better than the gym

i had every intention of going to the gym a couple of days ago. actually made it to one last week, after over a year of not setting foot in one. they're so frigging boring. and kinda sucks going by yourself. i mean all alone in a room full of sweating, stinking people.

i was surprised, though, because this gym had totally been redone and expanded. all shiny and air conditioned. as compared to the one over here near where i live. each and every time i went through the door of that place, i'd get hit by a wall of air so stagnant and ripe, i really didn't stay very long. so what's the point?

so as i was saying, i was going to the gym. had changed into the stretchy pants and big, ugly shoes. had to drop some stuff off at the post office, and figured i'd stop by the fuddrucker's nearby. got out and took a walk around the lot. some stuff there. a big ass, fussy britches car of some sort i don't know, but with his hood open, so nevermind. some muscle cars. some random cars. a couple of old vettes. and a few latin gents. they seem to have adopted this show, and there always seem to be a few of them there.

i'd taken a walk without my camera first, in case there wasn't anything worth shooting. then decided there were a couple. went back to the car, got my camera and tripod and headed back over. didn't bother to get my whole bag out of the trunk. ooops. got set up, framed the shot, and realized the memory card was back in the trunk. so had to make the round trip back to the car. errr. 

after my first few shots, the owner noticed and turned on the lights. that's different. wished he would have closed the hood. oh well.

anyway, took a few shots, talked to a few people. made it right in my head that all that walking, lifting the tripod, and up and down squats in front of cars somehow cancelled out the need to go to the gym.

and then after stopping to see my kid, i walked around the lake. so there. gyms suck.

sorry d

so i've skipped every show this week, even the good ones. i wanna go, but i haven't felt like it by the time i get home. the hour plus drive is really tiring. people drive like idiots. and thanks to the rain, more like two hours. i suppose i could have made it to a couple this weekend, but i figured with the sky threatening to drop buckets, it would be a wasted trip.

my better half is patiently putting up with my insanity. he's a saint. i suppose i have to go apologize for my own personal demons.

i think i like these kind of cars the most. style on wheels.

sherbet

i've seen this car several times. the paint colors always make me think of orange and lime sherbet. which sounds pretty good right now, though i always preferred raspberry.

better half is recovering from a cold. sounds like his mom is starting one. hopefully, it won't be too bad. apparently flu shots don't do much for a cold, which is why avoid them like the plague. the shots, not my sicky relations.

i'm just tired. i want to take some more pictures, but its raining now. probably off and on all weekend. i'll have to think of something better to do. >:)

temptation

i've posted this truck before. it really is extraordinary. paint, pinstripes, and engraving. really interesting airbrusing.

this was last month at the viejitos show. then i ran into it again earlier this month at the latin gents show. second time i've spoken to the owner, though i doubt he remembered the first time out at santa ana the previous year.

anyway, at the gents show, he asked if i could take a picture of his truck, specifically from the side and above. best i could do was get up on a curb. he and his buds were sitting in chairs in the sweet spot for taking the shot from, due to the location and sun angle.

i've said before, that i shoot them as i see them, and i didn't feel like getting a bunch of guys to move out of the way, even after they asked for the shot. if they can't think of it themselves, i'm not going to bother to tell them. they did move a little bit out of the way, but i still wasn't going to be able to get the shot they asked for.

should trust the photographer's eye, and even then, they don't always get the perfect shot. because he asked to see other shots, i'm posting a few here. i've got a few more, but not liking them enough to post, which i could say about most any of the cars i shoot.

watch yer back

mostly cars are viewed from the front. you can tell by the way they get parked, that owners think that's the thing to see; that's where the money is...in the engine. and i would agree for the most part, that the front is the ticket. depending on where the sun is in the sky, i sometimes curse the angled spaces, jacking up the good side with my awesome shadow, forcing me to shoot from the other side, missing the turn of the wheel. same issue shooting a motorcycle. hate when they are parked wrong for the lighting conditions.

