Wednesday, July 2, 2025
As the song goes, if you can’t work with the light you love, then love the light you have. Well, I might be paraphrasing because I don’t think that light was the subject of that song. The sentiment is fitting for the day though. I had gone out for a bit yesterday looking for some good light for a barn that I wanted to photograph. The light wasn’t bad, but the sky looked terrible, and the corn stalks were too high for me to get the composition that I needed. The day before, I went out in hopes of getting good light, which I kind of did and it was the first time that I had good clouds overhead in quite some time. Before that, we had an entire month of treks where I would go out in hopes of finding great light and ended up working more and more in strong sunlight. I guess that is just the time of year that we are in. It is either sunny, or raining. We have sure had our fair share of rain here lately, but if it is dry, the sun is working against the photography that I like to do.
That brings us to last night when I was checking the weather. The weather apps were both saying completely different things. On one hand, I was looking at no rain, and mostly cloudy skies for the entire day. On the other, I was seeing much thinner clouds overhead, but a good chance of rain from 9am on through the entire day. I was scared to ask Toni what her weather app was saying because it was probably showing a moderate chance of snow and sleet with sandstorms coming from the South. I had to come up with some ideas of things that I might want to photograph that would work for the weather that we ended up having.
For the cloudy forecast, I decided that I would take advantage of the recent rains and go to Styers Mill Falls in Yadkin County, followed up with a visit to a barn in Kernersville that I had seen recently when having lunch with my daughter. If it was going to be sunny, I would probably go into town and do a photo walk to take advantage of the shadows. If it was raining, I would likely just stay home. In case of the snow and sandstorm option, I would shoot video the entire day and see what happened.
When Toni left for work this morning, I could tell that it was cloudy outside by how the light was hitting the blinds. I checked my phone and saw that it was raining and was going to continue for the next couple of hours. This had not been an option when looking at the weather, but here we were. I rolled back over and gladly went back to sleep for a while. I think it was 7:30 when I finally woke up and got out of bed. I looked out the window and saw that everything was very wet and the clouds were basically an overcast. This could very well be a great start to some waterfall photography, so I pulled out the phone and looked at the weather again. The rain was about to stop, but the clouds were not going to last for long at all. I might be able to get out to Yadkin County in time to get good light on the falls, but I would have to work very fast because it was looking like the sun was going to be out in all its glory within about a half hour from the rain stopping.
That just didn’t give me the time that I wanted or needed to get things going. I started to think about other options that I could do with the clouds parting ways. The only thing that came to mind was the Nissan pickup that I have pondered for a while now. I had come up with a way to possibly photograph it and it would actually work with some direct light on it. It would be afternoon light, but it was something that I could potentially do with partly cloudy skies.
Not having a clear plan for anything in the morning, I went downstairs and got my morning routine taken care of. It didn’t take long and was much quicker than yesterday as I was closing out the quarter for tax purposes. That brought me back upstairs kind of early in the day and I sat in my chair looking outside at the bright sunlight that was bathing the back yard. There was no variation in the intensity and in all directions I looked, there was only blue sky. The current conditions on my phone were showing partly cloudy skies, but I wasn’t seeing a hint of any clouds anywhere. There I was sitting in my chair wanting to go out for some photos but thinking more seriously about what movies to watch on television. That was what I did for a good bit of yesterday and I didn’t really want to repeat that again today.
As I was pondering the options and trying to find something positive that I could work with, Toni texted me and asked what I was going to get into today. I answered that I wasn’t going to be doing much of anything at all. As I responded, I could hear the depression in my words and could see the desire to get out with the camera. I looked outside and it was no better at all. I checked my cloud app and saw that the clouds were supposed to be increasing a bit more over the next couple of hours which was promising, but I didn’t know how much to trust it. My other weather app was showing about 30% cloud cover which might be enough to see some clouds in the sky, but not enough to really impact the light. I could always go out with no clear idea and just chase the clouds.
This is worked for me in the past, and it would give me a chance to get creative with the camera. I knew that if I stayed in my chair, it was going to be a long day, and I would have nothing to show for it. Without doing my customary looking out of the windows again, I just texted Toni that I was going to go out and see where I ended up. I got some shoes on and grabbed my gear to head out. When I got to the end of the driveway, I finally had a bit better view of the sky. There were some puffy clouds in the sky, but the light was really quite strong and not all that flattering. It was also getting close to the middle of the day when most photographers would say stay at home, don’t bother.
