what's up?

pinks

1962 chevrolet impala

looking at my project for work. i don't want to do it, but i really should. will just hurt less on monday, if i get it out of the way today.


i could still make it to the car show. get my better half to drop me off. think we're going to walk uptown for bfast now, so maybe later...


impala from the new year's show at the dam. sparkly. caught my eye. one of the few low riders i shot that day. just love the details these guys add to the cars—really remarkable artistry. i think maybe this one is right on the cusp of doing too much of a good thing.

auntie freeze

had a busy weekend. better half got called in do work, so he didn't get to have any fun at car shows with me, as originally planned. hope they remember he is out of town when we go to chicano park.

spent all day saturday out at the chino corn feed run. a lot more cars than last year, adding a few more "overflow" lots. and i saw them all. didn't shoot them all, but really, who could?

also stopped at the unidos fundraiser at walnut high school on sunday. annual show. been there twice before. i thought there were more cars this year, but maybe because i got there later than i usually do.

anyway, i'll start by saying i took more pictures than i'll ever get around to doing anything with, as usual. i actually talked to a lot of people, which for me, is really interesting. met a lot of people, and i probably won't remember your name, until i've run into you a few times, but i definitely remember a car.

since i took a lot of pictures, i've posted single exposures of most of the cars on my flickr junkyard. feel free to check them out, and let me know if you think your car is worth polishing up. easier if you view by album.

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this impala was really nice. owner offered to put the top down for me, but it was fine as it was. how i found it, how i shot it.

muy bueno

i've seen the famous bueno family impala several times now. another car that i just can't get enough of. so many details. airbrushing, etched chrome and pinstripes all over. can never get up high enough to shoot the roof of these kinds of things.

there's stephanie waiting patiently. i don't know her well enough to know what she's thinking, so i won't presume to guess. we pass each other at shows, and don't say much more than hello. i'm shy. she doesn't seem shy. so it's just me.

other people we ran into at this show expressed happiness that she was there, and getting out, making the effort to be out with people. i imagine it can't be easy.

saw her around the show later in the day, without a camera in her hand. that was unusual.

one family

1965 chevrolet impala one family plaque

when i was in high school, i had an armenian english teacher. he was funny. he talked funny, like he had a mouth full of marbles, he mumbled through the day. i took several classes with him during my years there.

he liked the way i wrote. so much so, that for one of my finals, while everyone else furiously wrote their minor tomes on whatever the topic was, he had me write a satire about the students in the class. i was already gonna get an a, so why the heck not?

i took classes on shakespeare and the classics from him. the papers i wrote for that class, i used for term papers in college. i knew how to write, i guess.

i think about him once in a while, joke with my brother about him too, since he took classes with him after me.

he was older then, so i can only guess that he's gone now. but i do wonder what he would think of this late night drivel i scribble without thought of order, more of a stream of consciousness than anything else. i suppose without wringing it out and editing it over days and hours, this is what you get. but i wasn't an english major, and i mostly just write whatever pops into my head at the time i'm sitting here.

and that had nothing at all to do with this car. this is anthony's car. i know his name is anthony because his shirt says "anthony" on the patch. oh, and that he spent a lot of time talking with my better half.

i suppose i should be jealous at how easily my better half can work a crowd, get into a conversation on a wide variety of topics, and come out the other side with lots of stories to tell.

but i'm not jealous. he's just that kind of guy, not shy. big, gregarious...greg-garious. lol. he gets more stories. i get more pictures. i'm the innie to his outie.

and to my dad, who seems to be reading this blog more often than i think, no, there's no competition with who gets better shots. just simply the joy of taking the pictures and for me, of getting out, trying to get more out of my comfort zone. but i'll never get as comfortable as my better half just chatting people up. my mouth freezes up, just like in high school, when we had to give a speech.

but it all depends on the person who wants to converse. personality trumps shy anytime. or, if you're a richard, i'll just stare at you in amazement and write about it later.

back to the car. clean, basic, classic. the guys were sitting on the curb behind it eating their mickey d. i was perfectly happy to just squeeze down nearby and shoot the car, but they politely moved their feast away from the car, happy to have someone taking a picture of it.

yes, my better half took a similar shot. his is better. my opinion.

i don't like coffee

1962 cadillac

can't stand the smell of it. can't imagine how foul that inky molten sludge must taste as it scorches down your throat. flavored varieties just add an overtone to the stench below.

no thanks. i prefer my caffeine cold. gimme a coke anytime. though, if you think about it, is probably just as bad for you. rusts nails and stuff. wonder if it would remove tarnish off of silverware?

