Thursday, January 23, 2025
Welcome back, long time to see. It feels like only yesterday that I was sitting here at the computer typing out a blog. It might feel like only yesterday that you were reading a new blog from me. Well, the jokes on you, it has been two days since I was last out. I took yesterday off and thawed out after getting a mild case of frostbite while photographing those two Bugs. I honestly wasn’t planning on going out for photos today, as the plan was to wash Toni’s car and get the salt off of it since the high temperatures were supposed to be in the mid 30’s. While not warm, it was warm enough that the water wouldn’t freeze on the car before I could get it dry. That was the plan…
Well early in the morning, her job called and needed her to come in as they were understaffed. We had a few things to do together before she could go in, but once that was done, we hightailed it back to the house so that she could get changed and ready to go. Now that I didn’t have her car to wash, my day kind of freed up. I had a few more errands to run which I hadn’t been able to do when we were out together so I headed out to take care of those real quick and figured that I would get the truck washed when I got home.
One of the places that I had to go was to the dentist to drop off some paperwork, but they were not in the office. However, while I was driving down the side road to get to the office, I spotted an old rusty wagon sitting in the parking lot of a repair shop. After figuring out that I wasn’t going to be able to drop off the paperwork, I drove over to the shop to see what the car was. It was a Mercury Commuter which I had never seen before, but it really looked interesting to me. The location was not all that great as it was surrounded by other cars. However, I could see lots of potential with isolations. There was also a Studebaker Gran Turismo which I had not ever seen before. It was based on the Silver Hawk it looked like, which was a car that I had photographed before. While the Studebaker wasn’t very rusty, there were some aspects of it that I really liked and wanted to shoot.
I didn’t have my camera with me, but the light was very good. I could tell that the shop wasn’t open currently, even though it was well within business hours. I took a snapshot of the sign that had the phone number on it and headed off to my next stop. When I was done with Lowes Hardware, I called the number to see if anyone was in the shop. There was no answer, and I tried two times. I looked online for the business to see if there were any other numbers listed. There were not. Both of the cars were reasonably close to the road, and I could probably get a few shots from the roadside, but that isn’t really the way to work isolations like what I was wanting to capture. I really needed to get permission to do what I needed to in order to capture the images that I had in mind. The only way to get that permission was to go back out there and ask the neighboring shop if they had any information.
I headed home and dropped off a few things and grabbed my camera. I was back on the road in a few minutes and back out to the shop. This time I looked a bit more critically at the cars and determined that there was no way I was going to be able to shoot them unless I was able to move about the property freely. There was another shop next door that was occupied. I went over there and talked to several of the folks in the shop. They knew the owner of the shop that I needed, but didn’t have his personal contact information, only the main number. They didn’t feel comfortable enough to give me permission but said that there was a body shop behind the business that might have some extra information. I thanked them and headed over there to see what I could figure out.
I found a couple of guys talking in the shop and I made my inquiry. They had a lot more information about the property and felt comfortable letting me photograph in the parking lot. That was all I needed, and I was ready to get started. I went back to the truck which was parked near the Mercury and grabbed my camera. I loaded the 70-200mm lens and the polarizer because I really felt that was going to be the right combination for what I was going to be working with. I went over to the Mercury at first and started working compositions from the front of the car. This was what I had put the most thought into because this was what I felt I might be able to do from the street. I was a little closer than that, but I think that the plan would have worked out well enough had I not been able to find anyone to ask.
However, I did have permission, so I moved in closer and started to look at the rear of the car. This was where the car really stood out to me. The fins and the lights were very interesting and the fact that this was a station wagon made it ever more interesting. I worked on several different compositions until I landed on some that I liked. I did a few variations to make sure that I had something that I felt good about which showed off the lines of the car. The colors were also perfect with the mint green that looks so good with rust…and a red taillight.
After working with the Mercury for a while, I went over to the Studebaker to look at it closer. This car was actually in really good shape with only a bit of surface rust in places. The interior was in really good shape, and I almost opted to not photograph this one because it was hardly a decay subject. However, I felt that the Mercury had enough decay to allow me a little bit of time with the Gran Turismo before I called it a day.
One of the things that really interested me about this car was the badge on the pillar and the stainless trim beneath it. I looked to see if there was a way that I could photograph it and found that by shooting from a slightly rearward angle, I was able to get the seatback and the rear ash tray in the shot. The red interior and the presence of the ash tray kind of completed the story that I wanted to tell because it really captured the era of this automobile.
The biggest problem I had her was the glare in the glass which was handled with the polarizer pretty effectively. I decided to let the interior bits go into soft focus because I didn’t want those elements distracting from the small emblem which was what I wanted the focus to really be on. Between the sharp focus and the trim below, framing the emblem, I think I managed to achieve my goal even though I was fighting against that deep red color which will grab the viewer’s attention quite readily.
I had also had the idea to work the scripted emblem on the door from the roadway because the “Gran Turismo” nameplate was something that I had not seen on one of the Studebakers yet and I thought it was pretty unique. I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to capture this element though. I knew that shooting it straight on would be a boring composition, especially without any rust to really make the composition pop. I just held the camera to my eye and moved it around until I started liking what I was seeing. The interior of the car was in great shape, and I wanted that to feature in a photograph. Since the windows were intact and rolled up, I had only a couple of options as to how to shoot the interior. One of them was staring me in the face right at the moment.
