Shooting Lowriders with Carlos Valencia,

As a kid growing up in Austria during the 70′s almost all American cop shows seemed fascinating to me. I particularly remember begging my mother to stay up to watch reruns of “The Streets of San Francisco”. I was visually struck by the huge buildings, huge palm trees, and all of the gigantic cars. Everything was so different from what was so familiar to me in Europe. This was probably the time when I started to develop my love for Americana.

Of course, growing up in Austria and Germany I was very jealous that the legal age to drive a car was sixteen and it completely sucked having to wait two additional years just to be able to get a driver license.

Finally, the day arrived when I turned eighteen and I got my first car. Don’t get me wrong, it was exiting to drive this 82 VW Rabbit (slightly underpowered with 50 horses), however I kept dreaming about driving around in a big 73 Chevy Impala Coupe…

Intruder Car Blub Banner

My love for cars stuck with me until today and my childhood dreams came true after moving to the US. Oh yeah, I got to own and drive a 1974 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible…

Now, my love of cars has found its way into my love of photography.
Last week I was able to photograph the 1955 Chevy 210 Farewell Photo Shoot for a friend of mine… but it did not stop there…

I  also had the opportunity  tag along and shoot some Lowriders with Carlos Valencia at a gathering of the Intruders Car Club.

Carlos Valencia is a freelance designer/photographer, one of the owners of Studio 8 in downtown Phoenix. You can also see some of his work in Lowrider Magazine.

Here are a couple of frames of the photo shoot I was able to grab while looking over Carlos’ shoulders. Everything shot  was made with  a  Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC Lens, one light (Paul C Buff – AlienBees AB-1600 through a medium sized white Photoflex Umbrella powered by a Vagabond II) triggered by Pocketwizards.

…and yes I was listening to War as I processed these shots.

Last week-end my good friend John treated his four-door 1955 Chevy Model 210, 235 straight six with three-on-the tree to a day at the spa. She got rubbed with clay, then buffed and waxed by hand.

John has owned this beauty for a long, long time; I believe over two decades of which 16 years she served as his daily driver. Oh how I wished she could tell stories. My dear wife got to ride in this very same Chevy back in the high-school days.

Being stored for quite some time, she recently received a new starter, rebuilt carburetor, and a number of other bits. She is looking and feeling good…

A new chapter in John’s life is about to begin; and another one will come to a close… Now the Chevy is looking to become a part of somebody elses life-chapter, but before that happens John wanted to take some pictures for memory-lane over at my house.

John took a couple of shots in ambient light only, which you can see on his flickr stream and I seezed that opportunity to light this beautyiful car with John in it using my Paul C. Buff Einstein 640 bouncing it into a 86 inch parabolic umbrella  (PLM™v.2: Parabolic Light Modification System). To spice things up we placed a Nikon SB-800 with a 1/4 CTO warming-gel inside a bare-bulb difuser-globe on the passenger seat to warm things up. The baby blue interior is very cool looking but it cast a blue light on John’s face and the warming gel counteracted that beautifully. The Paul C. Buff Einstein 640 was powered by the Vagabond Mini and triggered with the Cyber Commader (which works perfectly now after the “random-reboot repair”), the Nikon SB-800 inside the car was set to slave mode (SU-4).

Lighting and photographing cars à la strobist can be tricky since you get all kinds of reflections from the glossy paint and chrome surfaces, but after trying a couple compositions I found some angles where I could avoid the huge light reflecting in the paint, chrom or glass and found what I was looking for. At certain angles the reflection of the light modifiers can look horrible, especially when they reflect in the glass. This is the best time to get your notes out from Physics class and remember the two laws of reflection:

There are two Laws of Reflection:

1. The incident ray,the reflected ray and normal lie in the same plane at the point of incidence.
2. The angle of incidence is always equal to the angle of reflection.

If memorizing theory and physics is not your cup of tee then just do what I did. Look through the viefinder, move around until you don’t see any reflections of the light modifier (in my case the 86 inch PLM Parbolic Umbrella from Alien Bees). At some angles you’ll never be able to completely avoid the reflection of your light and then it is best to frame the shot in a way to have the catch light in areas where the reflection is more pleasing and less pronounced.

John I don’t know how you are coping with the fact that you are selling this car. All these memories over all these years.  Honestly I would not able to do it.. and I am glad I had the chance to make some of the last photos of her together with you.
I sure hope she’ll find a good home…

Portrait of a Stranger - José

Assignment two at project52.org was to photograph a  stranger. I must say this particular assignment was an eyeopener.

