Down But Not Forgotten

This shot is part of an idea I had when I saw this gorge full of discarded cars and trash. I went on a hike with my daughter and saw this gorge but did not have my camera with me. The next year we returned with plans of crossing the river but the run off from Lake Chelan was quite intense compared to the same time the year before. The year before we could have walked across the river to get to the gorge. The images below show what we were up against, I had to come up with another idea if I wanted to get there. So as I left with an unsuccessful attempt to get to the gorge I kept my eyes open and noticed a piece of property on the other side of the river with a dirt road leading to it. So the next day we searched for the road and hiked down the river bank on large boulders not sure if we could even get there. As I hiked I kept in mind our safety and hoped we could hike without causing an avalanche. When we got there and I was shooting my leg sunk into the rocks causing my foot to get buried and scraped the side of my ankle. I had an idea of shooting up the gorge and making the cars look like a modern art sculpture but that idea did not work. I have a few more shots I am working on from this shoot.

This is a shot from the hike on the first day. The year before we could have walked across the river.

Everything including the kitchen sink. I can not imagine seeing this view and thinking this would be a great place to dump my trash. 

Lil Omen 1950 Ford Coupe

I saw this 1950 Ford Coupe at the Antioch Summer Fest 2014. It reminded me of the car Sylvester Stallone drove in the movie Cobra. The car in Cobra was a 1950 Mercury Coupe, I like the Ford because of the bold chrome grille.

Its In The Trunk 1930 Ford

I saw this 1930 Ford at Midnighters 17th Annual Downtown Martinez Car Show. I showed my daughter where the term trunk came from. I liked the duck stick shift and the suicide knob. On this car my my Sigma 17-35 mm lens decided to start giving me trouble by the end of the day I had another paper weight. I've had since 2003 and it took a break when I had my Canon 20D. It actually messed up the picture with the trunk, the images were so sharp it showed every dust spec on my lens sensor ect (it looked like someone took a shot gun to the image with all the dust specs). I spent a lot of time on the image because I wanted a shot of the trunk and the owner (Bob) was looking forward to seeing the images.

Toppenish Salvage Yard

I was recently was in a Google + hangout with Keith Cuddeback and Georges Pauly. We talked about how we processed our HDR images and shared our work. We all had a different workflow and used different software. Seeing how others work gave me new ideas and it was great to get some feedback on what other people think good and bad. It caused me to think about how I process my images. Actually it caused me to download Adobe Lightroom and do some research on it so I could work on my HDR images that I create in HDR Efex Pro 2 in 32 bit file format. I have been using Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended and I have to convert the files to 8 bit file format (loosing valuable data) so all the tools will work in Photoshop. I actually did not process any images for a while after I downloaded Lightroom I played with it. I have some research to do before I will feel completely comfortable with it. I remember the first time opened Photoshop 4 I could not get it to do anything not even make a mark and it involved a lot of reading and playing around before I felt comfortable altering images. There are people that make images from scratch with Photoshop like Bert Monroy, one of his most impressive works of art is Times Square. He always says it's not work it is play which is true if you enjoy the process. He approaches Photoshop from a totally different direction than I do. To see a short video of him at play click this link. I had the privilege to meet him, take a course for free and get my books signed. It was odd to see him walking down the street as I was arriving to take the course we met at a street corner and talked as we arrived at Keeble and Shuchat in Palo Alto. When the night ended we were still talking and they had to kick us out of the building. He is a really nice guy and loves to teach. I do not use Photoshop the same way as Bert Monroy but seeing how he uses it helps me get around problems when I am processing images. Getting back to the hangout I thought about what we had talked about and went back and reprocessed some images I had wrote off. Part of it was at the time I processed them I was new to HDR and treated all images the same and part of it was the advances in the software. Below are some of the images I reworked.

Ford

The second car in is a Dodge. I like the hand crank on the corrugated roofing material
where the hood should be on the first car.

Chevrolet

These are some old Chevrolet's that were at a salvage yard just outside Toppenish Washington, they are from two trips I took there. The second image has a Ford on the left. In the third image I am not completely happy with the composition, but I was fighting the vegetation. I would of liked to have lowered the tripod, if I would of done that the vegetation would of blocked my view. I was there in late August and the owner had brought in some goats to clear out the vegetation. To here more about my first trip there you can read more in my post Toppenish Junkyard (Garages).