By including the interior with the side emblem, I would be able to give context to the script. Also, by shooting the interior from this side, I wasn’t forced to include the steering wheel which was a bit dominant around the instrument panel. I was able to see the dash gauges, radio, and CB, along with the shifter on the floor. You could tell that this car was a bit of runner at one time from the elements that I could see. By twisting the polarizer in a certain way, I was able to remove the traffic but keep a bit of the spoiler from a Mustang reflecting in the window. It was a subtle clue positioned right at the shifter, but it gave more of an element of speed which I really liked.
Instead of going for a really colorful approach to the edit as I had in the other photo of the Studebaker, I chose to go with my favorite desaturated profile while toned down the red interior so that the attention would remain on the door badge and the brighter elements in the cabin which told some very important parts of the story. I really like how this one turned out with the colors, and I also like how the other one turned out, but they both needed different treatments to be successful images.
One area where I didn’t need to be concerned with the red interior was when photographing the more usual isolations that I like to do with these old cars. Of course, I went straight to the headlight area because that is just something that I am drawn to. I’ve shot this body style before and have kind of figured out what to do with the grill opening beneath the headlight. I wanted to change things around a little bit this time though. I picked the driver’s side to work with because it was the side that offered the most in terms of rust to work with. The passenger side was in much better condition and not nearly as visually interesting.
I went with my normal composition here but then tightened it up. This allowed me to crop into the opening and make it slightly less impactful. I was really trying to move the attention further up in the photo to showcase the rust. Again, it was the color profile that I chose which had a lot to do with how the eyes moved through this composition. It is not one that I use regularly, but I think that it was perfect for this photo, and it gave me a really nice balance of warm and cool tones within the frame.
After shooting the “expected” composition, I decided that I might want to really try for an abstract composition. I removed the headlight and focused on the grill opening that I had been avoiding up until now. I allowed the main grill frame to creep into the frame from the left, while the fender body line produced another triangle opposite of the grill. All of this was utilized to frame up the rust in the hood which was the real reason for the shot. I wanted the textures and found the faded paint to be a great backdrop for the rust. I used a different color profile with this one to achieve a different look and I think that it turned out really nice. Overall, this one is much warmer in tone than the one with the headlight, but without the headlight, the analogous colors seemed to work better for the overall impact.
I did shoot a few other compositions with the Studebaker, but none of them really jumped out at me when I was going through them at home. For the sake of being fair, I was trying to move through these edits because I had not been planning on doing any photography today and had already made plans to meet with Toni for dinner when she got off work. That didn’t leave me the luxury of time when it came to just experimenting with edits which I might have been inclined to do. I might come back later on and try some different things with the other photos. Honestly though, I am already very thrilled with the hit rate that I have seen with these two cars. When I finished up, I had 37 frames shot and figured that I would have three or four keepers. Here we are six keepers into the story, and I haven’t even changed out my lens yet.
I did want to pull out my standard zoom which would allow me to work a bit closer to the car before I left. There were a few compositions that I felt might be improved with the shorter lens. One of those ideas was on the rear of the car. I already had a really strong composition featuring the taillight, but I wanted to do something that focused more on the abstract nature of the design which was emphasized with the rust. I played around with different angles and decided that I really liked a composition that only used a portion of the taillight to bring in a triangle. The main visual anchor here was the three bits of trim framed by the strips of stainless. The other lines came from how the quarter panel and lid came together which was something unique to the wagon design. It felt really good in the camera, and I thought it worked ever better on the large screen when I got it home on the computer. Again, the colors worked so well here with the mint and rust. The pop of red from the light seemed to punctuate the whole image as well.
I had done some work on the interior of the car with the long lens but felt that there were too many distractions going on when using that lens from the distance that I was using it from. By switching the focal length, I had some different compositional options. By moving in closer, I was able to eliminate the door post and focus more on the needles on the top of the dash. Once again, the colors were what inspired me because the pine needles were basically the same color as the rust which we already knew worked very well with the mint color on the car. I was also able to get the door molding as well as the side mirror in the composition for a bit of extra visual interest. There is a lot going on here, but hopefully, it is organized in a way that makes sense to the viewers.
That was one of the last photos that I shot. I had been out here for nearly two hours at this point between talking to everyone and actually photographing the cars. I’m really glad that I came back and took advantage of the good light. While I probably should have been washing the salt off of something, I think that this was time well spent. The temperature was only showing 34 on the way home which would have been a miserable time with my hands in water. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit warmer and I can get Toni’s car taken care of as I had planned on doing today.
Thank you for tagging along on this impromptu trek. I hope that you found the photos as pleasing as I did when I finally got to see them. Remember, if any of these photos jumps out at you, I would love to match you up with a print. Just let me know what you are after, and we can get the ball rolling. Also, don’t forget that I’ll be hosting another decay workshop in East Bend, NC, in May. This is your time to ask me anything about how I create these types of photos. You will also get a full day to practice in a target rich environment. Head on over to my workshops page and get signed up before all the slots are taken.
Until next time…
