Rust Hunting in Danbury

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

After this past weekend, I was left feeling a little unsatiated when it came to my photography.  Yes, I was able to go out and I spent about an hour in the field, but when it was all said and done I had only worked one composition.  It turned out nice but I was still wanting more.  As luck would have it, I had a meeting Tuesday evening and that meant that I would have a little bit of time in the morning to go out with the camera.  To make matters even better, the forecast was calling for clouds and even a possibility of rain.  After all of the rain that we have had recently, this meant one thing...WATERFALLS!

I started to look at the time that I would have to work with and that put three locations in range for me.  That was Hanging Rock, Styers Mill Falls, and Widow's Creek Falls at Stone Mountain.  Any of these would look good right about now but just thinking about them caused me to yawn.  I've done some fantastic waterfalls here lately and I do enjoy them...but the ones that are close just weren't exciting to me right now.  In fact, after working so many waterfalls in the past couple of months I really didn't feel like that was where I wanted to focus my attention.  Add to it the fact that I've been to each of these falls more times than I can count and know every composition available for them.  I wanted to be creative and shoot something different.

American Textures

I looked back to a previous trek that took me out to Stokes County when I found three different rusty treasures.  I remember driving out to that location that I passed by Priddy's General Store which made me look back.  Thinking about the low clouds I was going to have got me considering a long exposure on the store for a little dramatic flare.  I was starting to get a little excited.  I also recalled seeing an old Mustang behind a house coming back home from the previous shoot as well as what looked like a parts car storage behind a shop of some sort.  All within about 10 miles of each other I had three possible locations to shoot rural and rusty subjects.  This excited me, and gave me the thrill of the hunt which was missing from waterfalls.  

French American Stalemate

I started to plan out my morning which would include dropping Sierra off at school and then heading to Danbury.  I wasn't quite sure what order I would work things in, but was really interested in shooting the General Store.  However, looking at it on Google Maps, I was a little concerned about compositions and felt that this might be a long shot subject.  I was going to be close and figured that I could at least give it a second look if I didn't shoot it.  The Mustang would be a sure thing as long as the owner was home as I would need to get fully into the property to shoot it.  The shop was a bit of a question mark since I had only seen it for a fraction of a second driving down the road.  I saw rust, but didn't know the compositions or even what types of cars would be present.  Based on all of this I decided to start with the Mustang and then decide from there where to next.

403

After dropping Sierra off, I took stock of the sky.  It had been phenomenal at the start of the day and the clouds were still really great but losing the definition.  This was going to be just fine for the automotive stuff and I didn't feel bad about putting off the store since the sky wasn't good for long exposure work just yet.  I made my way out to the area where I remembered the Mustang and the shop to be.  It was going to be difficult to find the Mustang coming from this direction as I would have to look behind me so I figured first come first served.

Car of the People

As luck would have it, I found the shop first and slowed down.  I could seen about a half dozen old cars in the back and a couple of them I didn't recognize the makes of.  They weren't quite the rusty messes that I like to work with, but I saw some potential.  It was a shop they were behind and I could see that the doors were open.  This was going to work out very well I thought.  I pulled off the road and took stock of the cars in the back once again before finding a place out of the way to park.  As I was parking, two guys came out of the shop with that look of questioning on their faces that I know ever so well.  I got out of my truck and introduced myself and shared why I was there.  They seemed cautious of me, but were willing to let me shoot some pictures which was all that I needed.

Double Dubs

I grabbed my gear and went around back to see what was there in detail.  I saw four cars up against the tree line that were definitely American and I was able to determine that these were Ramblers.  I just don't see that many of those around anymore, and it was a pretty cool find for me since my Grandfather had driven one many years ago.  On the other end of the lot there were two cars that looked German and turned out to be Volkswagons.  In the middle there was a modern Mercedes V12 car which I cared absolutely nothing about, but beside it was a blue car I wasn't familiar with.  The emblems were long gone from the back, but doing a little further looking I realized that this was a Peugeot 405 which was another really cool find!  The last car was some type of personal car which held no interest to me, but was cool at any rate.

American Decay

I went with the easiest to work with first, and that was the pair of Volkswagons on the far end.  For these, I opted to fit my 24-70mm lens and the Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer.  That gave me a great deal of flexibility in composition.  I found that there was a great tree that was behind the cars which I tried to include in several of the compositions.  Also, I saw that the clouds in the sky were getting much better so I was able to do compositions from down low that included the sky.  What I had to worry about was a shelf and a couple of trash cans on the far side of the cars.  Fortunately with some creative compositions I was able to block them out with the cars.  I was even able to shoot from both sides relatively easily.

Ramble On

As I ran out of compositions I moved over to the Ramblers and started to work them for a while.  I tried to get them individually, but that was very difficult to do with how close they were.  I found that the better compositions included several of them at once.  The trees made for a nice back drop for most of the shots and the sky cooperated with me in the other direction.  The held a lot of interest, but I was running into exposure problems.  With the front of the cars in deep shadows the sky was overexposing too easily.  I added the Lee Filter Holder and then started to work my Singh-Ray ND Grads to keep the sky under control.  I started with a 3-Stop and found that was not enough and added an additional 2-Stop.  That still didn't give me what I was after, so I swapped that out for another 3-Stop which seemed to work well.  I had the soft edge one down lower to soften the line of the hard edge while keeping the cars exposed properly.

