Friday, December 30, 2022
I really didn’t think that I was going to get out again this year. I’ve been kind of busy over the last week, and after having a cold that knocked me on my butt the week before that, I was content to let the year move on out without a lot of fanfare. I’ve even done the last bit of my next Behind the Camera talking about my last trek of the year, which has turned into my next to last trek. I guess, there will be a slight rewrite in order before tomorrow night. All of the disruptions to my flow over the last two weeks has really affected my creative energy. It isn’t that I wasn’t able to be creative, it was more along the lines of “why should I?” This is not a great place to be in creatively and I knew that I needed to get out of it as soon as I could.
With today looking like a cloudy day, or at least cloudy afternoon, I set my sights on going out to the location that I had wanted to shoot a week before Christmas when I woke up sick as a dog. I had spotted this little area on the way out to the barn that I was photographing with John on my last trek. There was an old house with several older cars behind it that included a Fairlane and a late 50’s Volvo which I thought was quite beautiful. It was only about a half hour away, so I planned on getting out there when the clouds started to roll in during the afternoon. I had scoped the location out and saw that the house that was probably related to this property was right next door, down a long driveway. I had no idea if I was going to be able to get permission to photograph the location or not, but I had a starting point at least.
The clouds came in a bit earlier than expected, but they were short lived before the sun came back out again during the middle of the day. It wasn’t until about 1:30 that the clouds came in for real and I was looking at light that I liked working with. I loaded up the truck and headed out to the East. The rain which was showing in the forecast was looking to hold off until after 5pm which was well after I planned on being done. I was just going to have nice clouds to help with the lighting while I was out. At least that was what I thought.
When I arrived at the location, I made a quick pass by to make sure that nothing appeared different, and I got turned around. I pulled down the long driveway to the house that I figured was related to the property. The house was for sale with a realtor’s sign out front. I parked and rang the doorbell. There was no sign of movement inside and no indication that anyone was at home. I slowly walked back to the truck hoping that they were just slow to walk to the door. No such luck! I made the short drive back to the road and called the realtor’s number. There was no answer, so I left a message. There was another home across the street, and I thought that they might know the owner of the place I was wanting to shoot. As I was pulling into the driveway, I saw about 10 or so older cars on the property neighboring the house. There were a couple of them that I was interested in photographing, so even if they didn’t know anything about the place across the street, there was decent chance that I would get the opportunity to photograph something at least.
I knocked on the door and I heard movement within. The door opened and I was greeted by a very pleasant man. I introduced myself and asked if the property next door happened to be his. It was, and after a little bit of explaining about what I do, he was happy to let me photograph the cars on this side of the road. Of course, I also asked about the property across the street which he said belonged to his sister. Initially, he said that I could photograph over there as well. I couldn’t argue with my luck here. I had two different locations with some great subjects to photograph. Knowing that I was going to be spending more time across the street, I informed him that I would start on his side of the street and asked where I could park my truck so that it would be out of the way. Once I got that done, I grabbed my camera bag because I really didn’t know what I was going to need once I got started.
My first stop was an old Rambler wagon that was parked along the tree line which I had seen from the road. It was the color more than anything that drew my eyes in, but once I started to get in close, I realized that the entire interior of the car was overgrown with vegetation which added to the visual interest of the car. The front end had been pretty much stripped and there was a lot of brush growing through the now vacant engine compartment which I loved. As I started to consider the options for this car, the gentleman came out of the house and joined me. This was not a strange event for me at all as I’ve had plenty of property owners join me while I was on their property. I would probably do the same thing in their shoes. It does impact my process a little bit though as I have to carry on a conversation while thinking through compositions and creative choices.
