Monday, June 1, 2026
After the successful trek that I made at the end of May, I was feeling a little more creative than I have in the past few weeks. I didn’t want to let that feeling fade away, so I was looking for another chance to get out and do some photography again. The question was what did I want to put in front of the camera? I had been trying to get out to Ashe County to look at an old house that Toni had told me about but didn’t get out there during that last trek. The sky wasn’t looking right in that direction on that day, but the clouds were supposed to be kind of thick during the morning hours on Monday. That was where my plan started.
When I woke up, I looked at the weather and saw that the clouds had been pushed back to about 10am and would only stick around for a couple of hours. Currently, as I looked outside, there were no clouds to be seen and the light was rather strong, especially for the morning hours. I didn’t feel the need to rush through my morning routine and just kind of took my time as I got things all settled down from all the recent blog posts. You have seen all of them, haven’t you? If you haven’t don’t forget to subscribe to the blog so you never miss an entry. In fact, just yesterday, I published the newest Behind the Camera, as well as the last part of the blog series from that last trek. Subscribing costs you nothing at all, and you will automatically get an email with each new blog. It really is as simple as that, and it is much more reliable than waiting on the algorithms on Facebook to show you my posts.
Anyway, I was working on getting things taken care of here on the website which included adding some new photos to the galleries which house all of my best work. When all that was done, I went back upstairs to see what the sky was looking like. There wasn’t much change at all, and the weather was showing no more than about 30% cloud coverage over pretty much the entire area that I would be wanting to go to. Not wanting to just stay at home on a day that had no rain, I decided to take the Miata out for a bit of a cruise. With it freshly serviced and detailed, it was ready to get out on the road for a bit of fun.
Not long after I made that decision I was driving with the wind in my hair and enjoying the warm sunlight after being in the cold studio for the last couple of hours. I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted to go but felt that I needed to get a nice long drive in while the weather wasn’t too hot. I figured that I would head up to see that house that Toni had mentioned and do a little scouting to see what I could do with it. As far as I could recall, it was about an hour away from home which would be a nice little drive for sure.
I had been out to this house before or at least driven by it a few times. I remembered dismissing it as a subject but didn’t really remember why that was. Looking at it on Google Street View didn’t really tell me much about the photographic potential or lack thereof. I just needed to lay my eyes on it in person one more time to see for myself. The sun was bright as I was making my way up the mountain, but I could see some clouds in the distance. That must be that 30% cloud coverage that I had seen in the forecast. It was nothing special and the light was still just too bright for me to do anything worthwhile with the camera. This was going to be all about enjoying the drive and scouting for another time.
The further up the mountain that I got, the thicker the clouds became and there was a time that I was worried that I was going to get rained on even though there was no real chance of precipitation in the forecast. The clouds that I was seeing overhead told me not to believe the forecast though. I continued on and enjoyed the breeze and the happy sounds that the car always makes when I tickle the narrow pedal.
I realized that I was getting close to the house and I was actually in Alleghany County and not Ashe as I had originally thought the location of the house. As I turned onto the road that the house was located on, I spotted a derelict house well off of the road and only clearly seen from a bridge. This house was familiar to me and had been the subject of a few frames many years ago. The property was usually quite overgrown, but this time, the field was a bit more manageable and the view to the house was pretty good. The clouds were making the light on the field look pretty good and I almost wish that I had brought the camera, but that would have meant bringing the truck and that would have defeated the purpose of this ride. The sky hadn’t looked promising an hour ago, but things were starting to change.
I put the old house back in my list of places that I wanted to return to later on and continued to the house that Toni had suggested. It wasn’t but a few more miles down the road and I found it easy enough. I definitely remembered this house from a few years ago and immediately remembered my issues with it. There was a large tree that was blocking the main focal point of the house which ruined the overall effect of the design. The property was kind of hard to move around in, and I saw several signs indicating “No Trespassing” along with a property owned by sign near several bands of purple paint. All of this kind of indicated that they didn’t want anyone on the property, and I wasn’t seeing a good enough photo to really push any gray areas that might be there.
