Chicano Park Fleetline

The Chicano Park car show held in Barrio Logan, adjacent to downtown San Diego is an event that Kathy and I look forward to attending each year. The San Diego area was crowded in part because the Padres and the Dodgers were playing all weekend. We took the Amtrak Surfliner train into town and rode the San Diego Trolley train from downtown to Barrio Logan and avoided all of the traffic congestion.

The neighborhood of Barrio Logan is a historically Latino area of San Diego County and the park itself has a very interesting history. Located below the 5 freeway and the approaches to the Coronado Bay Bridge, it is home to many murals painted on the concrete highway supports.

I saw this beautiful 1948(?) Chevrolet Fleetline at the show. There seemed to be fewer cars in attendance this year. Kathy and I assumed it was because of the threat of rain. This car had some cool mini-murals on the front and back bumper areas. Not sure if the wood on the sides are original to the car or not.

Rag Top Fleetmaster

Kathy and I arrived at the Southgate car show well before sunrise. Lots of cars were streaming into the parking lot adjacent to the golf course where the show was to be held. Other than the car owners there were very few people around. We kind of had our own pre-car show, car show. It was looking like it would rain any minute but it never did. I spotted this convertible 1947 Chevy Fleetmaster sitting there with its headlights on and decided to take a few images. Great looking car.

There Goes the Neighborhood

This is all going to end in tears, I'm sure of it. They opened up a liquor store right across the street from the Aztec temple in this striking hood mural I spotted at the Santa Fe Dam car show in Irwindale, California. Does this mean that all the Aztec dudes are going to start showing up at the human sacrifices hammered, three sheets to the wind? The skull-double headed arrow thing looks like it would hurt. The car's a Chevy, didn't catch the make.

Power Glide

I saw this cool old Chevy at the Dia Del Los Muertos event in Uptown Whittier. Everything about it seemed to be distressed and in my eyes all the more interesting for it. It still runs. I've seen it parked around town in various places. I really liked the look of this classic emblem.

Red Pinstriped '39 Master Deluxe

Kathy and I decided to go to the Viejitos Halloween car show in Fullerton. We got there a little early in the day. It's pretty rare to find a great looking car at a show without another couple of cars parked closely on either side, which kind of divides the viewer's attention and clutters up the picture. Do I wish those chairs on the right were out of the picture? Sure I do but not enough to spend the time it would take to convincingly clone them out in Photoshop. This 1939 Chevy Master Deluxe was pretty clean. The paint was great and I liked the subtle use of pin-striping. I took a bunch of HDR sequences of it from several viewpoints.

1957 Chevy Hood Rocket

An extremely shallow depth of field captures one hood rocket while blurring the other into a hazy outline and a few bokeh dots.

Low Down on a '48 Fleetline

Kathy and I met at the Broiler for a Halloween car show. After a beautiful sunset the sky turned purple before fading to black. To try to get this 1948 Fleetline and that beautiful sky into the same shot, I collapsed my tripod down so my camera was no more than 6" above the pavement. To shoot at F11 I ended up not using my camera's Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) function and instead manually adjusted the exposure compensation value for each shot. AEB supports a maximum exposure time of 30 seconds which wasn't enough to capture the range of light I wanted for this image.

The Taming of the Photons

Kathy had planned to attend the St. Hilary Car Show this year after we stopped by last year on our way to San Diego to start our California coast vacation. On that day she told me she was just going to take a quick look around but wasn't going to take any pictures. Uh huh. While she was looking around, I parked my van in a shady spot in front of the church and started cleaning my windows. Kathy returned after about 5 minutes, slid open the van's side door and grabbed her camera bag and tripod. She told me "I'm gonna take a few pictures, but I'll be back in about 10 minutes". Uh huh. I think she was gone for about 30 minutes before she returned to check on me. I gave her some water and she went back into the show again to shoot even more pictures. By this time my van's windows were spotless. Anyway, based on her experience last year, she knew this show had the potential to be good. We both got up early even though we wanted to sleep in and headed over. We arrived at the car show around 7:30. It wasn't supposed to start until around 10 but there were already 20 cars there and the weather was perfect for outdoor car photography. It was really foggy which means we had the advantage of very even lighting and no harsh shadows or blown highlights. It was as if we had purchased a mile wide softbox and were using it to beat those photons into submission, bending them to our will as we threw our heads back and laughed triumphantly. Revenge of the photo nerds. By the time the fog burned off and the sun came out of hiding, we had each shot more than 1,000 images, had our ear drums blasted by the live band (vocals were ok but distorted - get a sound board and someone to run it) and were trying to decide where to have lunch. I'll be posting some shots from this show in the next few weeks. I already reviewed them and I have some real keepers.

Anthony's Blue '62

This super clean '62 Impala caught my eye immediately when Kathy and I started walking around the Viejitos car show this past weekend. I met Anthony, the owner and he told me a little about the car which was as visually spectacular up close as it was from across the parking lot. The paint job on this car was very reflective and all of the classic Impala/chevy emblems were present and accounted for. I photographed all of them as well as another view of the car from the front. Nice meeting you Anthony, I hope we get to see you and your car again.

Fleeting Fleetline Sunset

Kathy reminded me that there was a Halloween car show being held at the Bob's Big Boy Broiler in Downey tonight. I had to work a little late so traffic was pretty heavy by the time I headed over to the show. I had just parked my van when Kathy arrived. The sun was getting ready to make its departure for the day and the light was already looking nice so we got right to shooting some of the classic ars that had already arrived. It was a good sized show with lots of cars and people. I was talking to a nice guy with an Australian accent who was also taking photos, and was telling him how I like to shoot during sunset at car shows. Just then the sky lit up with the most amazing orange color. I stopped talking and took a bunch of HDR sequences in the fading light. The sky went from what you see in this photo  to completely black in about 10 minutes. This Chevy Fleetline looked to be completely stock. The paint was very reflective and nicely done. Hope I see this car again soon.