quick post. gotta get up early tomorrow. make up your own story about this one.
what's up?
blaze of glory
you know, it's really hard not to notice this one. especially when i'm driving around town, and i see something orange out the corner of my eye. snap my head in that direction, and yep, it's usually this car. if you are a frequent, and long-time visitor here, you've seen it before.
shout out to the tribe...where you guys been? hoping to see you all in whittier in august, early as usual. you should update your website once in a while. it ain't xmas anymore, unless you ask my better half...he'd have the xmas tree up all year, like he used to in his old apartment, if his mother didn't make him take it down.
purple rein
i've seen this truck before. also saw it somewhere else, but didn't like where it was located, and passed it by.
but here, the big, tough truck, in front of trees full of flowers, and no one around, how could i not take that shot?
i didn't get to the braybrooks show, so i made the best of the day, and hit this high school show and another in whittier. this one had a live band playing oldies, under the hot sun, on the back of a flatbed semi truck. pretty good show too. seemed pretty proud of their guitars too.
too many hoods up. i suppose i should have taken another shot of redd's plymouth back there, but he didn't even say hi, so whatever. j/k. didn't like the shade on it.
my point of view
so my better half is always telling me to post something bigger. we're not in a pissing match or anything, but sometimes its fun to compare shots of the same thing.
he's six-foot-five-ish, triple-x-sized, with delusions of being on the ten-foot high ambercrombie & fitch posters in san fran. he makes me laugh, though he'd probably say i'm the one that makes him laugh. i don't think anyone else could possibly come close to understanding me, but he kind of gets me, though he mostly can't understand a word i'm saying on any given day.
i'm about five-six, unless i put on some heels, which are inconvenient to wear at a car show, and more so due to my tweaked foot, much to his disappointment. anyway, the difference in height, our abstract backgrounds, and/or my being a girl, albeit, more of a tomboy, leads to some interesting perspectives on the same subject or what we see or don't see at any given location.
i really like hood ornaments. i gave out a book of them for christmas gifts this year. click the link for a perfectly arbitrary display of a few of the pages.
pontiacs are always fun. i don't think this one is an original, it's too perfect, and the seams from the mold are too obvious. but i didn't find any of the original, crackled, ravaged, aged beauties the other evening at ruby's.
i shoot my close-ups with a newer 100mm lens. with all the new technology and lens coatings, i don't think it stands up to my original secret handshake lens that he bought me several years ago, but sadly crapped out on me last year. i used the hell out of a twenty-seven-year old lens, and then some; a little internal plastic thing broke, and it became more tempramental on whether it would work or not, whether it would focus or not. i wanted something that was reliable.
my better half would borrow it sometimes, and has borrowed the new one a few times. i always wonder if i'll be able to get it back from him, he goes so ape shit over it. i guess it would only be fair, as since he let me start borrowing his equipment, he has had to replace each item, because he doesn't get it back. strange that he keeps offering to let me try out his new camera, huh?
well, he pulled the handshake out of the drawer not too long ago, and it's temporarily behaving, so he's been out using it. he thinks it works just great.
so schweetie, here's a big one. how does it compare to yours?
into the gloom
another from riverside. first day. this belongs to gary, who of course when he saw me, exclaimed, "the hood's down!!!"
i took a couple of shots of it that evening. i like this one best—it hides the port-a-potties he always seems to park in front of. i suppose that might be convenient, but they do ruin a shot.
good thing i got these pictures, though. he was there the third day, but his car wasn't; said it wouldn't start so he left it at home. bummer, dude.