Classic Peugeot

This seemed to be the key and I moved over the Peugeot and had to get real creative with compositions since the Mercedes was parked right next to it.  I worked low so that the smaller in comparison Peugeot would completely block the large Benz.  That put a lot of the sky in the picture so I was having to use the ND Grads here as well.  I was able to drop down to just a single 3-Stop grad though which was nice.

Moby Dick

I was about ready to call it a day and go find the Mustang when I started to consider other options.  I went crazy and slipped on the 16-35mm lens with the slimmer B+W Polarizer for vignetting concerns.  I started working all three sections once again and found that I was getting some very dramatic compositions that included the sky.  Of course with the sky, I was having to add combinations of ND Grad filters to keep the exposure right.  Regardless, I was getting some very different feeling images while working on the same basic compositional ideas from earlier.  I was really on a roll, and loving getting in close and adding a lot of perspective distortion to the images.  The fun did eventually dry up and I found that I had run out of compositions.

Double Vision

I started to pack things up and saw the 70-200mm lens sitting there looking all pitiful.  OK, I'm a real softy and wanted to show it some love.  I attached it to the camera and added the Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer once again and started to work some isolations.  It got rolling with a shot of the taillight on the Rambler wagon which I found quite interesting.  That lead to other isolations of emblems and rust.  I even started to shoot head on shots of the Peugeot since the front end was quite a bit different than anything in my collection and it was just cool to look at.

Needs a Second Chance

After roughly an hour and a half on location, I had run out of creativity and the sky was starting to get a little active with some movement.  I would be able to shoot long exposures with this sky, but the only way to do that here was to include trees which were blowing too much to try several minutes worth of exposure.  I packed up my gear and thanked the guys once again for letting me shoot the cars and headed off to Priddy's.

Classic Flare

It didn't take but about 15 minutes to get there and the sky was still pretty good.  The problem that I immediately saw was that there was a Tesla parked in front of the store.  That wouldn't fit my vision at all.  I did take the opportunity to look at how the compositions would work out.  Honestly, I wasn't all that happy with what I as seeing.  The sky would be a great element, but to include that I would need to include a lot of power lines and some other clutter that I didn't like.  The store wasn't all that interesting on its own, although it did have a yesteryear feel to it.  With all the things working against a picture of this, and not much really going for it, I decided that this was not worth my time.  I looked at my watch and wondered if I had time to try and find the Mustang at this point.  I really didn't since I was going to have to talk with the owner to ask permission.  The day was done, and it was time to get to work.

Spotlight on Decay

I spent the day not really having a clue in the world about what I had captured through the morning.  I was hoping that I had about six good images out of the bunch.  I wasn't quite sure how many I had captured since the last time I looked I was at 60-something frames.  When I got home I went right back to the office to upload the pictures from the day.  I had to wait a bit because there was an update ready for Lightroom which needed to be installed.  That took a little while, and then I finally was able to upload the images from the day.  I was surprised to see that I had 83 frames captured in less than two hours.  My hopes were for eight or nine keepers to turn up out of the bunch.  I went through the culling process and kept tossing images out and when I was finally happy with what I had in front of me, I was looking at 21 images!  That is a 25% hit rate which was amazing.

French Patina

 I eliminated a few others as I was doing the processing and finally came away with a total of 14 keepers from this trek.  I would say that is a pretty good haul for a morning.  It definitely satisfies my creative desire from the previous weekend.  I am very happy at this point, and can now look forward to the next trek to see what I will capture then.

As a reminder, if you are interested in trying out some of the filters that I use, be sure and visit www.singh-ray.com and remember to use the code "KISER10" when checking out to get 10% off of your order.  I sure wish I had that code when I was purchasing my filters years ago.

Long Exposure at The Old Guilford Mill

Saturday, October 13, 2018

Old Mill of Guilford

To set the scene, the Southeastern US is getting over Hurricane Michael which hit Thursday afternoon.  While we didn't get hit nearly as hard as the Panhandle of Florida, North Carolina received a great deal of rain and some very high winds during the mid afternoon hours.  My plan Thursday was to go after work to the Old Mill of Guilford to take advantage of the dramatic clouds and the extra water that should be in the stream.  Well, shortly after 4, I got word that all units were being held over to be a storm response team.  By 5 I was out answering calls.  The hurricane passed through quickly though and by the time I got out of the office the rain had stopped.  The clouds were wonderful, and the lighting was just what I was after.  I was hoping that it wasn't going to take more than an hour to deal with the extra call load.  Boy was I mistaken!  I was at work until 11pm dealing with downed trees and such.

During the time that I was out in the field, all I could think about was how great the conditions were for the composition that I had in mind of the Old Mill.  By the next day, the clouds were all gone, and I was back at work dealing with the damage.  It hit us a lot harder than I had thought while I was sitting in the office prior to it passing over Greensboro.  The forecast for the weekend was looking pretty much as expected after a major storm passes though.  That's right, it was straight sunshine all weekend long.  I wasn't going to get my clouds, and there was even a chance that I wouldn't get any photography done.

When I got home on Friday, the sky was still crystal clear and while I had a little time to go out with the camera, I really saw no need.  I decided to mow instead.  While I got the mowing done, I ended up doing it under one of the prettiest sunsets I've seen over the house.  The color was completely covering the sky from West to East.  I was a little upset that I wasn't out with the camera, but it did get me thinking that I could possibly catch some really nice sunset colors over the Old Mill instead of the clouds that I was after.  If I was really lucky, I would hit magic light and have the mill bathed in warm light while the sky was shaded in subtle hues.