My first reaction to the subject was to do a telephoto shot of the car with the vegetation providing a nice textured background for the wagon. I found the best place to set up for that shot and got everything lined up. The exposure was simple, and the composition was effective, but it seemed a bit boring to me. I needed something else in the frame to really pull the interest. I went for a vertical composition that included the sky. This was better, but there was too much distance between the car and the sky to really make them work together. It took me longer than usual to figure out the solution because I was in the middle of a conversation, but finally decided to switch to a wider angle lens and move in closer. This would allow me to bring in more of the sky and change the visual relationship between the car and the trees above.
The 24-70mm lens did perfectly with this task and I had a composition that I liked of the car. The sky was a bit too bright in relation to the car though so I added a 2-stop soft ND Grad in addition to the Polarizer that I had already mounted. That little bit of exposure reduction did the trick and the exposure worked out beautifully. I shot two different frames here with slightly different focal lengths in an attempt to get the trees to appear a bit more orderly and not have any strays entering the tops of the frame.
When I was done with the overall photos of the car, I moved in to see if there was anything that I wanted to isolate for a different photo. There wasn’t anything that really caught my eye, so I decided to move to another cluster of cars that was parked a short distance away. There was a single Ford that interested me in this group. The problem was that the Ford was blocked in by a camper shell at the front and two other cars that I wasn’t interested in on the passenger side. There was going to be no overall shot of this car, and finding isolations was going to be difficult at best with all of the surrounding distractions.
I chose to concentrate on the rear pillar of the car as it made some nice shapes. The large bed of tree debris gave an interesting texture contrast which I liked. I played around with the angles of the camera until I landed on one that I thought worked best. I framed the composition up and realized that I wanted to have a limited depth of field so that the only hard edges were those on the car while the more organic forms were softer. There really wasn’t much to this composition and I was pretty sure that I was going to want to do this as a black and white image which is how I shot it. However, when I got home, I really liked the subtle colors present and decided to go with a color profile that worked well with the low saturation of the colors. The last thing that I did was flip the image horizontally so that it read better left to right. This is a trick that I will do at times when there isn’t anything identifying in the frame that would give away the flipping of the image.
I tried to come up with some other compositions of this car while I was here, but nothing was coming to me since I was still carrying on a conversation. Don’t get me wrong, I was very thankful that I had been allowed to photograph the property, and as I mentioned, having the owner right there with me is not an oddity for me. I was just really wishing that I had the mental focus that I knew would make the difference here. I knew that there were photos to be had here, I just needed to slow down and find them.
As we were talking, he started to mention that he wasn’t all that comfortable with allowing me to go over to his sister’s property without her there to ask. This was a disappointment since I had really been looking forward to going across the street and working those cars for the last two weeks. However, I didn’t want him to have a negative opinion of me or my intentions so I just said that since he had my card, I would appreciate it if he asked his sister to call me when it was convenient to do so. That way, it was her choice as to whether or not I was allowed on the property, and he wasn’t put in the middle of it. He agreed, and I went on about my way working through the cars on his property.
The next location that I visited was an area behind the trees that I had not seen from the road. There was another Ford sedan there that caught my eyes with the deep teal paint job on it. As with the other Ford, this one was also parked between other cars and there was one at the front blocking it in. It was certainly not the easiest car to get a line on, but I really liked the front quarter style of this car. I saw enough room to work with on the driver’s side, so I go the camera in between four cars to get the right angle. There was just enough patina on this corner to make things interesting and the engine badge became my visual anchor.
As I was setting this shot up, I kept feeling like there was rain falling, but I didn’t see anything on the camera. I got a couple of frames captured of the front of the car and figured that I had what I wanted there. By this point, I asked the owner if he was feeling rain and he wasn’t sure either. Just then I saw a drop on the back of the camera, so I knew I wasn’t just feeling things. Fortunately, I had my hat with me, so I was able to shield the lens from the light mist as I moved to the other side of the car.