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i skipped a show yesterday, and then we'd intended to go to riverside today, to the phil braybrook show, but my better half has been putting in too many hours at work, and was so tired. alarm went off at four a.m. i figured if i got up and drove out there, he'd feel obligated to go, so i stayed home and we slept some more.
instead, i went to a couple of small, local shows later, at nearby high schools. just a few cars i bothered with at both. and some confusion with my better half, who was still sleepy on the couch when i left. he didn't realize i left, and the rest of the day has been kind of 'off.' maybe after a good night's sleep, things will fall back in place.
feel free to buy a print.
tiger in the grass
i've posted this one up here several times before. keep trying to get the stripey, random airbrush paint job right. lo and behold, there it was in with a small contingent of cars from orange county down at chicano park, hiding in a corner.
as i've said before, it's fun to find a car over and over, and then to find it some new environment. typically, i find it on a hot, sunny day, sitting on hot asphalt in a parking lot. things get more blown out that way.
here i found it again, in the shade of the bridge overpass, sitting pretty on the grass. surrounded by hundreds of other remarkable cars, i found it without a crowd around it for a change.
screw it, here's a chevy
so i like old chevys better than the rest. been a while, so i'm posting one.
saw this one last night when i gimped around the ruby's show in whittier—hadn't been since last year. i saw it cruise past me fairly silently while i was shooting another chevy. they went down the aisle and under the caution tape...sadly thought they were leaving, then realized they were just taking a shortcut to another aisle.
i've learned that if i really want to shoot a car, i need to go find it pretty quickly, in case they decide to drive away again. so i headed over the two rows to where they'd parked. it had hydraulics in it, so here it is dropped down a bit. later, i got my better half to come over and admire it. he'd upped the front end by then for some reason, but i took that one too. didn't think that one was so interesting, so here's my favorite of the few i took.
it was mostly overcast, so the sky here is almost as silvery as the car, but the sunset was still peeking through here and there. there weren't so many cars as i'd usually see here, and my foot was starting to ache, so we didn't stay until full sunset.
the owner did come over to ask about where he might see the pictures. said he goes to lots of shows, but i don't recall ever seeing this one before. hope i see it again, in another setting, and without my foot distracting me from getting a good shot.
early early
best time to go to a big show is before it is supposed to start, the earlier the better. especially a show out in riverside, where the daytime temperature can shoot to over a hundred degrees on a cool day. wasn't the case this year, as it was unseasonably overcast and cloudy, but i still only managed to go out early in the morning and later in the evening. stupid foot was bugging me. still is. i'll give it a few weeks then go back to the doc.
this belonged to a couple who spent the night nearby in a motorhome. poor things. really roughing it. not. he found me out behind another motorhome shooting a little pink coupe, and he headed over to uncover his car. i had no idea what was hiding behind door number three, but i was pretty happy with what was revealed.
sun coming up, trees, and few people and cars passing by, so i was free to take whatever angle i liked.
i have one more promised car to do, if i can decide i like any of the shots. then it'll be time to get back to a nice old chevy.
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working eight hour days, but they feel like twelve. my foot still cramping my style. i went to the broiler tonight—first time in a couple of months—really going down the drain there. got there later, and still not much in the lot, so i took a few shots, chatted with my buddy angel and his friend, and left.
checkered past
i still have a couple more cars i promised before i get back to my favs.
this one was just different than the typical hot rod. mainly the checkered paint job on the radiator and inside the engine compartment. otherwise, pretty standard hep cat.
wonder what that guy in the doorway is thinking...or the zombie to his right. neither is looking at me, nor the car. must be something driving by out of the shot.
coming & going
i spied this one driving around the circuit on the last day in riverside. i hoped i would be able to find it parked somewhere before i left.
i was across the street shooting the rambler i posted yesterday, when i spied it here across the street on the corner. i was trying to hurry from the rambler so i could get to it before they possibly took off again, but the owner of the rambler was busy telling me her story. then i watched as the owner of the car popped the hood for a crowd of guys, and i kinda slowed down. why, why?
i took a couple of shots of the rambler and headed over to this one anyway. the group had mostly left, and the guy sitting with it saw me trying to shoot the hood ornament, and offered to close the hood for me. even better i said.
his story was that the car belonged to his father-in-law, and he had fixed it up. i thought it was pretty stunning and asked if he thought it had won anything. he said, no way, there were much better cars there in his opinion. dude, this one is a beauty, have some confidence. and thanks for closing the hood.