I started to look at the weather predictions for Saturday and found that there was supposed to be a really good sunset, or at least the conditions were favorable for a good sunset.  Knowing that the water would still be up, I decided to give it a shot and hope that the few clouds that were forecasted would actually pick up the color.  In the meantime, I would have the chance to work on some video productions that I had been planning.

I started early on Saturday morning setting up my studio.  I had my bag set up and my video camera (cell phone) on a tripod elevated just right.  I was going to do a tour of my bag with all of the contents.  I started the recording and started my presentation.  Of course, I goofed when I started so I went and checked everything and made a few adjustments before starting to record again.  This one went great.  I was going through everything in the bag and telling the purpose behind each thing and why I had it where I did.  At the end of the production, it looked like I had been talking for about 35 minutes.  Perfect!

I went to turn off the recording and was greeted by a black screen on the phone.  I opened it up and found that the video had stopped long before I had finished, or even gotten into the good stuff.  I noted that there were some alerts that had popped up and I thought that might have stopped the recording so I put the phone in airplane mode before starting again.

Not wanting to spend another 35 minutes talking again, I decided to reduce the content and just focus on the filters that I use.  I was rolling and feeling really good about things and stopped at the 15 minute mark to check my progress on the phone.  Black screen again!  It stopped at the 5 minute mark, which was exactly where it stopped on the first one.  Now I knew that I had only 5 minutes to work with for a video.  I thought about doing one more take but this is how it would have gone.

Roll camera
Here is my bag
It is full of stuff
These are the filters
This is the camera
It is really comfortable
Cut

Not wanting to sound aggravated I opted to just put things away and try again another day.  For the rest of the morning, I took care of some things on the computer and kept an eye out for the weather at sunset.  It was promising that there were some nice puffy clouds rolling in, but the sun was too harsh to take advantage of them.  I was working out plans for what kind of compositions I would try at the mill, and even started thinking about alternate plans just in case that didn't work out.

Old Mill of Guilford in B&W

When it was about an hour and a half before sunset I looked outside.  There were some very thin clouds working their way from the West.  The East was pretty blank and that was the direction that I was going to be shooting.  I decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a try anyway.  I arrived just about an hour before sunset, and took a view of the scene.  The banks of the stream were grown over more than I was expecting but the water was at least flowing well.  The mill was mostly in the shadows which was not really to my liking.  However, on a cloudy day, it would have worked with the sun higher in the sky as my original plan had been.  It is nice to know that the concept is valid, I'll just have to wait to get another chance to shoot it in those conditions.

Since I was here I did set the camera up.  Looking at the available compositions I opted to go with the exact one that I had previsualized a few days ago.  I positioned on the bank near the roadway, but over the culvert that took the stream under the highway.  I made sure that the tripod was stable in the moist ground and mounted the camera with my 24-70mm lens.  I was shooting water, so I added the B+W polarizer which is a slim mount and allowed me to mount my Lee filter holder in front of that.  I knew that I was going to have to pull the exposure down on the sky to make this work since I only had some very thin clouds in the sky to work with.  I started with two different ND Grads and shot with 5 total stops of light reduction.  This was working, but I wanted a different effect.  I wanted the thin clouds to move a little and give some smoothing to the sky to match the water.  I left my 3-stop Hard Edge Galen Rowell ND Grad attached and added another Singh-Ray Filter, the 10-Stop Mor Slo ND Filter.  This was what I needed to really slow the exposure down.  I figured out my exposure and shot at ISO100, f/13, at 2.5 minutes.  The resulting image looked like it had some promise with the elements that I was after being represented.

I worked on some other variations on this theme with different exposures and compositions and ultimately decided that the sky was just getting more and more boring.  I packed up and cautiously made my way back along the railing trying not to slip down the embankment.  I looked around for more compositions and more specifically, isolations.  The lighting was not good on the mill for this and I ended up not pulling the camera back out again.  I decided to leave right at sunset.  I had managed to get a total of 17 images from the evening.  It was all one angle really, so that was a lot of shots, and I was looking forward to seeing what I had to work with.  My last set of three shots was looking like the best of the bunch though and they were vertical shots.

When I got home and loaded them in the computer, those were still my favorites.  However, I really wanted to see how the two long exposures I did turned out.  These always look a little off as digital negatives, and I wanted to see just what I could do with them.  I picked my favorite of the two which happened to be the shorter exposure of the two (151 seconds vs 210 seconds).  I started to work with it and the more I developed the shot the more I really liked it.  In the end, this was my favorite shot of the day, and I didn't even bother processing the others.

When I pulled the image into Photoshop to prepare for the web, I decided to try a quick conversion to monochrome to see how I liked it.  I played with it a little bit and decided that I had a nice moody image, but something wasn't quite right about it.  I started to play around and added a blue filter to see what that would do.  It gave a slightly cool tone to the image which I really liked.  I actually liked it enough to add the monochrome shot to my keepers from the evening.  It is a little bit of a moody piece where the color one has a completely different feeling.  I think that they both say very different things and I like that about them.

It wasn't the image that I had previsualized, but I had proven to myself that the concept would work with the right conditions and I managed to pull a pretty good image out of the lackluster evening thanks to some filters on the camera.



