blurtard

since my better half hasn't bothered to post this one yet, i'll go ahead and put it up.

owners were nice enough to me, offered to let me get in and shoot some pictures of it. there was a really old guy, who told the other guy "there's a photographer." and the other guy was a really large guy.

better half had a different experience. paraphrasing what he told me, and you really need to hear him tell the story, with all the affectation and vocal interpretation:

he'd just set up his tripod and mounted the camera. the big guy that owns the car comes up behind him and informs my better half, "that he has long hair, and that his long hair is long, like a woman's hair, and that, people may think he is a woman. a big woman. with long hair. and that he doesn't mean to offend, but in case you didn't notice, your hair is really long."

and my better half stared at him.

and the guy went on to tell him some other stuff, mostly repeating the previous information, and even tried to touch my better half's hair in order to show him that it was long. like a woman's.

at some point, my better half had enough, and offered to let the guy go and not offend some other people, as there were plenty of other people waiting to not be offended.

it distracted him from what he was doing, and he says his pictures of it are crap, because he'd forgotten to set it to the proper f-stop. blurry, with the big blurry guy in the frame.

so ya, i kinda ignored the big guy, said uh-huh a lot, and got the shots. not really a great fan of the car, just the story that went with it. too over the top, too much glitter, just too much too much, it distracts from the car, and renders it fugly. my opinion, but i don't mean to offend...

blue moon

this truck is a bit over the top for my taste, but it isn't mine, so there it is. it just happened to be parked at the front, prominently underneath the host's signage, so i shot it. might as well show you the back as well. glitter and flames, and a bit chopped. hmmm.

shout out to hillco fasteners...another great show. if not for that pesky football game, it could have run a few more hours, and i could have got more cars.

painted on the back were the words "blue moon." what that has to do with the truck, aside from an affinity for the drink, i don't know.

rat

found this rat rod around back of the industrial park at the super cruise. its pretty beat to shit, and seemingly haphazardly put together. but if you look closer, the small details are really fun to discover. seems to have a thing for skulls too. wonder what freud would say to that?

the mottled paint is the color of rust, but it really isn't rusted at all, and it adds a wonderful layer of texture to the thing. and hells yes, real bullet holes instead of the stupid stickers!

work in progress, or will they stop here? 

  

  

ludacrous speed

yay! friday! 6.25 years with my better half—happy anniversary d. went out to dinner, which he doesn't do so much since he started a diet. so that was nice. even better, he took me along.

watching spaceballs on netfilx. haven't watched that in a long time. a classic.

neighbor upstairs is a single guy. no carpeting. sounds like he is strutting around in heels again. it could happen. might be my imagination. previous residents always sounded like they were rolling bowling balls around and dropping them. this is why i prefer my own two-story place. shhhiiit. sounds like he's skipping now. lol lol lol.

looks like another slow weekend for car shows. might try one of the small local shows i haven't been to in a while. see if they're still running.

quick post. i really liked the paint job on this chevy. shine. pinstripes. glitter. airbrush. this time, all working well together.

that is all.

enlightening

i spent a lot of time in the car today. drove out to ontario airport to pick up my daughter...yay no more feeding her tarantulas, etc...drove her home to oc. then out to south coast plaza to exchange the last camera i bought because it had a minor defect. then drove back to whittier. 

happened to decide to slap a battery into the new camera to change it to my preferred settings, only to find the "new" camera was more effed up than the one i had taken back. so drove all the way back to get another. took my camera bag with me and tried the next one out in the store with one of my lenses and my battery, to be sure it at least worked correctly.

seems to, but i won't know until i get out to a show.

then my computer was being quirky, and finally shot me a blue screen of death. seems to have booted back up ok, so i don't know what that was about.

i suppose i'll go to sleep now. why push my luck?

this was a beautiful impala from the other day. it happened to have been the first car i shot when we arrived, and i spent quite a bit of time shooting it from the front and back. the back has a big airbrush image of three mostly nekked chicks with bandeleros, and the detail and pinstriping is exquisite all over. but i liked this one, from just before we left, that i liked the most. 

had looped back around to where we started, and retook some of the cars from the morning. the light changes, the cars change moods, a different personality comes out. maybe i have just spent to much time staring at cars in the hot sun.

better than the other anyway

end of the week, glad of it. and now i've nothing to say. so i'll just throw more pics from the new year's show out here.

found this in a small cluster of harleys. moved to this one after some dude interrupted me shooting another bike, so he could throw down some signs for someone else to take a pic of him in front of it. maybe it was his bike—that would be one thing; if he was just a rude dickhead, well that'd be another. i'll never know, and i won't post that bike. didn't get a shot i liked because of him.