I am sure that any photographer, professional or amateur, has suffered from some form of “photography-block” – including me. No inspiration, no motivation and the list goes on and on and then come all the excuses as to why you cannot take any “great” images.

Let me tell you, participating in a photography project will definitely help open your photographic eye, especially if your are not shooting on a regular basis

The assignment of photographing a total stranger was very liberating. At first I had no idea where to go, what gear to take and who to ask to photograph. But then I said to myself “screw it” and I put the 50mm prime on my camera, grabbed my smallest reflector disc (32 inch) and jumped into my car and started to drive.

Not really having a plan as to where to go I ended up at a park near my house and decided to get out of the car to look around and see whom I could ask to photograph – and there I saw this frail and elderly slow-walking man walking with a cane. I nervously approached him and asked him if I could have a moment of his time. Explaining my assignment to him, without hesitation he agreed to let me photograph him and take his portrait. And then there it was, a moment hard to describe – but it was a special moment, looking through the viewfinder, seeing a simple man who has probably endured a lot of pain, seemed full of wisdom and hope and perseverance.

At first I kept focusing only on his face wanting to just take a tight head shot but then I noticed the long shadows cast by him and some street lamps intersecting the path. Instead of waisting time trying to get this stranger into a pose I simply moved around to find a frame – The only words of instrucions from me were “Just be yourself…”

Hard to explain, but it simply clicked and I thought i just captured “it”.

After I took this picture, José told me that he was staying with his daughter and he had to stay close to his house in case there was an emergency. Jose just had a stroke about three months ago and his doctor told him that it was good for him to go on short walks.

I asked him if he would like a print of the photograph I took, but he said: “No – that’s o.k.” Then I thanked him for his time and we parted ways. This all took place in less than 2 minuts.

After the encounter with José I strolled a little bit longer around in the park and photographed three more strangers.

Wow, this assignment was quite liberating and a profound experience.

Now I know what Don Giannatti meant when he said;

Photographing someone you don’t know can be a scary proposition for many of us. I am fairly shy, or at least not that comfortable with walking up to someone and striking up a conversation. I usually will not do that.

UNLESS… I have my camera around my neck or in my hand. When I am ‘a photographer’ I can easily and without hesitation walk up to people and ask to make their picture. I do it a lot, actually.

Here is what I took away from Assignment Two, Photographing a Stranger:

Assignment two very well could be the holy grail to overcoming lack of inspiration, lack of creativity and/or motivation – at least for me.

Playing at the River

Originally I used this image for testing purposes while I was tweaking the design of my blog a little bit but after looking at it I just decided to leave it up… This image was captured September 4th, 2009 west of Buckeye, Arizona somewhere along the I-10 freeway.

Checking on Southwest Lightning confirmed that it was worthwhile to venture out and try to get some shots. Not wanting to go too far I decided to head north on the Loop 101 and found a spot to shoot from just north of the 101 on Hayden Rd. After getting situated with my tripod and camera I started to click away.While I was concentrating on framing a shot and making sure that I was focused I heard a car pull up near to where I was parked and sure enough there was a guy getting out of his car with a tripod and a camera bag.

There was no way to ignore each other, especially considering the fact that we both spotted each other’s Nikon gear from the distance. We quickly exchanged “hello” and it turns out that this  Nikon shooter is a fellow European, from former Yugoslavia. Ivan told me that he just recently got into photography and picked up a Nikon D40 but is already looking to upgrade to a D90 very soon.

Ivan set up right next to me and started to click along. How cool is it to keep meeting other photographers out in the desert during monsoon? Funny how small the world becomes when there is good storm brewing in the Arizona desert. Not too long ago, we ran into Tony Laubach of Tornados Kick during a Monsoon Storm, August 23rd 2009 at the I-10 and Ave 75 E Exit, east of Quartzsite, Arizona.

I am just surprised that I haven’t run into other local Flickr storm chasers yet…

I captured this image on August 23rd, 2009 just east of Quartzsite, Arizona near I-10 and Ave 75 E.

That evening there was hardly any cloud to ground lightning at this position despite the size of that storm cell, but the drama unfolding in the sky was just spectacular. “Highway to Hell” was the first thing which came to my mind when I saw the image on my screen…

This image was taken in Fountain Hills, Arizona near the Fountain looking towards Saguaro Blvd. August 21st 2009 was a beautiful day to chase Monsoon Storms in the Valley of the Sun. There were storm cells in every corner of the valley.

A capture of Monsoon Storm over Phoenix, Arizona

This image was captured July 20th, 2009 from the look-out at South Mountain Park in Phoenix, Arizona. Chasing after Monsoon Storms all over Arizona and photographing mother nature unleashing its power is one of my favorite things to do.