If you are interested in Singh-Ray filters, visit them at www.singh-ray.com and use the code "KISER10" at checkout to receive 10% off of your purchase.

A Little Rust in Stokes County

Saturday, October 6, 2018

It is officially Fall here in NC according to the calendar.  The leave should be changing, there should be a certain brisk quality to the air.  I should be in the mountains photographing the leaves somewhere around 4000 feet.  The reality here is that we are still having ninety degree days, the trees are still green, and there is no telling when Summer will actually end.  This is really messing with my head as I was getting into the Fall mood in the closing days of September.  When it came to deciding where to travel for pictures, it should have been an automatic answer of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  It was not going to be quite that easy to decide.

I really didn't want to dedicate a full day to traveling to the mountains for more green.  The rainfall has been minimal, so waterfalls weren't really an option either.  Fortunately, I have been getting back into my mode of shooting old cars and trucks.  That gave me a viable option.  I also had some new locations that I wanted to try out as well.  These are two places that I have seen before and filed away in my mind for when the conditions were right.  In both cases, I wanted overcast skies and a low sun.

Come Friday, I had not really had any time to think about what or where I was going to be shooting.  I had no idea what the weather was going to be, and just didn't have the gumption to really go out at all.  I guess this is what happens when the week has some unexpected ups and downs along with considering a complete rework of my website.  Not to mention, I am starting to really put a lot of thought into where I could do a workshop for a small group of photographers.  My mind was pretty much fried.

Inspection Due

As I was getting ready for bed I checked the weather and it showed cloudy conditions to start the day, but partly cloudy fairly early in the morning.  It would likely be a good landscape day, but I just didn't want to photograph any more green landscapes right now.  There weren't going to be enough clouds to do what I was wanting to do with the old cars that I had found.  More than likely, I was going to be out of luck on Saturday and would just stay home.  I wasn't arguing with that one bit actually.  I did have Toni wake me up before she left for work so that I could check the weather one more time.

A quarter of five in the morning happens all too quickly on a Saturday morning, but such is the life of a photographer.  She woke me up and I checked the weather.  It was looking pretty much the same as it was showing the previous night.  I rolled over and went back to sleep.  I figured today just wasn't going to pan out at all.  About an hour or so later I woke up again and started to think about options to shoot.  I looked at the weather again and saw that the clouds were pretty thick outside, and that the partly cloudy conditions were going to be around 70% coverage.  I then had the idea to look at a new app that I installed a few days ago.  This is "Clear Sky" and shows the detail of where the clouds are, and what kind of coverage is expected.  This gave me a different perspective showing good cloud cover until early afternoon.

That told me that I was actually able to go to the two locations in Stokes County if I wanted to give it a try.  The main location I wanted to try was off of Hwy 8 and was an old garage with a busted Chevy sitting out front.  I have passed this location many times and wanted to get a composition, but the lighting had never been right with it.  I also knew that I wanted the overgrowth of late Summer rather than just an empty frame rail.  I was running out of time to shoot this car unless I wanted to wait until next Summer.  With the weather looking good, I decided to go on and give it a go.

I grabbed my gear and set off on the drive into Stokes.  The entire way there I was behind a dump truck that was going between 25-35mph despite the road being a 55mph limit in most places.  There were no passing zones where I could get around him so I just sat in place and took in the scenery.  A bit over an hour later, I arrived at the car.  I have no idea who owns the property, but I decided to take my chances with this one and pulled off on the side of the road.  I picked out my 24-70mm lens and added a Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer to it and mounted the camera on my tripod.  I worked compositions on both sides of the car and tried to include the sign on the shop wall that stated that this was an Official Inspection Station.  I found that rather funny when paired with the Chevy below.

The problem that I was having with this composition was that to open things up and let them breathe a bit, I needed to include the sky.  The sky was brighter than the shadows I was shooting in which caused exposure problems.  Instead of hoping that I could recover the shadows, I just went ahead and added a Galen Rowell 3-Stop ND Grad to control the exposure at the very top of the image.  This worked very well and allowed me to get the exposure that I wanted on the main subject while keeping the sky from blowing out.

After a while shooting with this lens, I decided to swap out to my 70-200mm and step away from the car to get a bit more compressed look to the image.  I found myself shooting basically the same compositions with this lens.  Without the perspective distortion, the car seemed to disappear into the background of the shop.  In the end, I didn't like any of the ones that I shot with the long lens.  In fact, out of thirty some pictures, I ended up only liking one enough to keep it.  This was part of the reason it took so long to shoot this car.  I knew that getting a good composition was going to be difficult with the lay of the land.  I am quite happy with this image though, and it captured everything that I wanted it to.

I seemed to end this one rather abruptly.  When I decided that I was done I went back to the truck and broke down the camera rather quickly.  I was getting sweaty and hot which was just not cool at 10am in the Fall!  I got back on the road and decided that I would check out another location that I had scoped out a few weeks ago further into Stokes County.  I had pinned the location on my phone so I just let it direct me to the location.  I didn't have a lot of hope for this location since I was expecting it to be gated like when I saw it last.  The car was sitting in front of a pretty bland commercial building, but it did have grass growing up underneath of it at least.  My plan was to shoot with the 70-200mm lens with possibly the 2X teleconverter attached.  That should isolate the car well enough from the road.

