1947 chevy fleetline
yesterday there were several car shows to consider. i can only pick one, since my better half has things he has to do, and i need to stay with his mom while he's out.
the big shows were mooneyes and the viejitos annual show. mooneyes is closer, but i've been several times, and find it hard to shoot what i do, and the cars are so spread out along the main street, with intermittent parking lots jammed with cars. there's a wide assortment of cars, to be sure, and if you're looking for the noisy cruise-bys, that's the place to be.
i chose the viejitos show. i wanted the bombs, the low lows, the big curvy-bodied cars. and a lot of them before any crowds showed up.
i arrived there in the dark. i always expect there will be cars from the host club very early, for the set up. there were two cars at the far end of the lot, but i didn't see any people, except the random homeless guy picking at trash at my end of the lot. i'm by myself, and i just wasn't going to walk over there in the dark with my camera bag, until i saw faces i recognized, or more cars anyway.
so i sat in my car, watching the sky start to turn orange, instead of watching it color up behind a car, as i'd wanted. pretty, but not a very dramatically intense sunrise.
about sixish, more cars started to show, and vendors started setting up, so i headed over. several of the club guys were there, and the president, raynbow, who shook my hand and welcomed me.
started shooting the club cars as they arrived. then there was a lull in new cars. pretty sure i leaned up against the chain-link fence in the shade for at least fifteen minutes. consoled myself that if everyone was over at mooneyes, i still had shot enough pictures of the cars i liked to keep me happy for a while, right here.
the pity party didn't last long. the closer to the real drive-in time it got, the more cars and groups of cars began to show up.
watched this cherry fleetline show up on the back of a truck. after it was unloaded, they parked it in the corner by itself.
it's a show stopper to be sure, but obviously not a daily driver.
the owner seemed to not want me to shoot it, as he said it was still all covered with dust from the freeway. i argued that if i waited, the light hitting it would be gone. i told him i'd come back around when it was as pristine as he imagined it could be and shoot it again.
i don't know if he understood, and i went ahead and shot it then anyway. he went ahead and started setting up a pop up tent right next to it, so i'm glad i got my shot before he moved the monstrosity up next to it.
i did go back later. he had moved it over a bit, another car parked in next to it. monstrosity of a pop up right up next to it. shows up in the reflection of the perfect cherry red paint. light was no longer specifically hitting it, just busy getting more generically applied to all of the cars.
as always, i liked this show. as always, i was up against a time limit, the heat, and the need to pee. i needed breakfast and to get back home, so i was on my way about start time.
all the other photographers must have been over at mooneyes. sort of missed those familiar faces; can't wait to see pictures from whatever event they were at. always good to see different points of view, how different people see the same subject. i have seen some other pictures from this show, so they did eventually turn up, but i was already gone.