I Found My Bus!!!!

December 3, 2013

There are a few pictures that haunt me that I had shot years ago.  Not haunting in a bad way though, just pictures that have always stayed with me.  One such image is one of a an old bus, from the '50's or 60's I would say, that I stumbled upon accidentally one day after leaving Hanging Rock.  I've looked at this picture so many times since capturing it, and thinking about things I could have done different.  For the record though, I really liked how the original set turned out, and I wasn't interested replacing those images, but at the same time, I really thought that there was more potential in the subject for some different conditions.  I had one problem though....I had no idea where the bus was.

Strange huh????  I did find it before, and I took pictures of it right?  Yes, that is correct.  However, I found it as a result of getting lost one day.  I was using a Garmin GPS at the time and I saved the location on the unit, but as luck would have it, the whole thing died one day leaving me with no record of where this bus was.  Oh well, no problem since I wasn't in the business of photography any more.  Well, in late November of this year that changed, and I once again found myself behind the camera.  I was still getting my feet wet at the close of the month, in more ways than one!  I wanted another shot at this bus, and I tried real hard to find it on a number of occasions.

In a last ditch effort to locate it, I posted to Facebook the question with the original picture attached to the post.  Much to my surprise the answer came from a cyclist friend of mine who I had met during the Double Down to the Beach ride several months earlier.  June Settle lived several states over, but had family in the King area, and as luck would have it, her stepfather had a certain affection for these old vehicles and might know exactly where it was.  In a couple of days she responded with a post confirming that she had located the bus for me, and even gave me the exact coordinates for it.  I immediately opened up my mapping app on my phone and started to enter the data.  What I found was exactly what I was looking for, just off of Old Hwy 52 in Pinnacle, NC.  It just happened to be a little further North than I had been looking.

Now that I knew where the bus was, I had to figure out what I wanted to do different with it.  I was thinking something different with a long exposure showing some movement in the sky above, using the same basic composition as I had used before.  For this, I would need some passing clouds, but not a totally overcast day.  The less wind the better since I would be dealing with exposures possibly up to 30 minutes in duration.

It just so happened that my first day off of work was looking rather promising in the weather department.  Partly cloudy skies and not too terribly cold.  That sounded like a winning combination to me so the alarm was set and I was prepared to head out early in the morning to get to the bus about an hour before the sun came up.

When the alarm rang, I checked the weather, it was showing fog outside.  Hmmmmm, not what I was expecting at all, but fog can be pretty darn interesting to say the least.  I kept with my plan and figured if the fog was too thick, I would just wait until daylight and work the bus in the fog.  Either way, I thought I would get something interesting with this bus.

When I stepped outside of the house, I saw not a bit of fog, and I saw clear skies as well.  This was nothing like what I was expecting.  This was potentially rather boring as a matter of fact.  However, I was up, loaded, and wanting to get some pictures so I pressed on.  When I arrived, I could see some light clouds floating in, but no fog at all.  This was looking promising again.  I went ahead and set up my equipment.  I went with the 24-70mm f/2.8L II for a nice wide angle view without any major perspective distortion.  There was no need for any filters, and in fact I wanted as much light to enter the lens as possible.  With the help of my maglite I was able to set up the composition that I wanted in nearly total darkness which is no small feat.

With the composition set up, I worked out the exposure.  I set a smallish aperture so that everything was in relative focus and decided that my first exposure would be 25 minutes.  I would see where that landed me in the final image.  Once you get into bulb exposure times, there is no exposure reading that you can rely on with the camera.  For me, its more of a best guess based on the desired effect.  I wanted the sky to be very dramatic with some detail in the bus.  That was my previsualized goal.

About 18 minutes into my exposure something completely unexpected happened...a truck pulled into the parking lot and shined its headlights all over the front of the bus.  This was not good as it would completely change the exposure I was going for.  To make matters worse, I was getting changing light in the sky and my subsequent exposures would be shorter and shorter.  Instead of trashing this exposure, I decided to incorporate the accidental intrusion and I used my flashlight to "paint" the rest of the bus to even out the exposure.  This technique is called "painting with light" and deals with selectively illuminating portions of the image.  When the exposure was finished, I was happy with the effect, but saw some things that I needed to do differently.  Since I was now sold on the "painting" option, I was fine with a lesser exposure, as long as I could register some interest in the sky.

The Depressed Express

On my third try, I came up with a version that I was pretty happy with in the review.  I could make out the movement of the sky above, the bus was illuminated in a nice warm light which complemented the cool tones of the sky.  In short, I was pretty sure that I had a winner.  From this point on, I played with the lighting just to see if I could get something else that would work. Nothing else seemed to have the same pop as what was later to be called The Depressed Express.  The title is not exactly a literal interpretation of the image and what it means to me.  The title is a play on the situation more than anything.  Looking at the markings on this bus, I could tell that it was a municipal transit bus back in its time.  Its job was to get its passengers around the city quickly and efficiently.  Now, some 50-60 years later, the bus is left out in a open area to rot.  The fascia is dreary with missing headlights, faded and peeling paint, and the large areas of surface rust as well.  There is nothing happy about this bus, and none of its former glory remain.  The windshield itself even appears to be looking upward with a plea of "take me now."

As the sun came up, what was promised to be a mostly sunny day, turned out to be a most cloudy day...in fact there was a pretty solid overcast coming in.  To add insult to injury, I was feeling drizzle on my head.  I knew that I had one workable image at least, but I wanted something else from this bus before I gave up and called it a day.  I went in close, and attached a polarizer to clear the windshield of glare and got a nice up close and personal image of the front of the bus.  To me, this is the most interesting part of the whole vehicle.

Out of Service

 In addition to the weathered elements on the front of the bus, I also found the vegetation growing along the dash to be a solid testament to the length of time that this old bus had been sitting here.  With the close up shot, that growth is readily visible, and therein lies the questions and mysteries that the photograph opens up.  With the very intimate nature of this shot, you can almost reach out and feel the texture of the oxidized paint, the rusted rivets, and the flaking paint.  There is just so much character here....I find myself getting lost in the composition every time I look at it.