Wing and a Prayer

When I got there, I was actually surprised to see the gate open and a truck by the corner of the building.  I didn't drive fully into the property though thinking that there was a good possibility that the gate might need to shut while I was shooting if I could get permission.  I parked and started walking up to the shop.  I saw no movement or signs of life.  I knocked on doors to no avail.  I looked around and figured since the gate was open, and there were no fences I might be able to stick around and shoot really quickly.

I grabbed my camera and mounted the 70-200mm lens as I didn't want to get too close to the car.  I had also seen a couple of other old cars that looked promising as well which I could do easily with the long lens.  Of course, I added the Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer since I was dealing with glass and metal.  I got everything set up and turned the camera on as I heard a lawn mower coming down the road.  By this stage in my tenure as a photographer I knew a lawn mower driving on the road toward where I was could only mean one thing.  The pavement needed to be mowed.  (Pausing for laughter).  It meant that the property owner was on the way to talk to me.  This could mean that either I was going to be leaving shortly, or I was about to have better access to things.

As the mower turned into the driveway I knew I had pegged the situation.  I made sure that the tripod was stable and I walked over to meet him.  I wasn't sure how this was going to go, but I introduced myself and explained why I was there.  He ultimately gave me permission to shoot the cars out in the open area of the lot which included the Chevy that I had seen earlier as well as the shell of a Nash, and a Chevy Nova just on the side of the building.  This was great news, and I was very thankful for the opportunity.  It did come with one caveat though.  It appeared that he was mowing the yard while I shot the cars.  I get it, I really do.  I would want to watch a stranger doing anything around my property as well.  We managed to stay out of each other's way for the duration of the time that I was out there.

Roll the Dice

Now that I had permission to be on the property, I was set to do more than just a quick overall shot before moving on.  I had the long lens on, and did a couple of shots that I had previsualized when I had originally found this car.  They weren't all that great, so I moved on to doing some more intimate shots of the sections of the car that particularly interested me.  One of the sections that really caught my eye was the broken quarter window on the driver's side.  I loved how the glass was shattered and it paired so nicely with the patina on the side of the car.  As an added bonus, there was a skull and crossbones decal on the door under the handle that really set the tone for what this car is...or was.

Deluxe Decay

While I was shooting my intimate shots, I moved to the front of the car for my trademark headlight/grill shot.  Typically I would do this with my normal lens, but since I was usually zooming to nearly 70mm I decided to just keep the long lens attached.  It worked just fine this way, and I managed to get a nice composition from the corner of the car.  The chrome really stood out against the black paint and the rusty undercoat.  The lines all seemed to work together to form an abstract design that flowed.  Oddly enough, there was what appeared to be chrome paint on the bumper corner from an earlier repair possibly.

I was pretty sure that I was done with this car for now.  I needed my 24-70mm lens to try some other compositions, but before I switched that lens in, I wanted to work on the Nash that was parked on the side of the property.  This was just a shell and a hood, but the blue color along with the rust tones were just perfect against the trees in the background.  I knew I was going to need the long lens for this since it was parked very close to a more modern minivan and I was going to need to cut in close to avoid that.  The trees were also taking up a very small section behind before dropping off to show power lines and a house across the street.

Nash in the Grass

I found this a very hard vehicle to form a composition with.  The hood was angled off to the driver's side which pretty much dictated that I shoot from that side.  This was fine since there was a long bungee cord holding the hood to the A pillar on the passenger side.  It distracted from the composition way too much for me to want to shoot that side just for that reason alone.  The lack of a front end of the car made the hood the anchor for the car, but there were no wheels visible through the grass to balance out the front end.  I couldn't really do a full on quarter view since there was very little body.  Essentially, I was taking a picture of a hood and a windshield frame.  The colors were good, and the grass was tall so I went for it.

Gnashing Beak

The sky was not looking great, but for the shot that I felt was really the key view, I was going to need to include the sky.  Looking up, I didn't see much definition at all in the clouds.  This was not going to be good at all to have a blank void at the top of the image.  I flipped on the live view and started to reduce the exposure to see what effect it had on the sky.  I was seeing it go from white to gray, but I could still see no detail in the clouds.  That told me that it would be worthless to add an ND Grad to the lens as it would just turn the white sky gray.  If this was going to work, I was going to have to hope that I could pull the detail out in post processing later on.

As you can see, I did capture some detail in the sky here.  I didn't do anything out of the ordinary to accomplish this.  I just added a grad filter in Lightroom where I reduced the sky exposure slightly, and then worked the "Dehaze" slider ever so slightly to get a hint of definition in the sky.  It worked very well, and I ended up with a sky that was worth being in a photograph.  The blues in the clouds as well as in the body of the car balanced very nicely with the greens and reds  which made up the rest of the composition.  When I was done with this, I thought about trying something with my 24-70mm lens, but opted out of it as there was too much potential clutter in the background if I went any wider than what I was already shooting at.

Winking

I still had one more car to work with.  It was a pale yellow Nova sitting on the side of the shop.  I was not happy to see that it was a four door version though.  I would have much rather shot a two door, but I couldn't argue with the patina on it, so I got to work.  I started out focusing on the front of the car against the side of the building.  I thought by cropping out the back half of the car I might be able to disguise the sedan body.  That image lacked any kind of emotion though and ultimately didn't make the cut.  I worked around more and more and found that my standard quarter shot worked the best for this car using the trees as a background instead of the building.  It wasn't a two door model, but with a 16:9 crop, I gave it a little bit of a sleeker feel leaving the primary focus on the front end of the car.  I really liked that there was a headlight missing which really finalized the story of the car.