anyway, besides the point. these cadillac guys are almost always here at bob's. they play musical chairs with the parking spots. this one got lucky tonight, out from under the roof of the drive-up, and below the neon. and just a hint of the last of the sunset. and the white paint really reflects all of that color back.

haven't been there in over a month. now the time has changed, and it gets dark early. in spite of the longer drive from the new office, i still got there about five-thirty. apparently, still too early for much to be there, but i just didn't feel like waiting. going to "bed" "early," if you can call nine-thirty early.

look at that, look at that cadillac

1962 cadillac

so when i was getting my degree in graphic design, i took a few photography classes. both photography and design classes required that you put your work up on the wall so everyone could pick it apart. the theory was that if you knew what wasn't working, you'd know how to do better next time.

you also learned pretty quickly how to defend your work, why you chose to put it up. started to put only what you considered your best, what you were willing to stand by, irrelevant of other's opinions. so there's the reason i never do a photo dump. don't waste space with every little fart in the wind.

i post these few cars up here because they please my eye. they're a record of where i've been, memories of light on that day. i hope they delight you as much as they do for me.

so i've spent the last few times out chasing sunsets. longer exposures make it harder to get shots without some blur of a person walking into the frame. but still having fun, so i'll keep shooting, at least for now.

drive-in, get down

1968 chevy impala

sitting here, growing bored. i think my better half would sit on me if he could, to keep me from going out. no, really, he would just strongly suggest that i stay put. just because the doctor told him to. pfft.

so maybe i'll post a couple of pictures. going to work tomorrow. i sit all day anyway, and i think they'd be in trouble if i didn't show up for another day, with the tradeshow cycle going again.

liked this impala's parking space. i like when i can get the car and the building in the same frame. kinda wish i'd been able to get a little more off to the side on this, but this will have to do.

i'm going to go ambulate uptown later, getting out of this house. for dinner. though disneyland sounds like a lot more fun than uptown.

bird's eye

1962 ford thunderbird

quick post again. tired. too many late nights starts to catch up eventually.

here's another from sunday's fuddruckers show in lakewood. don't believe the owner ever was around. maybe he/she/they were inside overdosing on burgers and fries.

not completely happy with tbirds, but slim pickens' at this show. and it was so nice and shiny.

heavenly shades of night are falling

1962 buick le sabre

i've shot this car a couple of times now, on a couple of occasions. not particularly one of my favs, but it is clean, and it is shiny. wasn't going to bother posting it, until my better half mentioned something the owner said to him. well, he didn't say it to me, so i won't retell it here (yet).

he just so happened to have parked his baby here, in one of my favorite spots, with a conglomeration of lighting. apparently, there was too much of a fluorescent light hitting it, and it effed with the blue of the paint. colorful, and the white fluorescent still manages to wash out the island too.

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on another topic, my better half and i stopped by the irvine farmer's market car show last sunday at the irvine "great" park. i think it was maybe the second week. weather wasn't too bad, just a bit chilly. hadn't rained yet. hauled all our stuff out of the trunk, and with tripod in hand, headed over toward the "car show lot."

was maybe a total of 5 cars that i would consider trying to be a show. only one maybe worthy of shooting, but the doors were open, and there were kids hanging around it and welcome to sit in it. some sort of 1920s or 30s car, kinda chitty chitty bang bang. skipped it.

then the same silly pt cruiser i see often, with fake bullet hole decals and gangster dolls in the back, instead of sitting in the driver's seat. never shoot it.

couple of '60s or 70s beaters and that was it.

so the show was a bust. didn't even take a token shot, which i usually try to do. so we walked quickly around the market place. noisy vendors, shouting as you pass by. food vendors were particulary obnoxious, and their wares were more pricey than other farmer's markets we've been to. so pfft.

i worked on a proposal back in the day for building the "great" park. our proposal lost, but the winner had so much overreaching promise, and it's so disappointing that it's been hung up in red tape and politics for this long. poor use of the money they talked us out of in taxes. would have been better for them to have kept the marine base open (thanks clinton), at least the air shows and men in uniform were pleasing to the eye.

sunshine on a cloudy day

1962 ford thunderbird

another day, another dollar. i am having some difficulty balancing work, family, and hobbies. i've spent a little bit of time shooting other stuff, but your old cars seem to be my favorite subject. they all have their own personalities, but i don't have to try and make them smile. they look good even on a bad day. and they don't complain that i'm taking too long.

tbirds aren't the top of my list, but give me a shiny hood and a cloudy day, and it's my new bestest friend...at least until my next post.