Tuesday, January 28, 2014

The Devil is in the Details. Photos that do not stink

If you have ever tried to slog through one of my slideshows, you are well aware that I am not much of a photographer.  Oh, I take a lot of pictures, but plenty of them are blurry, crooked, or downright irritating.  I’ve gotten better over the years, but I’m no Ansel Adams.  Still, I have discovered that if I take enough pictures, one out of every 5,000 might accidentally be tolerable.  That’s where we get to today’s story.  Sometimes when I’m looking through my pictures, I might see one that makes me think, “hey, that’s kinda cool.”  Usually it involves me squatting down or focusing in on something without shaking the camera all over the place.  With that in mind, I created a photo album that consists only of pictures that I think are interesting. 

Here’s one of those happy little accidents.  I snapped this ’58 Eldorado at the Mecum auction last year.  I actually waited for people to get out of the way and lined it up and everything.  There’s something about the way the beams in the ceiling with the lights and everything line up so perfectly with the car.  I couldn’t have gotten it all this symmetrical if I actually parked the car there on purpose.  This was a really rough but original car.  I don’t know how much it sold for at the auction, but I’ll bet whoever bought it spent ten times that to make this car right.

A few years ago, a co-worker and I went on a General Motors ride and drive in Phoenix, Az.  One of the highlights was driving this orange Z06, as you can imagine.  We also stopped along the way and took a couple of pictures.  I was using like a $20 digital camera, so even getting one that wasn’t completely blurry was a challenge.  I like it that some of the car is obscured by those scruffy desert plants.  If just reminds me of the location and how much fun it was to be there.  When I originally posted this story, there was a street sign in the background that I didn't like, but HMC reader Dave Evans Photoshopped it out for me, so this is the new and improved version!  By the way, that Corvette was awesome, and I hear you can do a huge burnout with it.

Here is a pair of ’47 Chevys that I took at the Liberty cruise last year. The sun was setting in just the right place.  The cars were parked exactly right.  They just looked cool there.  If that dang Trialblazer wasn’t poking out, you could almost mistake this for a vintage picture.  You see these cars around quite a bit, and they’re both really nice.  Chevrolets were never top-of-the-line cars, but they were still pretty classy.  I’d take the convertible, but the Sedanette has more accessories. 

This picture of a ’32 Ford hot rod was indicative of the way things were at the Greaserama two years ago.  The car is pretty neat, but far from pristine.  And he’s driving it right into a big nasty mud puddle.  Whenever I thought Greaserama, this is the image that came to mind.  Last year, however, they changed the location of this show to the Platte County Fairgrounds, and things got much more agreeable.  Still, this event had a lot of character when it was held in the nastiness of the Boulevard Drive-In.

This might not be the best picture ever, but I still like it.  I was driving the’63 Chevy pickup to the Weston Moonshiner’s Cruise on a warm summer afternoon.  There wasn’t much traffic—just trains and trees and corn.  The old truck was just purring along at 55-mph.  The breeze was coming in through the wind wings.  I could have been making this same 50 years ago, and the experience would have been almost identical.  Of course, we see a lot of old cars parked at car shows or trying to make their ways through modern traffic.  But there was something about this trip that brought me back to when this truck was new.  The only real difference was that the hood would have had more paint.

I’m going to leave you with a slideshow of pictures that don’t completely stink up the place.  I’m sure the real photogs aren’t going to get too excited over them, but for a rank amateur like me, they seem OK.  The best part about them for me were the experiences I had going out to take them.  I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot of cool things, and I do my best to capture them with the camera.  Check out the slideshow below, or click this link for a nicer version.

1 comment:

  1. I think you take nice pictures all the time. Don't sell yourself short! Great album,.

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