dam fine

stayed up late last night, slept in a bit this morning. my better half assumed we weren't going anywhere and was settling in to watch the idiotic rose parade on tv. he was laughing because channel 5 had missed the thunderbird flyover and only caught the contrails. can't stand the talking heads with their milquetoast voiceover.

when i said i was going to go to the majestics show at the santa fe dam, he got moving. we've never been there, and i figured it would be mostly low riders and jumpers, but also a bit of the stuff we like. flickr contacts are good references when trying to judge going to new shows by looking at past shows images. and mentioning flickr...hey to rudy and to luis...a couple of contacts who have introduced themselves and were at the show today. also, hey to steven, who ran into my better half, but i was off in another parking lot at the time.

needless to say, it was an incredibly well attended show. didn't realize that it continued from parking lot to parking lot, and we only got around to about five of them. also didn't expect to stay very long. we got there about ten in the morning and didn't leave until three-thirty, and still didn't take all the pictures that i could have if i wasn't worrying about my better half and taking up his day off. he had been bored early, but then got over it. said it was because he had gotten something to eat.

anyway. i know we both shot pictures of this car. i can't quite figure out what it is...to me, the body looks like a '39 chevy, but the front looks like a '34. i dunno, and i guess it doesn't really matter much. it was pretty detailed all over. it had airbrushed girls on the visor and in the engine space. can't quite remember if they were also in the trunk, but that was full of engraved hydraulics, if i'm not confusing it with another car. i gotta re-sync my two cameras, so the pictures are sorted by time...the detail shots start getting separated from the car i'm shooting too often.

it also had pinstriping on the hood and about the headlights and such. the grille was so gold, it seems to be throwing off the sensor in my camera trying to catch both the brilliance of the gold and the brightness of the red paint.

really amazing car. the owner lost interest in me after he asked if i was with a magazine. i threw my card on the seat, so maybe he'll enjoy the picture anyway.

long day, but so worth the time. extra glad it wasn't a summer show, as it did get warm, but not the hell hole it must be down in the ditch as during the summer would be.

enjoyed watching the cars hop for a bit in a different lot, though i don't think i can understand why you guys spend so much time and money fixing up the cars to look good and then bounce the hell out of the chassis. i suppose its just because you can.

i would go again next year.

up and coming

not much to say today, and it's late.

one from dia de los muertos show here in whittier. usually pass these kind of cars by, but the little blue bottle caught my eye. gives it that extra "get up" and go i guess.

i see what i see

finally, the weekend. not too much going on car show-wise. some standard weekly shows. not sure if i'll go. probably should, as i'm out of practice again. can feel myself closing into my shell again. gotta get out to shows frequently to feel like i'm getting any better in my photography and/or getting out of that comfort zone they talk about.

got netflix playing in the background. watched a couple of stephen hawking shows, which were kind of interesting. how he explains the world and how we see things. we all see things differently. just ask my better half, he'll tell you about going out on photo shoots when we travel, and how i'll see stuff he just never noticed. is it his height, or just that he doesn't notice things i don't know. is it the difference between boys and girls and what catches our attention? don't know. just know it's fun to compare what we take when we go shooting in the same places.

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saw this bomb at the latin gents show. i don't think my pictures have captured what i saw. i'll have to try again if i see it. 

loved the details—the engraved scrolling on the metal trim, the pinstriping, the paint—all good. not quite loving the window etching. did he do it himself? kinda ruins the perfection of the rest of it, but maybe it balances it out as well.

daddy's girl

i wasn't sure what to expect at this show. if i had just listened to my better half, we'd have been there earlier. last show i went to in this parking lot was pretty sparsely attended, and figured the same for this one, or at least that people would show up later, being that it was a sunday.

another photographer introduced himself because he recognized me from my flickr page. he said it all depends on which club is hosting and their connections, for pulling in cars. looking back at the good shows i've been to, i'd have to agree. i can be stupid sometimes. 

was unexpectedly hot outside for a december day. being late, i'm only going to have so much time before i get too overheated to stay and shoot all the cars i'd like.

there were a few impalas amongst all the other chevys. i can't pass up the swoopy back end, especially on a ’59. because it was midday, i was having to work around the harsh light and keeping my shadow out of the picture for a lot of the cars.

the only person who came over and asked for a card happened to be the daughter of the owner of this car. couldn't really decide what shot i liked the best, so i'm posting the one i liked the most. no people milling through the background is nice, but the modern suv thing next to it isn't my favorite. i'd have the door closed, but at least the hood was down.