Weather Worn

I looked around the Nova to see if there were any isolations that I could do.  Nothing really stood out to me though.  The few areas that I would have typically worked were missing key parts that made the composition in my opinion.  I decided that this one view was all the old Nova needed and moved back to the original Chevy out front.  I was ready to try some different things with this car now.  I swapped the lenses for my 24-70mm while keeping the Polarizer attached.  I got in close to the car for a little perspective distortion and started working the composition.  I wanted to minimize the building behind the car so I elevated the camera to about seven feet.  This gave an interesting view of the car and really concentrated on the patina on the hood.  More importantly though, the building was minimized.  I was able to compose the shot in such a way that I was including the stairs to the door on the right side of the image for a bit of balance in the image.  I cropped it as an 8x10 to keep it simple and add a little visual punch to the image.

Hot Rod Deluxe

I liked how this composition was looking in the camera, but felt that it might not work as well at full size later on.  I really wanted to get down low to show the stance of the car.  The problem there was I was going to have to include the building as well as the sky which was still rather bleak looking.  As with the Nash, I decided to give it a try and see what I could bring out in post.  I dropped the camera down low to the ground and started to frame up a composition.  What I found was I was able to get the angle where the two sections met.  This was good as it helped give depth where a straight building would not have worked.  It helped to lead the eyes to the car which was great.  I also had a minimum of sky to work with which was a plus as well.  The angle was such that there was no way I would be able to get an ND Grad to work, that was unfortunate.  However, as with the Nash, I felt that I would be able to get some detail out of the sky in post.  It was worth a try anyway.

When I got home, I found success here as well.  I did the same techniques as I did with the Nash to bring out the little bit of detail in the clouds.  It wasn't much, but it was effective in setting the mood, and providing just enough visual interest to make it worth including in the frame.  What was really a gamble of a shot turned into my favorite of the day.  Funny how that works out isn't it?  I really do like this piece for the angles that are in it, the lines, the patina, and the shape of the building fully holding the car in the frame.  It was similar to what I had previsualized, but so much better in every way.  

Style and Decay

Now that I had my workhorse (for automotive photography at least) lens back on, I set to work picking out more details on the body.  The rust was wonderful, and this car still had a good bit of its chrome still in tact.  I started to look for abstract compositions that excited me.  The sides gave me all sorts of views that worked well I thought.  I looked for textures, and transitions between the paint and the rust.  Occasionally, I was able to get the rust stained paint that glistened under the diffused light above.

Fractured Finish

The rear fenders really held my attention with their lines.  The chrome trim at the tops of the fenders was great on both sides of the car.  In an attempt to capture the awesome shattered glass once more, I worked out this composition that had lots of rust staining, abstract lines, textures, and just all around great patina.  I'm usually not a fan of shooting black cars in this condition, but I have to say that this one is among my top choices with patina.  The contrast is just so perfect and the paint still has a good bit of gloss that really draws the attention to the rust.  I'm so glad that I had the ability to get up close and personal with this car.

Where to Go?

Before I packed up the camera, I set up a shot that captured the steering wheel which still had the Bowtie emblem on the horn.  The dash was pretty much in tact, and I was able to compose a shot that included the side mirror and hood ornament as well.  The chrome of the door frame made a great leading line and frame for the cockpit as well.  It is a little bit of a different image for me, but I'm starting to like doing them when the opportunity presents itself.  This is also a great example of what a polarizer can do for you.  The glass is in tact for the most part here, and had a glare on it from the clouds.  By adjusting the polarizer to this point, I was able to eliminate the glare and be able to shoot into the car with no issues.  

At this point, the property owner was finishing up mowing and was going around to the side of the building.  I was pretty sure that I had gotten everything that I could from this location.  I started to pack up and went around to let him know I was leaving.  We chatted briefly and he told me about another location with some older cars and said that he would try to get in touch with the owner of that property.  It sounds really promising, and I really hope that it works out at some point in the near future.

By this time, I wasn't sure how many images that I was going to have as keepers, but I knew that I had shot a total of 72 frames, evenly split between the two locations.  The first location I had been mulling over for a year or more and felt that I had a lot of good stuff from there.  This second location was my alternate subject that I really didn't have much enthusiasm for.  It turned out to be my favorite location of the day with lots of variations on compositions, not to mention three different cars to shoot.  It really is funny how the success of a shoot doesn't necessarily relate to how much thought or planning had gone into it.  I love that about photography, and it goes to show that to be successful in this game, you have to adapt to what is there at the time.  Planning will only get you so far, reading the scene will get you the rest of the way.

Graveyard Fields, In Search of Autumn

Friday, September 28, 2018

Clouds Over Pisgah

I'll admit it, I have Fall Fever really bad right now which is odd considering that it is still very warm outside, and I'm still mowing every week.  That being said, typically by this time each year I have already started seeing color in the higher elevations in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  In fact, it was around Sept 17th, last year when I went to Graveyard Fields and found all sorts of color.  I've been keeping track online to see how the color is coming this year and it seems to be a good bit later due to the warm temperatures.  Based on what I was seeing though, I decided that it was time to make a journey out to Graveyard Fields and see for myself how things were coming along.

