dearly departed

soon after we arrived at the show on first street, we ran into a guy who asked about pictures we might have taken of his car at the whittier dia de los muertos show a few weeks before. he'd been looking for them online, but i don't recall handing him a card, so it would have been a bit more difficult to find it anyway.

wouldn't have mattered, as i hadn't posted too many from that show. haven't posted much at all, really, been so busy and sitting in traffic too often.

here are a few shots from that day. he was parked up toward the donut shop, at the end of the street, away from the street vendors and crowds and the other pod of cars at the next intersection.

yes, the door and trunk were open, and i normally would have not taken it. they're missing some dearly departeds, so i'll admire the shrine.

and i usually pass up cars when they have the dolls up on the bumpers too. just don't like them. not in the creep me out way, just kinda whatever.

i don't think i took one shot of the car from the first street show...it happens sometimes.

east first

someone gave me a flyer for the old memories east la show out on first street. kinda wished we had gotten up and out earlier, because it turned out to be more than we expected. the veterans celebration took up four or five blocks of the street and included a stage and music.

lucked out and got parking fairly close and headed out to the end of the street and unpacked. first block on one side was taken up with bomb club cars. i've seen some of them before. several of the guys stopped to talk to me, so lucky you, i'll start with your cars.

getting late, so i'll just quickly start with another truck, since i think the owner was the first one to say hey. i think the shot from the other side was maybe the better view, but the sun had gotten too high, and my shadow was too close to the car, as was anyone who was walking behind me, so here it is from the other side.

happy that there some smallish clouds in the sky, they always make a better picture. better than the plain blue that is more typical, and they reflect so well in the polished slates that are the hoods of the cars.

why?

so this gorgeous truck wasn't quite in the show at st hilary's, but in the parking lot just outside. sometimes i find some extraordinary cars just outside of the best shows, in parking lots, on the street, around the block. 

i figure it's the entry fee, they arrived after the lot got too full, or just too late to enter the competition. otherwise, i just don't know. come on, guys like to whip'em out and compare them, so come on inside the gate and play the game.

the only thing i really don't like on this otherwise perfecto truck, is the stupid, asinine bullet hole sticker on the front, just next to the headlight. i just don't get those. you want a bullet hole on your car, just shoot it already.

olive drab

i have spent too much time sitting in traffic lately. plenty enough to contemplate inane thoughts.

take this for instance: if they manage to clone a person, whose birthday should the clone celebrate?

thinking about changing my hours at work, since i get there so early to beat the morning rush anyway. i sort of think leaving an hour or even a half hour earlier than i do now won't make a damn difference anyway, but my better half thinks it will, but then he doesn't have to get past the 55 freeway in the afternoon, or that caltrans work up past buena park. pfft. it all sucks.

anyway, he is likely to get called in and go back to work tonight, so i should get going and spend some time with him.

here's one of the tribe's cars. haven't really had a good opportunity to get a shot i like of it. the owner was still polishing it when i was first there.

circled back and caught this shot before the other guys got closer. there's still a group there, but far enough away to not ruin the shot.

and i do like racoon tails.

pretty maids all in a row

its nice being at a show early. guys park their babies and go off to socialize or find breakfast. and i can pretty much futz around with my camera without interruption, or lots of people wandering into the frame.

sometimes its more interesting with a couple of people in the frame, helping to tell a story about a car show. but this time, i preferred the fog.

i've managed to take a few rows of cars like this lately. just haven't had time, as usual, to do anything with them. 

out of sorts

first, happy bday to my better half.

i gave him a woody.

the one from the pixar movie...i know what you're thinking... >:)

have had a very not feeling right weekend otherwise.

on friday, my better half walked five miles round trip, when he took his van in for service. ended up with a sore ankle, so he didn't want to go anywhere on saturday.

i stopped for about an hour and change at the latin gents show, then started feeling wobbly. probably because i needed to eat. weekends throw me off...i sleep in late, so i eat later than usual.

anyway, packed up and headed out, while seeing more cars arriving. considered going back later, more toward sunset, but just couldn't bring myself to drive back down there.

then today, there were a couple of shows i'd thought about going to, but, it's my better half's bday, and thought i'd just hang out with him and whatever he wanted to do.

this shot is one of the last couple i shot yesterday. couldn't resist that light and how it was falling through the trees. it just feels like fall. maybe that's why i feel weird...time to hibernate. i sure as heck don't feel like getting up at 4am and going to work tomorrow.

all in one weekend

went to three shows this weekend. good ones. missed ruby's last show of the season, but i'm ok with it. i've seen other people's pictures and i'm still ok with it.

continuing with the bomb club cars...

here's richard's (not that one) master deluxe. he pimped one of the photos in my book—was a picture of his friend's car, got him to look at it, got it sold after carrying it around for a couple of years.

i took several shots of his car. i liked this one best. just loving the fog. wish it happened more often.

then the next day, we went to the viejito's show. (ya, my better half likes to spend time with me when he's not working.) who do we happen to run in to? yep. same guy. same car.

as i was saying, fun to shoot the same car in different places, different times, different light. what do you think?