The light here was really horrible as well with the sun behind the house and nothing to ease up the shadows on the front of the house. I kind of struck that off my list but figured I would return again with better light to see if I could do anything with it. For now, I just continued on down the road because I knew another way home from here that would make for a nice route in the Miata.
While I was driving, I spotted a property that I had shot several years ago which had apparently changed hands as all of the really cool vehicles were gone now. The grounds were in better shape than before, and there had been a time when the grass had been left to grow wild. It would appear that there were new owners there. I had fun remembering the time that I was out there working a very large collection of rusty cars.
Not too far from that spot, just inside of Ashe County was a barn with a very large roof that went completely to the ground on both sides. I had stopped and photographed this barn before and had worked with some very difficult light that morning which made it difficult to get the detail in the face of the barn. There was also a lot of clutter right in front of the barn that I had a hard time working around. This time, the light on the barn was looking much better and the clutter around the front of it was now gone. There was nothing at all around the barn other than the clouds that were really starting to look good. This was another spot on my to-shoot list which was starting to form out nicely.
Several more miles down the road I spotted another location that I had shot years ago with an old VW Bug sitting in the parking lot. Back then, it was surrounded by other vehicles, and my only option was to shoot isolations on it. While those turned out great and, in many respects, fueled my early drive to capture fine art abstracts with rusted vehicles. The car was still sitting there, but it was no longer surrounded by other vehicles. There were still many large trucks around the property, but they were well off in the distance. The only thing of consequence in the background was the building which kind of fit the overall look of the scene quite nicely. The light was looking great on the scene, and I started to really want to photograph this Bug one more time before something happened to it.
I think that it was at that moment that I realized that the light was good and was looking like it was going to remain that way for a while. I didn’t have my camera with me, but I could absolutely correct that in about an hour and a half. The mission now was to get home and switch vehicles so that I could come back out here with the camera. I was still enjoying the ride in the Miata, but I was very torn about the sky. I wanted it to clear up so that I wouldn’t get rained on, but I was also wanting it to stay just like it was. Whatever it was going to do was out of my control, so I just drove and enjoyed myself the rest of the way home.
Once I got home, I got the car parked, put on different shoes and loaded up the truck before heading right back out where I had been. I took the reverse loop option so that I would get to the VW first. If the weather held, I was planning on stopping at the large roofed barn, the house that Toni had suggested, and finally the house in the large field. I had a long list of places to stop, and I was sure that most of the afternoon would be filled with photography at this point.
The sky was holding as it had been with lots of clouds and really nice light. The excitement was building as I climbed the mountain once again. When I finally turned on the road where the Bug was, I started watching for it on the right. When I saw it, I pulled into the parking lot and looked critically at the scene for the first time in a very long time. The surrounding cars were all gone, and just like I had speculated, the building was looking great as a background, even with the sign. I was going to have to be careful about some tractors in the distance, and a riding mower that was parked right next to the Bug. Everything else seemed like a pretty good scene to work with. There appeared to be nobody at the business so I just parked out of the way and grabbed the camera.
I would love to tell you how I grabbed a creative lens to work this car, but I ended up selecting the standard zoom. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to go too wide with the background elements that I was trying to avoid, and I didn’t want the compression of the long lens. The standard zoom would give me plenty of variety in focal lengths for overall compositions as well as isolations. I just needed to add the polarizer to the lens to be ready to roll.
The composition that I started out with an overall of the car with the business in the background. I liked how it was looking and I played with the focal lengths to find out the one that worked the best for the two subjects. I also wanted to make sure that I avoided the distractions in the background which added just a little bit of complexity to the framing. It didn’t take too long, and I was able to find the sweet spot for distance and angle on the car. That was when I started to make exposures.
Unlike my last trek, there were a lot of repeat exposures because the wind was blowing a little bit and that was causing the grass to move more than I wanted. The best way to combat that was with a higher shutter speed, but with the thick clouds and polarizer, I was looking at a very slow shutter speed for the conditions. I had to play with the ISO and aperture in order to get the shutter speed that I needed, and that took a little trial and error as I was trying to keep the ISO at a reasonable level for the camera body. This just meant that I shot several frames of the same composition with variations in the exposure to see what compromises I liked the best.