Well, over the past few weeks, I’ve been going out during the middle of the day and working in the sun more than I think I ever have. The old adage that there is no bad light kept coming to mind. Sure, golden hour is beautiful light and flattering for most anything. I love working with cloudy, diffused lighting and think that is some of the best light out there. What I have been dealing with here lately is strong sunlight with the sun high in the sky. This time of year, the sun just stays high in the sky with the lower diffused lighting only lasting for a few minutes at either end of the day. My history with the sun here recently has given me some more tools with how to deal with it, and how to embrace it. I’ve learned that these are not good conditions for portraiture because of the raccoon eyes it causes. it is also not all that great for landscapes because there is very little depth shown in the scene and it takes all the textures away. However, when it comes to decay subjects, particularly cars, the higher sun works quite well as it shows off the lines of the vehicle a bit better than the lower side lighting.
With that in mind, I decided that I was going to look for some rusty cars to shoot. I would also keep my eye out for barns that would take advantage of the sky because the clouds that were out were truly pretty. I had my ideas for subject, but I needed to actually find them. I was looking around to see where the clouds looked the best and it appeared that they were looking better South of my location which was where I went. I started off exploring some of the smaller roads off of 421 which I haven’t been on in some time. There were only a few interesting subjects on those roads, and none of them were in a good spot to photograph. I turned down one of the roads that I have been having some good luck with over a couple of different treks knowing that there were barns and old cars in the area. This was the same area that a friend of mine had suggested I look at back in the Winter, so that tip has already paid off. I was hoping that it would do it again today. I also knew that I could take that road all the way to another main route which was where the Nissan was parked. That was my last ditch location if nothing else panned out.
I was driving down the road and taking some turns here and there when I saw clues that made me think that there was potential in that direction. For the most part, I was coming up with nothing and the sun was just getting brighter along with the temperature climbing. It was really looking like I wasn’t going to find anything at all that I could work with in this light, and I was starting to be OK with that as I was enjoying listening to my music and taking a little country drive. If nothing else, maybe I could stop and get the truck inspected before I got back home so I would be a little ahead of the game, but I wasn’t sure if it was too early to get it done. By my math, the earliest I could do it would be tomorrow, but I wasn’t quite sure after an incident with getting the Miata inspected last month.
The miles passed by, and I found myself back on the main route again that I was quite familiar with. As I came to one bend, I looked over to see a Mustang II parked in a field by a home. I have lost count of the number of times that I have seen this car. I think the first time was shortly after Toni and I moved into the area in 2020. Over the years, I’ve watched it show more signs of neglect and become more interesting to me gradually. It was still a Mustang II and probably the least popular model of the Mustang ever built until the advent of the Mach-E. I knew that this car wouldn’t be all that popular in my collection of old iron photographs, but at the same time it was speaking to me.
Maybe it was the light that was bathing the car and making it stick out in the landscape. It might be that I had just come off of a very successful shoot with a red Ford pickup that looked really good with the green trees and blue sky. It might just be that in my old age, I am less interested in the model of the car, but rather the condition, and more importantly the story behind it. This answer to the gas crisis had a place in history, and had even had some serious screen time in shows like Charlie’s Angels. It wasn’t as flashy as the first generation, and it didn’t have a long run like the Fox Body Mustangs, but after all these years, it is kind of rare and unique. In a matter of seconds, I had decided to pull into the driveway and see if I could get permission to shoot the car. There was none of the normal looking at the scene critically because the lighting on the scene was not what I liked, and I was kind of doubting that I would get anything usable if I could even get permission.
Why was I stopping if I didn’t think I would get anything. Well, with the light that I had, I knew that I was going to have to get creative and I figured that I might as well experiment with a car that was close by and one that probably wouldn’t be a crowd favorite subject anyway. I was also looking at all the signs warning about trespassing which made me think that I probably wouldn’t be able to get permission to shoot it. If that was the case, the failure wouldn’t be because I couldn’t work in the light, and it wouldn’t be that I couldn’t find a subject. The failure would be because I didn’t get permission, but I knew that I had tried.
Yeah, I had real high hopes for this stop as you can tell. Yet for some reason, I was feeling myself getting excited about the prospects of actually shooting this car that I had seen probably a dozen or more times over the last five years. I walked right up to the front door which also had a “No Trespassing” sign right next to it, and I am pretty sure that I saw several “Private Property” and “Keep Out” signs scattered around. I didn’t even get a chance to knock, and I was met at the door. I’ll be honest, I was happy that the person that came to greet me wasn’t a gruff old man with a gun in his hand. I was really expecting that to be the case.
