skully

this was a very nice hot rod ford at the run whatcha brung show in rialto. the owner was a very nice gentleman, that told me a bit about how he'd fixed it up. he seemed especially proud of the skull details he'd added. this one was made from a belt buckle; others were from lighters and other found items, and put onto valve stems, door locks, etc.

i liked the purple in the flames and the purple of the flowers...oh how i hate those little flowers. they fall on my car, and they make my high heels slip when i have to walk on them...but they do frame a car nicely from this angle.

shake your pom poms

so it's fourth of july. here's a big red one for you. off to my bro's house for a block party. he's had a busy couple of weeks in the news, but that's another story.

found this on my trip to washington a few weeks ago. i'm not sure why, but pom poms in the back window seem to be popular there. not the school colors, but matching the car. i guess it evokes the time of the car? kinda lame to me, but i'm not from the 50s. eh, i didn't like cheerleaders in my own time. < i've edited myself a bit, or there'd be a few too many potty words here. i'm in a mood...>

really nice car. just wish some of these guys would actually close the trunk, not just shut them down.

got the blues

well, it's over 100° today, here in sunny, lovely cali. got up early and headed over to the chino air museum, where they were doing their monthly presentation. this month was on russian planes, followed by a flight of a yak-3, with a MiG-15 sitting by the hangar. if you haven't been to the museum, you can get up close the planes, even so far as touch them, and a good majority of them are still flown, as evidenced by the oil pans underneath those. use it or lose it.

why bring up airplanes on this blog? back to the point about the weather. too damn hot. keeps me away from the middle of the day / early evening car shows. really tires me out and gives me a headache. on the other hand, it's good i've got a lot of pictures in my little archive here to finally get around to tweaking. so many to choose from. not a bad thing.

this truck has been taunting me since last february. there was a baseball fundraiser over at whittier high school, with many fine cars inside. but this baby was outside, not participating in the show. was it a tease, or was the owner just too cheap to pay the participation fee? whatever.

it was a hot day back in february too, i might add. anyway, i've played with this picture several times. my camera threw a yellowish cast over it, in spite of my white balance doohickey. i can't quite seem to get it all out, as i'd prefer, but i still like the truck, so i've thrown in the towel on it, and i'm calling it a day. does it look washed out to you, or is it just my monitor misbehaving again?

it's a drag

i don't know exactly what you'd call this thing, but i don't see one every day, so i stopped and took a couple of shots. i think mainly i liked the mascot out front, between the front wheels. there really isn't much car to look at, being so sleek and stripped for speed.

how the heck does the driver see around that engine? i'm pretty sure they didn't drive it here. wish it had been parked somewhere besides this lovely alley, but it wouldn't fit in a standard parking space, now would it?

----

does it bother you too, when kids purposely spell things wrong? i have some relatives that seem to be incapable of spelling stuff correctly on their facebook pages, though they have brains the size of the universe...IQs off the charts. maybe they think it makes them more cool and more gangsta — though they're the milkiest white gangstas you'd ever see...i think it's the environment they live in. i think it just makes them sound stoopid. yo yo yo...boyz.

don't just stand there

so often people just wander through a shot, completely oblivious, like the lady looking in the window. fine. but that dude in the doorway saw me shooting this car, and still came out of the restaurant several times and just stood there looking around.

congrats, i didn't rub you out, and now you're infamous. not richard infamous; just a minor irritation.

no doubt he knew that this car was a centerpiece for the show. it was depicted on the show's t-shirt this year. thus aside from being spectacular, was going to draw attention to the location.

perhaps the dude works there, so he couldn't very well go out and check out the cars, and was stuck seeing the show which was so close, yet so far.

purrfect

this is from the mother's day show at canyon crest in riverside. not too many cars were there for obvious reasons.

this beauty drove, or should i say purrrrrowled into the show just before they called it a day. it ran very quiet, and after parking, soundlessly dropped down to the ground. damn fine hydraulics i suppose. obviously, i didn't just imagine it...here's the picture to prove it. i think it even won a trophy, but then, with so few cars, maybe everyone won.

le sabre

i don't typically shoot these, but this one was just an outstanding piece of work. how could i pass up all that chrome?

i was shooting pics of an old packard and la salle across the street from this buick, which i had shot the back of earlier, as i had walked up the sidewalk behind it. no one was really paying any attention to it, so i figured i could just finish with the packard and cross the street and do what i wanted with this one.

of course, as soon as i set up my tripod and set the white balance, a horde of guys decided it was a good time to take a close look at it. i could wait until they left, or i could just take the shot, and get over it. my time was limited, so i took the shot. still came out all right even with everyone milling about. i got what i wanted, the shiny chrome, the reflection on the hood, the overall ambience of the weather and location.

one little indian boy

here's another beauty from washington state. where do they keep these remarkable cars?

this one was at an intersection, usually had a few people around it, but i managed to wait them out, and quickly got this shot before the next bunch got in the way.

this town has a nice, clean, little main street area, similar to most main streets anywhere. i think if i didn't mention where i was, it could almost be anywhere. 

copperhead

this paint job was really different. like an irridescent copper plate. it was overcast, so i can only imagine what it would look like in the bright sun. i suppose it would have been too bright and messed with my camera focus, so just as well.

i took a few angles of this, but it seemed more interesting from the front in this setting.

enter continental

so i had to make an emergency trip to washington state this past weekend. i had wanted to hit a show on saturday, but shockingly, it rained. that was fine, as i had a lot of things that needed to get done anyway.

sunday was father's day. overcast, but not raining. found only a couple of car shows on the net, in opposite directions. so i picked this one in burien. turned out to be a strawberry festival, street fair and carnival, with an added bonus...three blocks of cars. classics and muscle, about 50/50. new stuff to shoot, so yay. only had time to check out the car show before i had to get back to family stuff.

i'll start with this one, since it was the first car i shot, and the only one i bothered throwing a card onto the seat. one comment on that; around here, cars get filled up with flyers for all sorts of crap–upcoming car shows, parts, wheels, etc.–but at this show, there were no flyers, cards, anything thrown into/onto the cars. i almost felt like i violated the space, but i had to throw at least one card at a car...just as a i was here, and hope you come check out your car on my blog, thanks for letting me shoot it.

anyway, i don't think i've seen one of these before. it was pretty clean, no rust, really amazing condition. they must keep cars hidden in the garage all winter in this state. not the only pristine car here.

strangely, no one asked me who i was with, what i was doing, mostly didn't say nuthin at all, though i was the only one hauling a tripod. oh, and thanks to the baggage gorillas at the airport, the tripod head had a broken piece hanging off of it, and i feared it wouldn't work right. i managed to get the piece back in position, though it popped off a few times. finally twisted it a bit, and it seems to be usable. kinda sucks, as they don't make this model anymore.

i got a bunch of other shots that i'll post soon, but it's late now, and i have stuff to do before bedski.