busy day saturday. whittier car show. got up before the sun, and walked down the street.
tried shooting cars at the main intersection. all the guys that help set up get in early, so get their choice of parking. but, they were too close to where vendors were setting up, so people in the shot, cars driving through the shot, and with it still being mostly dark, it messed with the long exposures.
better half had me fiddle with the camera settings, which sped up the exposures, but made them more noisy. didn't change the background activity, so i skipped a bunch of them and moved on down the street, to where cars had started staging.
the point of being out that early was to get the early light. so tried to get to the cars stopped with the rising light coming up behind them, and fewer buildings in the way. mostly owners leave their cars and hang out in groups, or take the time to polish the paint.
the owner of this one asked me to take a shot of his car. so here's one from the morning. couldn't get the group out of any of the shots, so there they are.
we continued to shoot, then the fire marshall cleared them to start moving. everyone at the far end of the street started their engines, but that didn't last long. takes a while to move cars in. so, we just kept going. when they finally started moving the end of the street in, we stopped for breakfast.
may i also mention, that unlike the previous years that i've gone, it was hot and humid, even at this time of day. so, everyone that survived sitting out there all day, omg, how did you do it? we had the convenience of being able to go home for a break.
had to anyway. we had relatives arrive from northern california, so spent some time with them and their baby. took pictures of them for a while. downloaded all the pictures i'd already taken, charged batteries.
we had just headed back uptown and started shooting, when i got a call from my son. he was in town, and he'd just arrived at the house. so we headed back, while he headed toward the show. stopped again. walked down the street and had lunch at one of the barbeque places. at least it was cool inside. that ate up more time.
walked back home, chatted for a bit, checked out the car he'd recently bought himself. he took off. we went back inside to cool off for a bit. downloaded any additional pictures i'd taked before being called away again.
decided to head back at two-thirty, before the awards were to be given out. that usually ends a show; people start leaving after they realized they haven't won anything. wasn't really the case here. seemed like the earlier organization of the show broke down here. the announcer at the main intersection seemed to be calling out awards, but really, there wasn't the normal crowd of people listening. as if no one had told them what time they were going to make the announcements. it was weird to say the least.
and we also finally got to eyeball this year's show shirts. wow! what a crappy quality image! they've been bad the last few years, but these were really, truly crap, sad to say. looked like they'd put tracing paper over some pictures they probably downloaded from the internet, and used cheap magic markers to draw them. maybe kids did it. but wow, really bad. didn't see too many people wearing them. and the printing sucked too. sorry, i'm a graphic designer, so i can say it was badly done shirt all the way around.
i digress.
we went down the side streets. i was looking for a particular car, we'd seen earlier, after breakfast, waiting in staging. had no idea where it had ended up. i wasn't going home until i found it.
was up one of the cross streets, and found this same car again. didn't see the owner, so couldn't take him up on his earlier offer of a cold bottle of water, which would have been really good about then.
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have to pick up my pictures from the fair tomorrow. hope you all got a chance to see them. i have relatives in town from the east coast, over at my parent's house, so i suppose i'll drive over there, and show them off. probably won't get back to my posting until wednesday.