With my work schedule this week, I ended up having to take Friday off (Darn!) since I was working on Saturday.  Looking at the weather, there was a pretty good chance of clouds throughout the morning and showers later in the day.  With some good rains recently, I figured that this would be a great time to see the Fall colors and to shoot some of the waterfalls at Graveyard Fields.  I have yet to try the lower falls because when I have been there, the sun has been too bright to attempt waterfall photography.  The forecast was showing some promise this time though.

As an added benefit, the sunrise forecaster was calling for a good probability of some color in the sky as well.  This was going to make for a really good trip if I could get a sunrise, and waterfalls in the same day, along with some bright colored leaves.  I knew that it wasn't going to be anywhere near peak, but if I could just get a few trees here and there, I would be very happy with the first Autumn trek of the year.

As is typical, I had to wake up pretty early to catch a sunrise.  Oddly enough, the sun was rising after 7am at this point in the year and that makes it much more tolerable than the middle of Summer when the sun wakes up before 6am.  However, Graveyard Fields is just a tick over three hours from home.  Doing the math...carry the one...that meant that I was waking up at 3:30 and on the road by 4.  I hate early mornings!

My plan was to get on the Parkway in time to find a place to set up for the sunrise, which shouldn't be a problem considering I was looking at arriving around 6:15 or so.  The trip out there was interesting.  I left in the rain, and had clouds and fog most of the way to the lower section of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  I wasn't sure how sunrise would look, but I was sure going to be in good shape for waterfalls.  In fact, I even brought along directions to get to Estatoe Falls which is on my short list of waterfalls to visit.  I figured that after shooting at Graveyard Fields, I could jump down the road to Estatoe and save the three hour drive I would have to make another day to shoot it.

When I arrived on the Parkway, the fog was heavy and most of the overlooks were socked in.  Not being very familiar with this section of the Parkway, I started hunting something that looked promising.  The only problem was I couldn't see anything at all in the distance to know what to shoot.  The sun was coming up too, and I was running out of time to find something.  I started to drive by a long driveway that was marked "Mt Pisgah Parking" and thought about turning to see if that was an overlook.  I remember thinking to myself, if I turn here, I won't have time to find anything else.  If I stay straight, I don't know what I will find ahead.  Essentially, it was a chance either way and I opted to make the turn and climb the short driveway.

Passion in the Air

What I found at the top of the driveway was the Buck Springs Gap Overlook.  It was positioned perfectly to see the sun, and there were some of the most awesome clouds down below.  I pulled in and just parked the truck right on the edge, not wanting to be concerned with whether or not I was in a parking space.  I got out and grabbed the camera.  I set the tripod up and fitted my 70-200mm lens to the camera.  I made a single exposure and found that I wasn't able to get the reach that I really wanted at this stage of the game so I added my 2X teleconverter to extend the reach.  I was now able to shoot at 400mm which was just perfect to capture the clouds and the color in the sky.  I was right in the nick of time to capture this as the colors were unfolding quickly in front of me.

As the sky started to erupt in color, I removed the teleconverter and went back to my standard 70-200mm lens.  I started looking at composition options and found that this was going to be a great prospect for a panorama.  I flipped the camera on its side and got the tripod perfectly level.  I did a dry sweep to check the exposure and set the focus.  I then shot a 6 frame series across the horizon which I later stitched together for the opening image to this entry.

I worked with other compositions and found some pretty good images over the course of about 30 minutes.  In the end, I decided that I would pick the two best examples since they were largely of the same subject.  These are the two that I liked best from the sunrise at Mt Pisgah.

After that series was done, I looked around to see what else was available.  The sky was really nice, but I wasn't able to find any more workable compositions that excited me.  I packed up my gear which actually took a minute.  In my haste, I was throwing bits and pieces into the bag and not worrying about where they were landing.  That meant that I had to move everything around to get it all back to where it was supposed to be.  I considered shooting a short video here, but decided that the photography was more important than any video work.  I still had a chance of getting some really cool skies if I found another vantage point to shoot from.

I loaded the truck back up and started back out on the Parkway towards Graveyard Fields once again.  I ended up passing Funnel Top and saw some really interesting clouds around the mountains.  It was most definitely worth pulling over and setting the camera up again.  This time, I was pretty sure that the 70-200mm would be the right one, and it turned out to be just that.  With the conditions present, I still wasn't using any filters as the exposures were still very good.  I started doing my isolation thing with the mountains in the clouds.  This is always a lot of fun to do and it starts to take on an abstract quality really quick.  My intention at this point was to shoot in black and white, but when I got home I realized that the color in the sky was pretty nice and worth leaving in.

After Dawn

The clouds were really thick down in the valleys and the sun was still being diffused by the clouds to the East.  This gave me very soft light and that was just what I wanted.  I loved being able to render the textures in the mountains, and even the hint of green.  These would have been absolutely gorgeous if the leaves were at peak with the colors in the sky complementing the Autumn colors, but alas, that was not the case.  I'm not complaining because regardless of the colors present, these were a lot of fun to compose and shoot.