I was looking for isolations that I could work with on the passenger side, but the only thing that I could find of interest was the way that the tree trunks were shaped behind the car. I decided to work with that for a while and ended up doing a close crop on the shape of the rear window and quarter panel. I had to move some branches out of the way and then shoot with a higher ISO to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the remaining branches, so this was kind of an involved photo. In the end, I edited the image and liked it, but felt that it had not real purpose as a photo. It didn’t make the cut and was ultimately deleted from the collection. It just isn’t good enough to be a good photo anymore. I have to have a reason behind the photo and a story that needs to be told for a photo to make that final cut.
The rain was starting to come down pretty good at this point, but I saw a Ford Torino further into the property that I wanted to work with before calling it a day. It was pretty much fully engulfed by the trees and vines, but since it was a white car, it stood out nicely from the brush. The character came from damage that took the car off the road in the mid 80’s. The rust from the side-swipe damage gave just the right amount of color unity to the scene and gave me the visual interest that I needed. The problem was getting a composition that made sense. I wanted to get the shot from the front of the car, but there were two other cars parked very close to the front of the car that prevented me from getting a clean shot. I could get a workable angle from the rear of the car which was what I ended up doing. I used the brush to minimize the proportions of the quarter panel, forcing the attention to the door and fender where I wanted the eyes to go. The perspective gave me a bit of a diagonal approach to the scene which I liked as well.
I ended up shooting two frames of this composition, one where the I had more foreground and one where I had more trees above the car. Since the trees had no organization, I decided to go with the one that had more foreground since it was a bit cleaner of an element to include. In post, I took it one step further and changed the aspect ratio to 16:9 to really focus on the length of the car. That seemed to make it work much better and gave the visual balance that I wanted.
The rain was starting to come down pretty good at this point and I was having to work overtime keeping the rain off of that front element. I ended up leaving my hat on the lens as I moved around to see if there were any other isolations that I might want to work before leaving. There wasn’t room up front to do anything with the headlights, and the only other part that I was being drawn to was the emblem on the C pillar that identified this as a Torino.
Once again, I was set to do this as a black and white image because I didn’t see how color was going to play a part in this particular composition. I got things framed up as quickly as possible as the rain came down. I shot two different variations of this composition, both of which with the camera set to B&W. Those represented exposure 17 and 18 which is usually what I will shoot to get warmed up during a session. When I started this one, I really thought that I was going to be out here for at least two hours working both sides of the road. I hadn’t even been out here for 30 minutes yet and was pretty much done with the day. The rain was showing no signs of letting up which was making my work very difficult. I also felt bad for the property owner that was still standing out in the rain with me. I had gotten most of what I felt was there and didn’t see any further need in sticking around and getting wet.
We worked our way back to the truck and I put the now wet camera bag back in the truck. We chatted for a bit longer and I again reminded him to have his sister call me at her convenience as I was really excited about the possibilities across the street. He assured me that he would and with that, I was on my way down the road. I was hoping that the rain would let up long enough for me to get at least one more location shot before getting home, but that didn’t happen. The rain was early, and it was apparently here to stay at this point.
It was a quick trek, but I’m glad I got out one last time before the year was over. I know that this will be my last trek of the year because I have a portrait shoot scheduled for tomorrow afternoon that will pretty much take the day. I am hoping to get out on the 1st for a little bit to get the first trek out of the way for the year. I’m not sure where that will be just yet, but I’m planning on doing something at least.
I hope that you have enjoyed this trek and the resulting images. If any of them strike your fancy and you would like a print on your wall, please let me know. I would love to match you up with a high-quality print of one of my photographs. Not only do I offer the standard sizes that are listed here on the website, but I can do prints much larger and on metal or canvas if that is your choice. Whatever works best for you will be so much better than looking at these photos on a computer monitor in a very compressed state. There is just no substitute for seeing a photograph in its intended form which is tangible and can be hung from the wall.
Since this is my last entry for the year, I want to wish everyone a safe and happy New Year. Look for my year end wrap-up on the 1st as my Behind the Camera series continues. See you next year!
Until next time….
Remember to use the code KISER10 to get 10% off your purchase