While I was working on getting these overall compositions and moving in closer and closer to change the perspective on the car, I spotted a pickup truck driving down the road behind me very slowly. I figured that this was probably the owner, but he didn’t stop to talk to me. I didn’t give it much more thought after that until I saw him driving up through the parking lot to my location. Yeah, this was more than likely the owner, so I turned the camera off and went to meet him. He was very pleasant and we started talking right away about the Bug.
He asked if I was a VW man to which I responded not specifically, more of a rust man if I had to label myself. I shared that I had been out here years ago when it was surrounded by other cars and had worked with it for a bit then. I had really liked it because of the bits of trim that were unique to one this old. I knew that it was a ’50’s model but wasn’t quite sure of the exact year. He let me know that it was a ’56 which was about what I was thinking. He’s got parts to start the restoration on it but hasn’t had the time to start. He didn’t recall quite how long it had been sitting here, but it was a driver in the ’90’s if I remember his account correctly.
After chatting for a little while, he happily gave me his blessing to continue photographing the car and wished me a good day. With his blessing, I really started to get in close to the car and started with the detail shots once again. I found an interesting design feature on the rear hatch that kind of showed like a “W”. I liked the symmetry of it all along with the surface rust which became a composition. I also worked around the front of the car focusing on that blue fender that balanced out the color palette of the car quite well. I spent most of my time with the camera just about a foot and a half above the ground for a more pleasing perspective on the car. There is something about capturing these Beetles from a lower point. It just makes them look that much better.
I still worked with some overall compositions as well once I got in closer than I had been. This called for the lens to be pulled out to 24mm for a bit more of an extreme perspective. I don’t think that I would want to go any wider than that with this car because of how round the body already is. Getting this kind of wide just increases that roundness and I think that it would be far too easy to take it too far. However, I do really like the close in version of the composition that I started with.
Knowing that I had a lot of different overall shots of the car from different ranges got me thinking about how I was going to process them. I knew that each variation was going to be unique and have a different kind of vibe to it. Of course, I could go with color and black and white, but I might want to go deeper than that. When I was going through the processing of the images, I started to look at more of the color profiles than I would normally look at. There have been a few new ones added during a recent update that are designed as film profiles. Normally, I don’t care for these, but occasionally, I find a photo that works well with them. The widest-angled shot of the Bug was one of those shots that worked with a film profile. Of course, I actually finished up the processing after using that color profile as a starting point, but it gave the image a bit of a vintage vibe that I enjoyed for the scene. The lower saturation was a nice touch as well.
I ended up spending 20 minutes with the Volkswagen, which included a discussion with the property owner. In that time, I had shot a total of 26 frames which resulted in these six keepers. I honestly didn’t think that I was going to get this many images from the car. Looking back in my mind over what I had shot, I was thinking maybe four keepers if I was lucky. There is no doubt that this was the right time to stop and work with this car.
Just a few hours before, the sun had been shining fiercely, and I had all but written off photography for the day. I was even thinking that I would be mowing by the end of the day since Tuesday was supposed to have better clouds. Things changed quickly and I do believe that I rose to the occasion by making the choice to get the Miata back in the garage and grab the camera. I don’t know what the conditions would be like the next day, but I knew what I had to work with at the present time.
Of course, I wasn’t quite done yet. The sky was still looking great, and I was close by several other locations that I wanted to shoot. Stick around and see what comes next when I have the next blog ready for publication. In the meantime, take a moment and look through my photographs to see if there are any that you might want to hang on your wall. I do make and sell prints for clients, and it is a great way of showing your support for my art. It is also the absolute best way to view my photographs because I have no control over the device that you are currently looking at the images on. I do, however, have control over the final printed image that you would hang on the wall. There really is no comparison between seeing them on a digital screen, compressed to 19% of the original quality, and seeing a full resolution print hanging on the wall. You owe it to yourself to have the best version of the photo that you love.
I’ll be back here soon enough with my next stop, so keep your eyes out for that entry.
Until then…
