i don't like coffee

can't stand the smell of it, so can only imagine the sludgy flavor of it as it burns down to one's gullet. but i think i can relate to the caffiene addiction, only i like mine with ice with that classic logo on the can or bottle. 

so if it were me, i'd kick that cup of joe to the curb, but i figured someone might still be interested in, so i left it where it sat. awesome.

got an email from the owner, who was jealous of his buddy getting his cadillac posted, i guess. just kidding. he wanted to see if i got a decent picture of his car.

early in the morning, so it's kinda dark, but i really liked the back end here.

turn off the light

got up before the sun and out to point fermin yesterday. clear sky and a full moon, we ran around trying to catch some pictures of the legends' cars that were already in the park.

don't realize how quick it fades from night to day until you're hauling a camera bag and tripod across grassy fields, to get to cars with the promise of a better point of view. still wouldn't trade it for a point and shoot camera. i'll use my phone camera for quick shots to instagram, but they're more of a documentation of stuff i saw quickly or where i've been--they're the throw aways.

i've shot this car before, and he always seems to park here every year. you don't know how much i wish bad things on that scrawny palm tree, whose pathetic trunk snakes up between the car and the lighthouse. ruins the shot, and i'm not going to waste time photoshopping it out...it was there, so there it will stay.

it was dark, so of course the park lights were on. do they get some sort of discount for those horrid yellow-tinged light bulbs i wonder? the blackness of night inherently sucks the color out of stuff and neutralizes it, but with that light dropping its mandarine light down on the car, everything getting hit by it just gets whacked to an orange spectrum. would have been so nice with just the moon and stars shining down.

posted the color version here too, because despite it burning my eyes, it's sort of ok, because that's how i saw it.

a went back a little later to try and get the same shot as last year, about the same time in the morning, but the sunrise just wasn't as spectacular, and every sunrise is a different experience, to be enjoyed in that moment. maybe next year...

feed bag

my better half and i got a rare three-day weekend, where his sister is in town and able to watch their mom. we hastily made last minute plans, since we didn't have much pre-weekend notice. we tossed a few ideas around, found some places we wanted didn't have rooms available, so we went local thursday night, and then friday to where we are now, hanging out in long beach.

mostly we have done absolutely nothing, but enjoy the air conditioning and sleep, with an occasional foray into the world for food. sometimes that's all we need. we work too many hours, so just to be able hide away is a good break.
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better half is whining that he'd looked at this car, from the viejitos show, and had even taken some pictures of it, but that they didn't look anywhere as good as this. maybe it's his point of view--he's a foot taller--he needs to adjust the angle of that dangle, and really look at a car from all points. i whine because i'm not tall enough to get good shots of cars with lots of airbrushing on the roof. maybe i'm just trying to see a good shot and take it.

he says i'm obsessed, but maybe he's enabling the obsession...otherwise we wouldn't be staying in long beach, just to be closer to the car show by the sea, happening tomorrow in san pedro, now would we?

picture this

up and out way before my body wanted to be on a weekend. stuff like this makes getting there early totally worth the effort. i like it when i can catch the sun just kissing the car, warming it up just so. and no one around. almost like a thief, stealing this shot...did anyone else see it? am i bogarting this all for myself? no, trying to share what i saw here.

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so at work they're thinking of doing their portraits in-house. tired of paying the go-to guy five hundred a pop. probably have another in-house guy do the shooting. they're thinking of getting a canon camera. pfft. whatever.

they know i do photography, so they're asking me for advice. why not; i'll end up working the files anyway, so might as well try to minimize how much work needs to be done with them. mostly asking if i can help them with lighting. i reminded them i do cars. at car shows, in natural light. where i can move around to find the best angle and lighting.

i've never done portraits, at least besides family. i suppose i could do it. i guess it would be the opposite of shooting a car, having to move the lighting around the subject or shifting them around to find the right angle. but it does miss one of the reasons i shoot cars...they don't look back, i don't have to talk to them or tell them what to do.

