An Overgrown Truck and Home

August 16, 2014

I will admit, it has been a long time since I've been on a Trek.  Like I alluded to in my last entry, I have had a lot on my mind lately.  One of the big things is that I have been missing my cycling side, and I have finally made peace with the fact that I need it in my life again.  So, for the last little while, I have been working on making that a reality again.  With things settling down on the bike front, I had the opportunity to go out this morning for a quick Trek.  When I woke up, I looked at the sky and found that the early light of morning was showing some promise to the cloud cover for later.  I went ahead and got dressed and quickly loaded the truck up.  By the time I was pulling out of the driveway, the clouds overhead were all but gone.  I had started, so I might as well keep it going.

I made the half hour ride out to King where I had seen this old Blue truck mostly covered with weeds several times before.  I had previsualized this picture with some very interesting clouds overhead, but that wasn't going to happen today.  When I got there, there was a bit of overcast off in the distance, but nothing like what I was wanting.  The truck was still cool, and I wanted to give it a shot or two since I was here and had the time.  I opted for my wide angle lens which might sound like a strange choice for this subject, but I figured that in order to keep some of the blue in the sky, I was going to need to get in close and go wide, otherwise, the distant overcast would be a dominant factor in the scene.

Overworked and Overgrown

As it turned out, the blue sky played quite nicely with the faded blue paint on this old truck.  The overcast in the background provided a nice visual barrier to separate the blue subjects and give the truck a little more pop than a straight blue sky would have allowed.  With all the cool tones in the picture, I needed some warm tones to balance things out.  As it turned out, there was a little bit of rust on the door and bumper that I was able to boost just a little bit through saturation.  That gave just the right bit of color balance to the entire image.

While going through the editing/culling stages with this old truck, I found that I really liked a vertical image of it, but there was just something missing from the image.  I had thought about doing monochrome conversions while in the field with this subject, and thought I would give that a try to see how it looked.  The straight conversion was ok, but rather boring.  When I started to play with the color tones, the image started to take on a whole different look.

Not Quite Ready

When I got to the preset for an IR conversion, the image just popped right away.  I did a little bit of tweaking with the tones, and contrast and found that the white vegetation really stood out and framed the now subdued truck against the subdued sky.  A quick check with Toni, validated that this was a pretty cool image, and one that was worth hanging onto.  The title comes from the fact that it looks like a heavenly scene, but the truck doesn't quite fit in.  Just because its old, and obviously long since out of service, it just doesn't appear like it is ready for that final journey.

When I got finished with the truck, I moved my attention across the street to where an old house was sitting right at the treeline.  The house was mostly intact, but was really showing its age, and appeared that it has been unoccupied for many years.  The paint had all fallen from the siding, and the windows were pretty much all gone.  However, there was still a homey feel to it with the warm morning's sun striking the face.  The reality of the scene was in the shadows however.

Family Heirloom

In addition to the actual scene and lighting, this is also a story about texture.  I just love pictures where I think that I could just reach out and feel what I'm seeing.  The first thing that jumps out at me is the almost carpet like fuzziness in the trees.  There is so much depth in the image, and such uniformity of shades, all that is left is texture.  Your eyes then fall down to the house where the worn siding has a roughness that only time can produce.  I can feel the splinters entering through the pads of my fingers as I am sliding them across the wood.  The grass below is recently cut and promises a soft place to lay down while the sun warms the morning chill.

It was a pretty good morning despite the sky letting me down.  That is just part of the realm that a landscape photographer exists in.  We are very dependent on conditions that are completely out of our control.  The test comes in how you deal with adversity.