but the group of cars with distinctive backsides, tail lights, fins, are all equally in my crosshairs. not quite like bubba in the prison shower, but i do like to get down low, catch a shot of where the sun don't shine—mostly because you guys back them into the shrubbery (a shrubbery!). ya, thanks for that. i'll back up into the bushes too, and chance the occasional spider or sharp sticks (pointed sticks!). ahh, i have to go pull up a monty python flick now...

gently into that good day

saturday was my better half's birthday. plan was to go to disneyland and ride stuff, and hang out until the evening to watch one of the bands that rarely plays there anymore.

all week, i'd been telling him about this car show someone told me about, hosted by the latin gents, before i realized it was happening the same day. so i had started tossing out other options for his birthday. mentioned that this show was not too far from dland, if he could spare about an hour.

so i kinda hijacked his birthday, at least for a couple of hours. he said he mostly just wanted to hang out with me, and if i was going to be hanging out at a car show, then that's where he was going to be. especially since i was driving. sweet thing. he was bringing his camera to dland anyway, so he made the best of it, and took some shots too.

i had been told that there had been over a hundred cars there the previous month, and that they thought i'd really have fun there. all they had to mention was that it was associated with the latin gents, and i already knew that was exactly the type of cars that i would be looking for. i wasn't disappointed. though we did arrive at about the slated start time of two in the afternoon, there were already quite a number of cars there, with more arriving all the time.

i saw many guys i've met previously, and they came over to say hello, glad i could make it. quite nice of them, actually. especially some that i hadn't seen in a long time.

yes, to the dude with the civic, i did shoot a couple of your car. haven't decided if i'll post the better one here or not. to the guy with the yellow truck, the shot i took last year is here; i haven't decided if i like the shots from this show or the viejitos show last week better...keep checking...its a bitchin' truck, and i'll definitely post something soon.

yadda yadda. getting late, and there are plenty of other cars i can continue to blather on about. good show. hope to get there again in coming months.

liked this particular shot for a couple of reasons: first, i liked the car, of course. second, you need to know that the other two cars in this shot originally had their hoods up. that third one back has the two-sided type hood that opens.

well, i was setting up to shoot the green car in the front, and a guy casually walks over and closes the hood on the one next to it. i figure, well, he's going to leave before i can get to it, and mentally write that one off, and wait to take the picture until he's out of the frame.

but then he also goes to the split-hooded car, and carefully closes the hood on both sides, and walks away. that just makes me start to laugh on the inside. either he knows, or someone told him about my likelihood of shooting their cars when the hood is up is about zero. either that, or he was just being very considerate of me getting a better shot. makes me giggle to think its the former, so i'll just stick with that.

i'll throw in this shot, just because. its their show. they were representing. here was a whole row of them on the outside of the lot, though there were plenty more member's cars elsewhere. thought i'd give it a try to see what my camera could do with it. had to do three shot panorama to get this. kinda funky with a wide-angle lens, but it gives you the idea of what i saw.

miss the light? uhh, no.

i went to a couple of shows on friday, which i have not been to in at least a year. because frankly, they were sucking donkey balls. i'll give a show a couple of trys before i decide it ain't worth the drive for either the number or variety of cars, or else just the people and/or vibe. and with the price of gas spiking thirty cents in a day, i guess i should get more picky.

on fridays, there are at least three shows i used to hit up when i got started. and all are basically on my way home, so it worked out. the one in garden grove used to be pretty huge for a main street show, until the local businesses, the show organizers and cops squeezed out the bad boys, and then pissed off a lot of the car owners.

that was the first one i stopped at. not much has changed in a year. pretty much the same diehards there. not as many cars as before. the latin gents were there, and i did take time to shoot their cars, because they're pretty sweet. i'll post some of them eventually.

then, for whatever reason, i decided to give the elks club in buena park another shot. i'd been there a couple of times a year ago. where i found quite a few of the deserters from garden grove. i also shared the story, here somewhere, of my parking in one of the grand poobah's spaces, getting told to move it, and how that wasn't very welcoming at the time. that, and the fact that there warnt much there.

