flamed and a little grumpy

the lovely couple that own this hot rod have been waiting a month to see a new picture of their baby. they thought they'd been going crazy and missed it, but no. i just don't post everything, especially if i'm not satisfied with it. i suppose i have an old email from them somewhere, so i could have let them know. or i guess i could have written something here. but then i wonder if they're just looking for the picture and not reading it, they wouldn't know then either.

i had been having an internal arguement over a couple of shots of it from a show out in riverside, but there was something in each that was just not doing it for me.

then this weekend, a couple of local shows i'd heard about and planned to attend, just simply didn't happen. so having awakened at an ungodly hour for a saturday, took my better half along for the ride out to rialto, promising him that i don't drive out there anymore if it isn't worth it. i'd scoped out a few while my son went to ucr, so i knew this would be ok.

and i kinda guessed they'd be there too. i saw them drive in as we walked over the train tracks to the main strip. we didn't actually get there until after 8am, so the sun was already past the sunrise we were looking for, but not so high as to be irritating.

i took a few shots early, then wound back around and took these two before i left. i think either one looks better than the shot with gary's favorite outhouses.

my better half went to the car show with me, so afterwards, we went out to chino planes of fame for him. he had fun...hardly anyone there, and a nice breeze for a change.

thanks for telling about another show the next day, but i just couldn't do another whole day in riverside.

oh ya, and there's the little grumpy on the back of the other car. didn't notice him last year, when i was just all about the skulls.

oh, and buy a print here

saved from an untimely crash

i was working on this picture a couple of days ago. i was about five minutes from calling it a day and posting it, and then wham, blue screen of death. shit.

i'd already put in a long day at work, sat in traffic for two hours in what should only be an hour drive, but is becoming a more typical evening drive. then to start playing with the pixels, and for it to bomb out at almost ten o'clock at night, just topped off my day and week.

going crazy at work, trying to meet multiple, overlapping deadlines, which is also par for the course, only more so with a redesign of monthly reports. also really lowering my energy to get to as many car shows after work as i used to like to be at.

thought about going to the broiler tonight, but after the drive home and being glued to an office chair and a car seat for hours, i just had enough fight in me to walk uptown for a slice of pizza.

there are a couple of cigar bars/drinking establishments, that i find more and more often frequented by owners of classic cars. tonight there was an old plymouth sitting in front of one of the wino bars. almost went in to find the owner, and ask if they'd be there if i went home and got my camera, but no. it will be back. if not another time, then maybe at the uptown show in august.

as i was saying at the beginning, i was afraid that this file was going to be corrupted by the computer crash, as has happened before, but shockingly, there was only a minor, fixable flaw. i liked the location, the sun setting behind the trees, but there was a decent breeze blowing the treetops a bit more than i like.

thinking of going to the show in rialto and/or the show at la habra high school this weekend. i wanna say there was somewhere else i was supposed to be, but it eludes me right now.

hey, ernie, here it is

i'm pretty sure this is ernie's car. from back in february. a few of the latin gents drove all the way out to norco, where they found crazy me, who also drove all the way out to norco.

they got there kinda late, so had to park down the lane, instead of in a space as a group.

i've made the pilgramage out to this big boy a couple of times now. the lot was full up both times. i had wanted to go out to the show on memorial day, but we went to see the shuttle and dino bones instead.

that's mister lowrider to you

this is one of the glitter twins. not sure where the other one ended up. actually, maybe it's pixie dust, they're like a dream, a happy thought.

parked in a perfect spot, i shot it from the front, the side, the back. liked this one best, because it hides most of the tent behind it, where the owner (i think) was sitting, and look at those great trees and sky...really makes the orange pop. basic art school color wheel complementary and tertiary colors.

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.

buy a print here

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.

sedan, i am

this is bob's pontiac. i'd seen it parked off the street in this side lot for the last couple of years that i'd been to this show. finally had the time and inclination to go over and have a look. initially, there was another car parked on this side, and i was just shooting the hood ornament. he came over and apologized that it wasn't a better ornament—said there was more to it, but someone had snapped the other pieces off at some point in the past.

then, the car next to him took off, so i had space to shoot the car. happily, he moved the dust mop thing off the hood. 

the car is showing its age, but that's fine with me. imperfections just make it that much more interesting, so don't apologize when you're car is less than perfect.