i don't like coffee

can't stand the smell of it. can't imagine how foul that inky molten sludge must taste as it scorches down your throat. flavored varieties just add an overtone to the stench below.

no thanks. i prefer my caffeine cold. gimme a coke anytime. though, if you think about it, is probably just as bad for you. rusts nails and stuff. wonder if it would remove tarnish off of silverware?

anyway, besides the point. these cadillac guys are almost always here at bob's. they play musical chairs with the parking spots. this one got lucky tonight, out from under the roof of the drive-up, and below the neon. and just a hint of the last of the sunset. and the white paint really reflects all of that color back.

haven't been there in over a month. now the time has changed, and it gets dark early. in spite of the longer drive from the new office, i still got there about five-thirty. apparently, still too early for much to be there, but i just didn't feel like waiting. going to "bed" "early," if you can call nine-thirty early.

look at that, look at that cadillac

so when i was getting my degree in graphic design, i took a few photography classes. both photography and design classes required that you put your work up on the wall so everyone could pick it apart. the theory was that if you knew what wasn't working, you'd know how to do better next time.

you also learned pretty quickly how to defend your work, why you chose to put it up. started to put only what you considered your best, what you were willing to stand by, irrelevant of other's opinions. so there's the reason i never do a photo dump. don't waste space with every little fart in the wind.

i post these few cars up here because they please my eye. they're a record of where i've been, memories of light on that day. i hope they delight you as much as they do for me.

so i've spent the last few times out chasing sunsets. longer exposures make it harder to get shots without some blur of a person walking into the frame. but still having fun, so i'll keep shooting, at least for now.

bird's eye

quick post again. tired. too many late nights starts to catch up eventually.

here's another from sunday's fuddruckers show in lakewood. don't believe the owner ever was around. maybe he/she/they were inside overdosing on burgers and fries.

not completely happy with tbirds, but slim pickens' at this show. and it was so nice and shiny.

heavenly shades of night are falling

i've shot this car a couple of times now, on a couple of occasions. not particularly one of my favs, but it is clean, and it is shiny. wasn't going to bother posting it, until my better half mentioned something the owner said to him. well, he didn't say it to me, so i won't retell it here (yet).

he just so happened to have parked his baby here, in one of my favorite spots, with a conglomeration of lighting. apparently, there was too much of a fluorescent light hitting it, and it effed with the blue of the paint. colorful, and the white fluorescent still manages to wash out the island too.

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on another topic, my better half and i stopped by the irvine farmer's market car show last sunday at the irvine "great" park. i think it was maybe the second week. weather wasn't too bad, just a bit chilly. hadn't rained yet. hauled all our stuff out of the trunk, and with tripod in hand, headed over toward the "car show lot."

was maybe a total of 5 cars that i would consider trying to be a show. only one maybe worthy of shooting, but the doors were open, and there were kids hanging around it and welcome to sit in it. some sort of 1920s or 30s car, kinda chitty chitty bang bang. skipped it.

then the same silly pt cruiser i see often, with fake bullet hole decals and gangster dolls in the back, instead of sitting in the driver's seat. never shoot it.

couple of '60s or 70s beaters and that was it.

so the show was a bust. didn't even take a token shot, which i usually try to do. so we walked quickly around the market place. noisy vendors, shouting as you pass by. food vendors were particulary obnoxious, and their wares were more pricey than other farmer's markets we've been to. so pfft.

i worked on a proposal back in the day for building the "great" park. our proposal lost, but the winner had so much overreaching promise, and it's so disappointing that it's been hung up in red tape and politics for this long. poor use of the money they talked us out of in taxes. would have been better for them to have kept the marine base open (thanks clinton), at least the air shows and men in uniform were pleasing to the eye.

sunshine on a cloudy day

another day, another dollar. i am having some difficulty balancing work, family, and hobbies. i've spent a little bit of time shooting other stuff, but your old cars seem to be my favorite subject. they all have their own personalities, but i don't have to try and make them smile. they look good even on a bad day. and they don't complain that i'm taking too long.

tbirds aren't the top of my list, but give me a shiny hood and a cloudy day, and it's my new bestest friend...at least until my next post.