It was the lady of the house that had come to the door, so I instinctively backed away to make sure I wasn’t crowding her at all. I introduced myself and went into my apologetic canned speech that I have worked out after many years of making these contacts. It is actually something that I now teach in my decay workshops because if you can’t get permission, you can’t get the photos. I was still thinking that I was going to be turned away, but surprisingly, she didn’t have a problem with me photographing the car. In fact, she came out and started to talk with me for a while. She told me that the car was bought by her late husband brand new and was eventually given to their son. Of course, the story had some very familiar parts where it ends up sitting there waiting for some freshening or a restoration. The more she talked about the car, the more interested I became in photographing it. It is one thing to photograph an old car and imagine the stories behind it. It is something else entirely to know the story behind it and actually feel a connection with it through someone else’s experiences.
I was aware of the fact that the clouds were covering the sun, and the light was really good while I was talking with her, but I really didn’t worry too much about the light. I was having a good conversation with her and learning about the man who had bought this car originally. I hadn’t been any closer than 100 feet to the car, but I was starting to feel a strong connection to it the more she talked. The clouds eventually gave way to clear skies once again and it started to get very hot on that porch. I could feel the sweat dripping off of me and I was starting to get really concerned about how uncomfortable I would be once I started working the car.
After maybe 10 minutes, our conversation was finished, and I went to park the truck closer to the Mustang with her blessing. It was now time to get rolling with some photography, so I pulled out the camera and my standard zoom lens as it would give me the most flexibility. I added a polarizer because that is just what I do when photographing these old cars. I did a quick walk around of the car to see what I had to work with in terms of angles. It was also the first time I had ever seen the passenger side of it since that was the side away from the road. The little Mustang was looking really quite good, even in the full light.
To get things started as I was getting properly acquainted with the car, I decided to get the overall establishing shot. This was going to be rather simple because other than the road, which was elevated, there was nothing at all in the background behind the car. I had a choice of angles as seen from the passenger side front quarter. This was the side that the sun was on, and it made for a pretty good composition, though I hadn’t expected it when looking from the road. Because the road was elevated, it didn’t show in the photos at all, and I don’t think that I could have elevated the camera enough to change that. The only thing that I had to worry with was a couple of power lines that were draped across the sky, but not too close to the road which made it very possible to shoot under them.
I went with a very simple composition to get started that just included the car and the trees behind it. The sky wasn’t really all that important for this one, and I wanted to really focus on the car. The clouds were coming back over the sun slightly so some of the bite was taken out of the highlights which I was very thankful for. I got everything dialed in and got the photo. It was one and done because everything looked good with that first exposure. I then wanted to go vertical and get the sky for an alternate composition.
When I flipped the camera, I had to back up quite a bit to get the full car in the frame at 24mm. I ended up losing a lot of the perspective on the car and wanted to go wider to get it back. I ran back to the truck with the camera and swapped out lenses for my wide-angle one. That one did the trick, and I was able to get a very compelling photo in a vertical format that included the sky and clouds above. The only issue was the sky was a little too bright as the car was in the shadow of the clouds once again. I ran back to the truck and grabbed my entire bag because I was obviously needing more tools than I had anticipated. I added a grad filter to control the sky a bit more and started making exposures.
I did a series of these as the lighting changed on the car and the clouds changed in the sky. I really liked how this was working out and wanted to see how it would work as a horizontal composition. I flipped the camera back to level and moved in closer to keep the same wide-angle perspective. I was still able to include the sky in the shot which was very important at this point. I really liked the blue as it complimented the warmer tones of the Mustang. The sky and clouds also gave a sense of scale to the scene which I liked.
After 19 frames shot, I was pretty happy that I had what I wanted for the overall, establishing photograph. Little did I know that I would like each of the three compositions that I shot and would keep them all. It was time to start working the details on the car. This was going to be easy with the sun coming back out again. Detail shots are more fun many times when I can get shadows involved with them. Since this car was in the open, I didn’t have to worry about dappled lighting which is problematic on a car with a patina like this which already shows visual interest.
The first area that I went to was the front corner where I had been aiming for each of the shots up till now. The difference was that now I was looking at a much smaller scope of the scene. No longer was I interested in the entire car. It was the little details that defined it which interested me. Since I had not shot a Mustang II, I knew that I had nothing with the headlights from this car. That was the first thing that I started to photograph, but I wanted to add the prancing pony to really identify the car. This brought in the turn signal as well which was a nice addition. There was a tall weed that was growing up by the headlight and there was tons of interest in how the paint had aged over the years. The composition came together pretty easily from there and I was starting to really have a lot of fun with this car.