forward to yesterday: the lot was packed, lots of hoods down, no one really bothered me, and surprise, surprise, several of the viejitos were parked out in the back along the wall. mind you, i had just spent the previous sunday at their show in fullerton, but i'm always happy to see the cars in new locations, at a different time of day.

ok, it's getting late, almost midnight, so i gotta wrap this up.

i took a bunch of shots of their cars, then went off to take others up by the entrance. as it was getting later, and closer to raffle time, everyone gathers in the middle of the lot. so i went back over to the best cars, as the sun was starting to go down. it was awesome, because, no one was around to get in the shots, and i could pretty much do what i wanted.

there was one old guy (it's an elks lodge after all) who walked slowly by, who remarked on how i was losing the light. i told him, i certainly wasn't, and i was going to be getting my best shots right about now. wonder if he'll see them when i post them.

thinking i should have stayed a bit later, but this will do. and i came thisclose to going to ruby's as well, but i had to eat, and figured they'd be about done when i got there. so now i probably won't make it there until their last show of the season at the end of this month.

this car was/is for sale. i know how to get hold of him, if you're interested.

shady lady

haven't seen this truck since last year, when they used to have a show at chubby's in anaheim. i'd shot it on several visits there, and the last time i'd seen the owner he was interested in buying a print. but the day i showed up with an 8x10, he'd just put new wheels on it, and now it didn't match the picture, so he didn't want it. oh well, another for my book.

so here i saw it at angelos, another show i hadn't been to since last year. never well attended, at least the handful of times i'd stopped, i had hopes there would be more since the show further up the street has been cancelled. saw the truck, and a couple of other guys by it, but not the owner i remembered. wondered if he was inside having dinner, or if he'd sold the truck. the guys by the truck didn't say anything, and just sat talking to each other in spanish.

as i was finishing up with a few shots, the owner did emerge from the restaurant, and come over to say hello. yes, i remembered him and his truck. i always remember the car. mostly i remember the owners if they've taken the moment to say hello or make a comment.

i liked that the truck was parked here on the end of the row, actually not a real parking spot. i did not like that he parked here under a tree, when the shade sucks the intensity and richness of the color out of a car. but i shoot it as i find it, so fiddle dee dee.

and as far as yesterday's drama with my pictures, the problem was resolved. my favorite framer took care of it, whereby i dropped off the pictures at 6am. he had them redone by 10am. i dropped them off at the fairgrounds before 11am. i did mention the ambiguity in the wording of the rules to one of the judge types accepting entries at the tables. he said he thought they'd clarified it better, but apparently not enough. i gotta do something nice for my framer, who busted his ass to help me, though he reassured me that they would have been fine as they were.

in the still of the night

so i made a quick stop at the show over in garden grove for the first time since last year, probably. a lot of people had split off and started other shows because of some dispute with the organizer and the shops over at this show.

considering it was a holiday weekend and i had arrived later than usual, there were a fair number of cars compared to the last few times i can remember being there. no where near what it was when i had started going to this show. and quite a bit dark, without a lot of street light, depending on what part of the street i was at.

i intended to only be there a short time, so did a quick walk thru before bothering to pull my camera out. i was stopped on the way back by a couple of people whom i've met before, who said they'd seen me go by; sorry if i didn't see you on the way in—i was seeing without seeing—looking at the cars, lighting and locations, not the people. i didn't really mean to be rude, just trying to maximize my time and figure if there was anything i wanted to shoot. but i did see you on the way back up the street, so sorry about that first trip.

i only shot a couple of cars. this one and a mercury monterey. and people were walking up to the monterey while i was shooting, and stood there arguing over what year it was and talking car geek talk. they finally went around to the back of the car, but made me wonder if they were obtuse or purposely standing there.

anyway, this one might be with the latin gents, who had their cars parked nearby. many with hoods up, so, so sorry, no shots of them tonight. no one seemed to be really looking at this one, so i took this shot. thinking the other side would have been more interesting with the nearby shop's neon signs, but that side of the car was pretty dark, so this is the one.

hoping to hit three shows tomorrow, but my shoulder is hurting, so i don't know if i will be able to lift my bag. we'll see.

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.