Reaching for the Day

As I was shooting, I realized that there were a few clouds that seemed to be arching into the sky.  When I started looking, I realized that their shape was mimicking the mountains beneath them.  This was a good enough reason to capture that scene.  I had no problem isolating this phenomenon with the 70-200mm lens.  The background mountains even lived up to the name of "Blue Ridge" in this light.  Again, the color here was too good to pass up so I opted not to convert either of these images to black and white.  I stuck around here about 20 minutes or so before I realized that I had shot all that I cared to from this location.  The clouds were not changing significantly, so there were really no other compositions developing.  I loaded up and hit the road once again, still bound for the Autumn colors of Graveyard Field.

Clouded Looking Glass

Not far down the road I passed by a well known landmark of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Looking Glass Rock.  At first I wasn't going to shoot it, but when I saw how the clouds were looking around it I reconsidered.  Once again I pulled out the 70-200mm lens and left any filters off of it.  I worked on a few different compositions here before I found the one that I liked.  There are repeating patterns of waves from the foreground into the background.  The big interruption is the large bank of clouds with Looking Glass peeking out above it.  The subtle hues in the sky rounded the image out, and I really liked how this one panned out overall.  While I shot about 10 frames here, I only decided to keep this one.  the others were just variations on the theme and really didn't stand on their own compared to this one.

It was now time to move on down the road for my ultimate destination.  I was looking forward to seeing the Fall colors at Graveyard Fields.  However, when I arrived, my hopes were dashed.  I could see the lower falls, or second falls from the Parkway and they were shrouded in green.  They were also fully lit by the sun which had found its way into a large expanse of empty sky.  The entire landscape mirrored what I was seeing at the falls with nothing but green present.  I was disappointed to say the least because I was really hoping to see something similar to what I had seen last year, over a week earlier.

Oh well, I was here and had driven a long way for this specific spot.  I grabbed my gear and started off into the trails.  As I was hiking through I could see where some of the trees I had expected to be in full color were now bare.  It appeared as though those same trees had changed and then shed their leaves quickly.  This would explain why I had been seeing pictures on Facebook showing some fair color in the area.  I was too late for that, and too early for the majority of the leaves.

Cascades on Cascades

I decided to skip the leaves this time and focus on the waterfalls.  Yes, I know they were fully in the sunlight and that is a bad thing.  My hope was by the time I got into position that the sun would be hidden behind the clouds.  I was happy to find that the first little cascade by the boardwalk was in shadow.  I had shot this last year with some color on the trees, but this year everything was totally green.  I decided to give it a shot and I fitted my 24-70mm lens with the Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer before looking for a composition.  I found a few workable compositions, but the lack of color left them rather flat and lifeless.  The lighting was also not the best with some highlights in the background from the sun.  After about a half dozen shots I decided that this wasn't going to work for me.  I packed the camera back up and continued on to the lower falls.

Having never been here before, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect as far as terrain.  I knew what pictures were possible, but not exactly what was needed to get those pictures.  After I made it down the steps, I came face to face with a rock garden like I have never seen before.  The boulders were stacked up too high to get a good composition from where I was at.  My only option was to find a way to rock hop to a location somewhere on the top of that pile.  Fortunately I did have my waterfall boots on so some shallow wading was possible.  The problem was the water was deeper than the boots were tall.  I did manage to find my way around and over the boulders.  My final location was interesting to say the least.  I was standing on a rock, and there were three other rocks where I was able to place my tripod legs.  I had very little wiggle room, and the camera was pretty much where it was with no movement possible.

As you can see, I made use of what I had to the fullest.  I started out with my 16-35mm lens along with the Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer, but quickly realized that that was just too much for this waterfall.  I didn't like the compositions that I was getting and it was including too much of the foreground for my tastes.  I swapped it out with my 24-70mm lens with the polarizer and found that focal length to work much better.  My problem was the sun was still bright and causing my problems.  The problems weren't my usual ones though with highlights and deep shadows.  This waterfall is situated perfectly for a sunny shot as there are no shadows to contend with and everything is evenly lit.  My problem was I was having a really hard time getting a slow shutter speed with just the polarizer.

Second Falls

I knew I was going to need to add an ND filter to reduce the light and I have one for just this purpose.  However, I was recalling my recent shot with Elk River Falls where I used the 10-Stop ND to get a three minute exposure.  I figured that with the bright light here, I might actually be onto something with that kind of light reduction.  I went ahead and added the lee Filter Holder to the edge of the polarizer and slid in the Singh-Ray Mor Slo 10-Stop ND filter.  The lighting was much brighter than at Elk River Falls, so I knew I wasn't going to get a three minute exposure, and really didn't want that.  Actually, I was aiming for 30 seconds, and was able to get just that with this filter combination.

I shot several different compositions and exposures for this waterfall.  I did everything from 1/5 of a second up to 30 seconds.  I was actually surprised to find that I liked the results of the 30 second exposure best by far.  The water flow was quick, but it was cascading beautifully so that it maintained detail throughout the falls.  In the end, I decided that I liked a horizontal as well as vertical composition of this waterfall.  I did shoot some isolations, but none of them really stood out to me, and I ended up trashing them.

After this I was feeling pretty good about the day, but the clouds were clearing and it was not looking like Estatoe was going to be a possibility.  Instead of giving that one a try, I decided to pack up and head home.  I was getting sleepy anyway having been up for a very long time already.  The sky was gorgeous all the way home, but the lighting was not quite good enough for photography.  I think I made the right decision in calling it quits.  I will get to Estatoe Falls eventually, but I do want it to be on a very cloudy day as I have in mind what I want to capture and sunlight really won't play a part in it.