While shooting the headlight, I was looking at the shapes on the hood and felt that there was some form of a composition there. I didn’t want to use the headlight, but I needed something to ground the image to give it structure. I played with the angles and eventually found an angle that used the lines of the hood in a diagonal fashion while the fascia gave a perpendicular point of interest to the scene. I played with the camera position until I was happy that I had something that made sense. I fired off a couple of different frames because there were flies that kept landing on the hood. Instead of cloning them out in post, I was hoping to get a clean shot without them in the frame.
I was able to get that to happen, and the processing was really quite simple on this one. The biggest thing that I did was to flip the image horizontally so that the lines would go up as you read the image from left to right. In the original form, the lines went down and that had a calming effect that I didn’t think fit the image as designed. The flipping changed the whole attitude of the composition, and I think made the photo quite a bit better as a whole.
The next area that I went to was the passenger side headlight once again. This time, I was wanting to really focus on the weeds that were growing up in front of the light. There were also radial cracks in the plastic bumper that again shows a design feature of cars from this era that is unique to the cars that I normally photograph. Metal doesn’t do this, and I thought that the striations on the painted plastic were quite interesting. They also required a bit higher of a perspective to properly capture when compared to how I am normally photographing headlights.
There was a pinstripe that was right there on the body line and accented it perfectly to help point to the weeds. Their stems also pointed up to the yellow buds at the top which kind of framed the headlight. It was a slightly different variation on an expected composition from me, but everything really came together nicely for this one. At the time I photographed this one, I wasn’t sure if I would do it in color or black and white. The yellow buds on the weeds were not distinctive enough to really necessitate color and I was more interested in the shapes anyway. However, when I got it into Lightroom, there was no questions that this had to be done in color. The colors that were present just really seemed to fit together and they made for a quite pleasing color palette.
I experimented with some other variations on compositions from the front of the car and took advantage of the different lighting options that I was being given as the clouds passed overhead. Where I ended up spending most of my time was on the passenger side of the car photographing the scallop on the quarter panel with the door handle. I had figured out a really interesting composition when the sun was out, but when I finally got it dialed in the clouds covered the sun. I spent far more time waiting on the sun to come back than I should have and when a very large cloud moved over the sun, I decided that I would be better served finding something else until the sun came back out again.
With the clouds providing some even light, I was able to start working the driver’s side of the car which had been in the shadows up until now. With the diffused light, I was able to get some detail in the photos from that side. This is why I love working with clouded light. I can shoot in any direction because the shadows are so soft I never lose detail and can add in the contrast where I want it later on. The driver’s side wasn’t really all that different from the passenger’s side, but the patina was a good bit different as there was more organic matter growing on that side.
I finally got a composition dialed in that I liked on this side as the sun came back out again. I fired off a few frames before it got too bright and then remembered that I had a really good composition worked out on the other side of the car. I picked things up and moved over there to recreate the composition that I had worked out before. It wasn’t exactly the same, but I thought that it was close enough. The light was exactly what I had been wanting, and I got several shots fired off with slight changes between them.
After just a couple of minutes the sun dipped back behind the clouds, and I lost my shadows which had been so instrumental in this shot. Now that I had even light again, I moved back to the front quarter that I had been working with and found my composition once more. The lighting was much more to my liking, and I fired off some more exposures here hoping to get something good. What really surprised me was that when I got the images home, I compared the same composition with the sunlight hitting it which caused me to abandon it and then the more favorable lighting from the clouds. It was barely a contest between them, and I liked the ones in partial sun the best. The shadows gave more interest and since I was wanting to do this one in black and white, the added contrast to the scene really worked well for the image.
It was also the second run at the scalloped quarter panel that won my heart because of the shadows from the direct sunlight. There was so much more depth that was added to the scene thanks to the shadows that sculpted the side of the car. I knew from the very beginning that this was going to be a high contrast black and white presentation to fully take advantage of the shadows. With the sun helping out, there wasn’t much contrast that needed to be added which is always a nice thing.
I don’t normally lean towards sunny images when I have more even lighting as an option, however, this time my preferred lighting was just boring on the scene. Maybe I’m finally getting used to this summer sun and possibly starting to embrace it. Something that I have been considering here over the last few weeks is that this is the first time I can remember when I have been able to do as much decay work as I am currently doing. Once the vegetation comes in, I am usually working landscapes or barns instead of these old cars. Looking back over what I have been shooting the most here recently, it has been old cars and trucks which is just something that usually doesn’t happen that much this time of year. It is really quite interesting that I’m focusing so much on this subject matter when I do have options available to me for doing landscapes as often as I would like. Decay photography is just too appealing to me right now, and the fact that I keep finding more new subjects to shoot is keeping my interest elevated more than normal.
