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It's a good idea when shooting something at night to spend a little time during the day getting familiar with your subject before it gets dark. When there are a lot of subjects or objects, it's an even better idea to zone in on what you are going to work on before the lights go out and hope you will be able to find your way back. It's harder than it sounds. In this case, it was my last day/night in the yard, and this particular car caught my eye. I put it on my list to come back to for a night shoot.  The inside was pretty dirty, although since the driver's door was missing (which is why it's so dirty), it made for easy access to shoot into the car.  As is typical, the list of cars I intended on getting done that night was long and the clock was ticking away. I had more to work on in other areas, so I decided to just shoot the side panel. Here is the daylight capture of it:  And the night image:  This is a 1970 Buick Wildcat and was the last year this car was made by Buick until 1985. If you want to see something cool, check out the Google images of the 1985 version which was a concept car: https://www.google.com/search?q=1985+buick+wildcat&espv=2&biw=1396&bih=1245&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CB0QsARqFQoTCPKSvZSHzMcCFYxtPgodP08BYg#imgrc=2AiTzBl11QmGuM%3A As always, I appreciate your visit and hope you are enjoying the last days of summer. These old cars have a lot of character and the dashboards are where their interior personality really shines through. As mentioned in last week's blog, I promised to show a couple of cars from the evening part of my workshop under the full moon. If you've tried night photography with light painting you may already know one of the challenges is that objects do not show the accumulated (flash) light that has been painted on them, thereby leaving no evidence of how heavily or lightly it was applied or retained. Digital photography is a world of help here and in the days of film, I bet it was a real guessing game as to what was happening. I can't think of anything else similar to this process where you are doing something almost imaginary (into thin air) that then appears on some other medium. Maybe it's like playing a musical instrument. It disappears as it is created unless something is recording it. For ease of reference, I am putting the daylight image first and the moonlight image second. A discerning eye might find itself thinking "Gee, if I were her, I would have moved that cardboard box in the lower right out of the way," and I just want to say that is exactly what I was thinking when I was there but after it was already dark. I decided to rather carefully lift the box, having been previously warned about Black Widow Spiders and other potentially toxic nocturnal creatures. Sure enough, when I lifted the corner there was a spider sitting right there staring up at me with all eight of its eyes. I don't think it was a Widow, but it didn't matter. I kept a non-stop beam of flashlight on it for probably 10 minutes waiting and watching to see where it was going to run off to. It didn't budge, probably because it was blinded from the light. I thought about killing it, but that didn't seem right since this was the spider's home, not mine. I'm sensitive about that stuff. I'm sure the spider is too. I knew as soon as I turned off the flashlight it was going to crawl straight toward me and probably up my pant leg or get into my camera bag for a surprise visit in my hotel room later. So I left the box, finished my work prematurely, and moved on to another car. I wanted to experiment with multiple colors so I painted this truck in red and green. I had a bit of beginner's luck with the steering wheel. Interiors are hard to do and I don't think I successfully duplicated another steering wheel like that the rest of the workshop. Which one do you think looks better? I actually did not get very good feedback for the red image and they didn't see the green one during the workshop. I happened to be one of the few greenhorns in the group and my work pales in comparison to the experienced shooters I was keeping company with. When I set out to do this workshop, it was something I wanted to check off my list. I thought I would experience it and then be able to move on or go back to what I am used to doing and have a new skill to put on my resume. It didn't quite work that way though. Now I want to work on it more to see if I can get to be as good as the really good guys. I am pretty sure I can improve if I keep working at it. Thanks for visiting and I have two more days of shooting in the junkyard that I will hope to cover in the future. Also, a very Happy Mother's Day to my Mom and all the other moms out there. Thanks for all you did and still do Mom!  You are beautiful Mom! On a recent car photography workshop, we spent some of our daylight hours figuring out what to shoot at night. It was really helpful to have the sunlight available because once it got dark, the entire landscape seemed to change. If careful notes were taken, one could find their way back to the cars that caught their eye in the light. Here are a few from the first day that I liked. These cars have so much style, personality and class. The interiors were very cool, when the parts are still there. I wonder if people will be saying the same thing in 70 years about the cars we are driving now?
Come back next week when I plan to show you one or maybe two of these autos when they were taken at night under the almost full moon. Thanks for stopping by! |
AuthorI am a photographer who lives in Minnesota. I blog about Minnesota, photography, music, food and miscellaneous topics. Archives
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