dude, buy a print. i mean if you want.

here's the plaque from the car next to it, since richard's car has window blinds covering his.

it was their halloween show, btw. not as many cars as usual. i assume it was the baseball game again. but i did see this...which was pretty scary in itself.

mists of time

we got up very early on a saturday and drove over to pico rivera for this show at st. hilary's school.

stopped by quickly last year, on the way to san diego, and remembered it being full of wonderful cars, so we had high hopes for more of the same.

it was wonderfully foggy and overcast. the show didn't actually start until ten, but we were there about seven-thirty. the ladies at the gate thankfully let us in, so we got to taking pics right away, knowing we only had an hour or so before the sun burned through.

many of the cars i've seen before, clubs i've run across before, but always good to take the cars in different locations, lighting, and/or atmosphere.

while it turned out to not be as busy as the previous year, be it due to the weather, people partied too hard the night before, or the world series, there was still plenty to shoot, and those people missed out on a good show.

found several bomb club cars down this lane, with no other cars around them. there was the unfortunate placement of the portable toilets nearby though, so i mostly tried to keep them out of the shots.

here's the first one i liked. not sure if it was the matte surface with the fog misting around it, but i just liked it. i will probably post another of it, just because the owner expressed an interest in it, and this one won't print to the proportions of 8x10, which seems to be the typical size people want. guess i pushed in too close, but i really liked this angle. but hey, there is no shortage of framage available for the new size standards for digital cameras nowadays.

still want to buy a print? i've posted it over here, where you can order all different sorts of items with your car on them. christmas is coming. i'm just saying. and my equipment is wearing out. it's an expensive hobby.

hot legs

been a long day. was at work at 5:15am, so i'm pretty much done for it.

quick post. i squeezed down between a couple of old cars and the group of guys that went with them. not the best angle, but i wanted the picture. liked the car, liked the club sign. the guitar that was actually a speaker playing some good old tunes was pretty cool.

and then there's that guy's legs. i could crop the picture, but that cuts the sign. i could just photoshop them out, but its late and i'm too tired to bother. maybe some other time. maybe its his car, for all i know. i could have shifted the camera a bit to the right, but then there'd have been the issue of them parked next to the porta-potties, so i took the less offensive angle.

testing testing

took me two hours to drive home yesterday. sure it was friday, but seriously, i leave work at four most every day, and the traffic is just getting worse and worse. wtf. do i just get up at three am so i can try leaving at three in the afternoon??? efffff.

i got home in a not so happy mood. already was tired from not getting enough sleep for three days running. felt like a zombie driving on the freeway, i'm glad i made it home. told my better half, either we get going to a car show, or i'm just gonna lay down for a bit, which would turn into several hours. 

i knew the ruby's show only runs for a couple more fridays, and figured i would skip this one, knowing its the first and last show of the season that really gets a lot of cars anymore. but then i remembered seeing mention of a show out at the broiler, and had to double check on the date. yep, friday evening, same as ruby's only it runs until ten. hosted by the vintage bombs south side, it promised to be just what i was looking for.

pleasantly surprised when we got there, because the last few wednesday night shows i've been to have been so disappointing. while there only seemed to be about twenty cars, they were the right kind for me.

i mentioned before that i had to buy a newer version of my camera a couple of months ago. i've shot so many pictures, mostly of your cars, that the old ones are starting to be unreliable. so i've been mainly using the new one at the few shows i've made it out to. i'm still getting used to it, and it's ok, just not in love with it yet. more buttons and fine tuning required, it's a higher maintenance bitch than the old one.

here's the thing: i hadn't taken it out late, after sunset yet. was't a problem with the old one—got very nice night time shots even in dark corners—but here we arrive at basically a chevy bomb show, sun already set, and i'm not sure i can get the shots i want. so i'm experiementing with the settings.

didn't know my better half had updated the firmware, when i'd only asked him to clean the sensor. so right off the bat, my settings had been reset. wondered what the hell was going on with the first bunch of shots i was taking, then noticed a few things set wrong, and knowing i hadn't left them that way. finally had to go ask him why my camera was tweaking.

there were a few additional settings he found that needed to be changed back, then i got going again. had to reshoot a couple of cars. went to the back lot, where it is much more dark without the lights on and shot over there too. there were a few more in the dark, i really would have liked to take, but there were a lot of guys hanging around behind those cars, and i don't care for the smell of what they might or might not have been smoking. i'm sure there was just a skunk walking by, right?

we packed up about eightish, as neither of us had eaten dinner yet. spoke to a couple of the vintage club guys on the way out. very nice. said they were doing only one more show next friday for halloween, and that was it for the season. costume contests and candy for the kids. said this was a pretty small show because of the dodger game, but they'd been getting more than a hundred cars on other nights. 

we're already talking about just driving straight there from work next week; sorry ruby's—see you in april.

so here's a couple of shots of the same car. one from when we got there, with the screwy settings, and the other from later on. i think they're kind of both ok, but still not quite the same as i could squeeze out of my old camera. guess i'll have to keep trying.