i sort of offered to do a shoot out—their canon against my sony. it would be sort of fun to see if i could get the big cheeses to crack a smile or ask them to do strange contortions to bend the light to my will. i've sat through classes, watched videos, read books. aside from getting the equipment, the only thing required would be to just do it, just like when i started going to shows and shooting cars. worse that could happen is getting some average pictures.

stalking

i mentioned a car i was looking for in a prior post, that i saw after breakfast, but had to go uptown several times to find it. took a while, went the other way down the street; had to take a few breaks from the heat, but i finally found it. 

isn't always the way it is, the thing you want is always in the last place you look, or you find it when you aren't even looking for it at all. here was this olds, parked way up the street, by itself. aside from being a funky purple color, it was the tail lights that caught my eye in the first place.

when we had seen it earlier, all the cameras were packed in the bag, not tripod ready. so we whipped out the newer, smaller cameras and shot some hand-held brackets. i got the shot of the dad and the kid waiting to move out of staging.

the kid seemed really nice and polite. he's just at that age, where he's happy to hang out with his dad all day looking at cars, and still polite to others. i hope he stays that way. i really do.

when i shot it later in the day, a bunch of kids kept getting in the shot, looking inside the car. turns out they were checking out the speedometer. they thought that since it said one-twenty or more, that that is how fast it can go. there was one boy in particular, that was overly enthusiastic about it. then he wanted to push the shutter button on my camera too. uh. no thanks. he was so hyped up, i figured he'd manage to knock the tripod over too.

black and white

another car i promised to post. i have a few normal shots of this car. but i like this early morning shot. black and white cars can be a little boring sometimes. even if it is a fleetline.

mutiny

got up early for the viejitos show over at st gregory the great. compared to last weekend, it was wonderfully overcast.

arrived to find them just setting up. and complaining loudly at each other. raynbow's guys were a grumbly bunch. half had been there at the agreed time, half got there when they got there. partied too much friday night or just slept in. he wasn't too happy about that, and went around letting them know it. doesn't make a good impression, and if you join a club, there are certain expectations. no one made you join.

anyway, they weren't the only club having issues with their members. heard quite a few guys getting reamed by other members. at least one guy got mad because they hadn't saved him a spot with his club. he got there late, and they don't save spots. he threw a hissy fit; they told him to just go home; so he did.

there was a decent turn out. got to pretty much all the cars i wanted before the sun came out, except for cars with the pop-ups or people in chairs in front of them. i had fun. my better half was able to go. he got to fart around with some of his different lenses.

here's raynbow's pontiac. hope his day got better than it started out.

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i've been busy at work as usual. then my dad had to go the hospital—just got out this evening. so, i've hardly had any time to be home and posting. i'm so behind on car shows, and yet i keep going out for more. better to have too many to choose from, and hopefully i'm getting better.

i don't have anything scheduled for tomorrow. i'm sleeping in. then maybe i'll go see how my dad is doing.

baby blue

got an owner interested in seeing a picture of his car. i only shot a couple pictures of it. people got in the way here, in the staging area. 

later in the day, i passed it a couple of times, but the trunk always seemed to be up, and people were around it, so i didn't shoot it again. maybe some other time, some other place. 

it's not a bad shot, but i think it could have been better.

check another promised car off the list...

uptown boy

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.

valley high

gonna post this, because i had it ready to go. i did make it uptown to the show today, and i'll start posting some of those soon, after i move from out of the front of this fan, and into a cold shower.

i'm way behind posting on recent shows. just been too busy and not home enough.

this one was from san fernando last month. love this show—oldies car club is very efficient about getting things organized, and moving the cars in. plus, they've let me in early for the three or four years i've made the trip up there.

pretty much have decided, since my better half mostly hasn't been able to join me at car shows lately, that if i can't find decent parking, in a relatively safe looking neighborhood, i'm not hanging around. luckily, i haven't had to leave one yet. there are other places i can be, which is the great part about socal and the los angeles area.

i think this is one of theirs. was in a line of their other cars, in the last parking lot i made it to before i was done. not sure which i liked most—the car or the hood ornament. liked the pop of the red, of the wheels, and the subtle pinstriping.