the sky’s the limit

another late night, spent pondering a graphic i have to do tomorrow at work. thought i could come up with an idea while shooting a car show...you know, when your best ideas appear when you aren't even thinking about them. no luck. guess i'll sleep on it.

well there wasn't much out at cypress today, but not disappointed that i left work on time; i needed the break. actually, the few local shows i've been to have been pretty sparse. is it the price of gas, or is everyone just selling off their cars?

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getting back to this picture...another from henderson lincoln. didn't realize the clouds looked so awesome at the time. i was just trying to get the front of the car and the reflections in the hood. this thing was so shiny. interesting hood ornament thingy too. i'll have to post the close up another time. i'm running on fumes right now, so best get meself to bed.

“it's a girl car”

this one was at the labor day show in henderson's lincoln dealership. it stood out amongst all the chevys, rat rods, and other typical vintage stuff. mostly because it was hot pink. these puppies always make me think herman munster.

so while i was taking a few shots of it, some old guy walks by and mumbles about it being a “girl car.” ya, i didn't shoot his car, so maybe he was jealous?

even has hot pink dice...ya, it's a chick car.

cardinal

a quick search on the web finds this car, or one amazingly similar, parked down in balboa park in san diego. it is also on a cars for sale site. is it the self-same car? i don't know. it didn't have a sign on it.

i found it up in the "look at me" row, up front of ruby's. once in a while they are actually worth a bother. this one is almost too perfect to be driven much. i should have peeked at the mileage.

fly away

i'm pretty sure i didn't see the butterfly on the hood ornament the first time i passed this car. i think it got clipped on later.

my better half was spending a lot of time shooting this hood ornament on the car next to this one. he'd borrowed my macro, which when slapped on his full frame camera apparently kicks ass. anyway, i'd spent long enough just standing around waiting, that the lady who owned this one noticed i/we shoot with sony cameras. she was fascinated and full of questions. mainly because she was looking for what camera she should buy, and noticed i had a minolta lens one of mine.

when she started asking more techical questions, we waited for my better half to finish with the other pontiac. she and her husband said they'd owned more than 100 different cars over the years. this one, she said, drove like a pig, something about the power steering or non-existence of it. she'd made a deal with the proprietor of a car shop, where he spliced in an engine or front end of a car he'd recently finished, and some other parts, so now the thing supposedly really rips up the road.

i think she said it had a t-bird radiator in it too, which my better half joked whether it had an opera window in that as well.

of course, she may have been talking about one of her other cars, and i've just gotten them mixed up, just like the guts of said car.

i liked that the paint wasn't perfect; it was all scarred and pitted—a car that is driven and loved every day.

general

i think i've seen this truck over at jae bueno's blog at some point. here it is, hiding on a back pathway of the old world village in huntington beach.

i'm thinking the wheel covers aren't original, but they are kinda cool. wished the hood was down, but figured i better catch it while i could, from the side that was closed.

it was highly polished, like looking into a black hole, were it not for the blue sky above, throwing reflections all about it.

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i'm in tradeshow hell at work again. i've worked a couple hours over for the last three days, and will probably continue doing so for the next month or so. makes it hard to get it up for a car show in the evening. i want to go, i really do, but if i stop at home first, i just don't want to go back out.

i do intend to hit the whittier uptown show this saturday. please do bring all your purrrty cars out for me. i miss you so.

ye olde fordes

so my friend from the old show at chubby's told me about this new show in huntington beach at the olde world village. think solvang. think octoberfest. ja, probably more german than scandinavian, it's a small market "village", with a meandering "cobblestone" walk that runs around the "village."

so one day a week, they let these crazy car people come and park their cars throughout the pathways and in the parking lot for the duration of the show. interesting concept, but as there is only a little over a car's width of space, once you're parked, you're there until the 8pm close.

supposedly the first night there were 150+ cars, but i think this was the third night, and i dunno where that many would go, so i'm saying maybe 75 in the village and parking lot. i did like seeing the same cars i see everywhere in a different location. and i did like that inside the market, the buildings provided enough shade to keep cool until the sun went down.

i've seen this ford in whittier, at the ruby's show a few times. just realizing i posted the hood ornament a few days ago. i like the setting for it here much better than the parking lot at ruby's, probably because it just looks better, but also because it's not crowded next to another car. and i got my shot right before more people came around that curve.

raider nation

i've seen this car several times over the past year and a half. i've tried shooting it from various angles, in different lighting conditions, in different locations depending on where they've parked. i've never really been satisfied with the location or the lighting, but this one is ok. i need to bring a ladder to get a better angle on the artwork on the front here, but i already pull too much around with me...i'd need a little red wagon to carry more.

not only is it a great car, it has some interesting, intricate airbrushing going on front and back, all in black and white, and just a hint of gold on the helmet. i'm taking a wild ass guess they like the raiders.

backlot

my better half thought i had taken this at some hollywood backlot. nope. i stopped at the anaheim show at the promenade. first time there. probably the last. giving points because i was early, but with all the tall buildings around, most of the shots look like this, half sun, half shade. dramatic, but sucky at the same time. maybe if i'd shown up later, after the sun was down and the street lights had come on, but then there would be more people there for the live band in the center intersection.

i found it funny that several of the cars i saw here, i also saw drive in to the garden grove main street show, and then even later, one showed up at ruby's in whittier. and i thought i got around. ain't it great to have more than one to choose from, if not all to go to on a summer evening?

anyway, there were several really great cars there. the location could be better at different times of the day, i suppose. it would have been nice if the old guys behind this one would have moved to let me shoot the back end, as that planter made it hard to get there otherwise. but oh well. i didn't feel like asking them to move, and they seemed pretty oblivious otherwise.

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and i'm still pissed at my computer for crapping out on me yesterday; was up until midnight reloading the whole freakin system and still am working out tweaks. even with all that, it still had the nerve to lock up as always in the middle of playing with this picture. and my screen is too dark, the colors are odd. i'll have to calibrate; hope it doesn't look too bad.

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and to the bungholes that have been trying to bury comments on old pages with links to sell their own shit...go suck it. i'm in no mood to put up with you. go buy your own advertising space.

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.

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?

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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.