With the sunlight back up to full strength I started to look around the car for more compositions that might work out. An area that I had been interested in, but hadn’t shot yet was the trunk lid. Well, not so much the lid as the emblem on the back corner that stated Mustang II. I’m a sucker for emblems that identify the car especially when they have survived for so many years. How many years you ask? Well, the last inspection sticker was from late 1995 which would indicate that this car has been sitting for roughly 30 years at this point.
With the emblem as a main reason for shooting the image, I started to figure out the different characters in the story I was about to craft. There wasn’t much around the emblem to work with, and the patina wasn’t all that fantastic. What I did have available was a nicely shaped quarter panel with a pinstripe on it and a mostly intact taillight assembly. I started to work out something that included those elements and I added in the bumper for a bit of diagonal at the bottom while I angled the whole frame to give more diagonals from the other body panels. It was the sun once again that really set this photo off because there was a slight body line halfway through the taillights that forced the bottom half into shadow. The top of the rear bumper was fully in the light, so I recognized the chiaroscuro lighting pattern which was developing. This is the alternating light and dark sections which adds visual interest. I needed all the help that I could get for this composition to work.
I’m not saying that this wasn’t a solid concept for a photo, but I am saying that there was really nothing all that special about the design of the rear quarter of this car. There were no fins, nothing artistic in design, and it really looked pretty utilitarian. The patina added some to the image, but it was the lighting and the angles that really made it interesting. When I got it into Lightroom, I realized pretty quickly that the entire frame was mostly warm tones with the rusty hues along with the red taillights. Even the faded center section had some yellow and orange bleeding from the lower portion. I tried doing this as a color image because I wanted to have the taillights pop, but the more I worked with it, the less I liked it. The colors were getting in the way and eventually, I decided to strip the color away and go with a black and white image. That made more sense and allowed me to make more use out of the shadows as well.
By this point, I had been out here for an hour working the photos. I was getting very hot and was getting eaten up by insects. I knew that I was coming to an end for the day and was pretty happy with what I had gotten so far. I made a quick look around the car to see if I had missed any opportunities. I came back to the scallop on the side of the car and decided to try shooting it from the other direction with some of the weeds in the frame. I figured out a composition that I thought looked good and shot a couple of frames. in the end, I culled them out by the second round because I liked the earlier scallop shot much better.
The last composition that I worked with was on the driver’s door focusing on the mirror. I’ve done similar compositions before, but never with a mirror that was this large with the aerodynamic housing taking up a good portion of the composition. I still included the body seams for a bit of structure and the windows for the shapes. Once again, it was the sun that came to the rescue for this composition. Had it been in diffused lighting, there would have been too much of the door visible in the lower left corner and the balance would have been off with the windows blacked out by a thick layer of organic matter. With the deep shadows, I had a much more structured image and composition. It turned out to be a surprising image because I really didn’t think I would like it as much as I do.
It seemed that at multiple turns, I ended up using the sun to my advantage to make more compelling compositions. While I still love a nice cloudy day, I am getting more and more used to shooting in the sun. Add to that, the fact that I am shooting more and more in the middle of the day under full sunshine. This is where popular photography wisdom says to stay home, but I think that is more related to portraiture and landscape work. The more I experiment with this lighting, the more I find I like it for working automotive subjects. Who knows, I might be opening up a whole new style of shooting for myself. I’ve impressed myself with these sunny photos time and time again. Eventually, I will start seeking this light out.
In a little over an hour, I had shot 53 frames which turned into an even ten keepers. I remember not that long ago that 10% was a pretty standard hit rate for me on these treks. I could just about count on it to happen that way. While I still think that is a very respectable goal and something that should be in the back of every photographer’s mind, I can see that with experience and practice that hit rate can increase. I’ve been around the 20% mark for a while now. I’m shooting less to get more images and the determining factor between what I keep and what gets tossed is getting less and less significant. There will always be times when I will get just a couple of images from a lot of frames shot if the conditions are quickly changing, but I’m very happy knowing that I’m doing a lot more culling before even pressing the shutter button.
Thank you for joining me on today’s trek. I do hope that you have enjoyed it as well as the photos that I came back with. I know that the Mustang II isn’t one of the more popular models out there, but I do hope that you will look at these photos not for the specific subject, but for the way that it has been presented. I’m certainly a fan of this car for the first time in my 51 years. There are a lot of little styling details that I found fun to work with. It is a truly unique car and worth appreciating after all these years.
Until next time….
