pull the attention away from it if I wasn’t careful. This seemed to be on the right track, and I was seeing great potential in the editing style I had in mind for this one.
I only shot a handful of frames here because I knew the composition and the sky wasn’t really changing. The only things that I was working around were how far to offset the background farm from this barn. That was my main consideration, and it didn’t take long at all to work out. After about 10 minutes or so, I was done with this barn once again. Neither time I’ve shot it has taken long at all. The first time, I was racing rain that I saw, this time, I also saw rain as I finished. It was just a slight mist and not enough to force my hand to go home. I did stay on my course and followed this side road as I had done one other time, but I took some different turns. I ended up near the community of Rockford I believe and spent some time on those back roads.
As I was driving around, I saw all kinds of potential in the form of barns and old cars, but nothing really jumped out at me as a composition. I was enjoying the drive through and just kept my eyes out. I found myself on a largely residential street that felt like it was going to turn into a neighborhood at some point. It was here that I saw a yellow Ford truck in the distance sitting in a field surrounded by beige grass which looked like a great monochromatic photograph to me. I eventually rounded the curve and saw the house that it belonged to which also had a Ford Falcon wagon sitting out in front of an old house. I considered the compositional options here and got turned around feeling that it was worth stopping for and asking permission. I went to the house and knocked but heard no movement inside indicating that anyone was home. There were all kinds of No Trespassing signs out and signs warning of security cameras. I got the feeling that they probably didn’t’ want to be bothered and if they were home, they weren’t going to answer the door. It was worth a try, but I knew that there was no way to get the truck in the back field without permission. The Falcon was another story though. This one was parked a short distance from the roadway. They have obviously had many inquiries about it in the past because they had written “NOT For Sale” on the side windows. I didn’t really care for the added script, but the car was very nice, and the setting that it was in was absolutely beautiful.
I wasn’t going to stay in their driveway, and I even had reservations about parking on the shoulder of the road, so I got back in my truck and drove away slowly looking at alternatives. There was an abandoned house across the street where the driveway was covered in a thick pile of leaves. I would actually be able to park there and shoot from across the street to get the car in the way that I would want. It was worth a shot, and I knew it wouldn’t take but a minute, so I pulled into the driveway and left the truck running as I built the camera with the long lens. I found the right area to set the tripod up at and worked out the composition. I had to include the pedestrian door that was on the second level because it was humorous that it came out to nothing on the exterior of the house. I ended up cropping that partially when I made this a 16:9 composition to go along with the shape of the car. The partial door works just as effectively while not pulling too much of the attention away from the car. It was a quick shot, and one that I only tried, but with the way that the colors all came together, this is one of my favorite photos of the day which was a surprise. I also could have cloned out the writing on the glass easy enough but decided that it tells a part of the story that would be missing without it.
Not wanting to press my luck, I decided to move on down the road and search for the next scene. The rain was still holding off, but it was getting darker by the minute. I was driving aimlessly around and ended up in the community of Pilot Mountain once again. I was on some back road that I don’t even remember, and it came to an end at a “T” intersection. I could see a dead-end sign to the left and I almost turned to the right which would have been a mistake. There were a couple of barns here that were not all that picturesque, but beside one of them well off the road I saw teal and rust which are my favorite combinations. Upon a closer look I found the Holy Grail of cars…a ’55 Chevy which was still largely intact. I wanted to work this car, and I knew that the photos would be amazing.
The house next to the property where the barn was appeared to be vacant and only used for storage. I pulled into the house next to that and knocked on the door. There was no answer, and I wasn’t sure if this property was even related to the one with the barns. I went back out to the truck and pulled off on the side of the road where the car was. It was close enough that I could get a shot from the shoulder of the road which was what I intended on doing. I parked and grabbed my camera with the long lens attached. I looked at what I had to work with from this angle and found that I really loved the tree that was in front of the car. The wood of the barn worked well for the scene, and I wanted to include that as well. By getting a tight shot, I wasn’t going to have to include the sky which was a good thing. I just worked on finding the right angle to capture the car from where there was sufficient separation between elements to make it work. I would have loved to have gotten in closer, but that wasn’t in the cards right now. I did the responsible thing and worked with what I had. To be fair though, I really like how this composition turned out, and I think that it works as well as any overall shot I would have gotten from here.
I kept looking around expecting a property owner to show up which I was hoping for. Nobody had showed up yet, so I decided to look and see if there was anything else I could shoot while I was here. There was another barn off to the left with a Ford tractor sticking out of it. It was an interesting scene, but I wasn’t sure if it would make a good composition or not. While I was here there was no reason why I couldn’t give it a try though. I moved over to the other side, while still standing on the shoulder of the road. I started to pick out compositions where the doorway framed the tractor, but those all felt forced. I was seeing a UTV vehicle approaching while I was working on this composition, so I thought I was about to get luck and get to talk with the owners.
They finally came up to the intersection and paused. I took that as my cue to come over and talk with them. It turned out that they were not the owners, but they knew the owner and a bit of the history of the car. To make a long story short, the owner was elderly and usually didn’t answer her door. She lived up the road from here. I didn’t want to bother her, or upset her, and since I had gotten a photo of the car that I really liked I wasn’t all that pressed to get in closer. I was happy staying where I was, and they said that she might not be willing to let me access the property anyway.
When I got done talking with them, I went back to work on the barn with the tractor. I wasn’t liking the close in crop that I was committed to, so I looked for options. A partial crop of the barn seemed to provide the answer for me. I was able to crop out the extra stuff on the right side and focus on the tractor, while having the side of the barn give depth to the scene. I liked the shadows inside of the barn as it just gave a clue to the items along the wall showing this to be a place of work. The tractor was peeking out as if to say hello and even the nearest headlight was angled towards me. By opening the image up, I was able to get so much more context to the tractor which was why I didn’t’ like the first shots I had made. I just fine tuned this composition by elevating the camera to keep the bent roof from breaking the line of the roof above. When I had that, I was happy with this scene and loaded the truck back up.
At this point, I had 62 frames shot and I was ready to head home. On the way, I stopped by another barn that I was interested in photographing in Jonesville, but the conditions weren’t right for what I thought it needed. I did save it in my phone for another visit and possibly to bring a mentorship client along with me for. That was my last stop because the rain was starting up again and it was time to get home. It had been a great day, and by the end of it all, I had 15 new photographs from the day. That is over 20% for a hit rate which is a huge deal for me since I average 10% most of the time.
I hope that you have enjoyed this trek and the resulting photographs. Each of these images as well as any other that you find here in the blogs are available for sale as prints. There is just no better way to view a photograph than in a tangible form where you can see exactly the image that the photographer intended without worrying about monitor variations, or how your phone displays colors. A print is the physical version of a creative concept, and the photographer will always make sure that the print is exactly how they viewed the scene.
I’ve been at this blog now for roughly four hours and it is time to wrap it up. I’ve got an appointment with John back at the barn in Jonesville here in a couple of hours. I’ve got to get ready to head out for that and we are hoping that the conditions will be right for some really good photos of the barn. Who knows, you might be reading about this trek tomorrow when I get done washing the nasty 4Runner.
Until next time….
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