As mentioned in Milo's Impreza, I went to No Fly Zone with a group of people. Keaton, a very close friend of mine I met in the beginning of college, was another person in our group, driving his WRX. And, as stated before, when a Subaru and some dirt combine, rally drifting ensues. Milo and Keaton drove together, however, due to all the dust kicked up, I could only photograph the lead car, which was always Milo because he has more experience than Keaton. However, that doesn't mean I couldn't snap a photo of his WRX as it emerged from the dust. Look forward to an actual feature of Keaton and his WRX soon.
Milo's Impreza
I'm working on No Fly Zone and Cars and Coffee photos, but first, I wanted to share some pics Milo's Impreza. We went to No Fly Zone together with some other people, and after we were done spectating, we set out to a power plant we spotted in the distance to get some photos there. While we couldn't find a way in/couldn't find a suitable location, there was a nice dirt circle by the entrance. When dirt and Subarus combine, you get off-road drifts. Plenty of them. What do you do when this happens and you have a camera? Take some photos.
Since this was a spontaneous thing, I didn't get to do an "interview" per se with Milo about himself and his car to write about as a feature here. However, from the small talk we've made, Milo has plenty of racing experience, racing karts as a kid and cars like his Subaru in autocross and track events. Hence, when photographing him, everything felt completely controlled and comfortable. His car makes "unknown power"; I didn't as about what's under the hood, but it isn't stock, either. Clearly though, his skill and the car's unknown power showed itself in our little drift-photoshoot. Which, by the way, was on a dirt loop with only one entrance and exit that we blocked off, so it was a closed course, in case if anyone was wondering. We're professionals, folks.
Automotive Photos from the Past Month
I'm not dead, I promise. Just super busy and slow at editing photos. Here are the pictures I've posted on my Instagram/Facebook, I posted these thinking I would be done with the rest in a week and I would have all photos and a write up on the blog, but clearly that hasn't happened. I promise I will work on them as soon as possible though.
Transparent Hood Experiment
As a kid, one of the coolest illustrations of cars for me were cutaway diagrams which showed off the internals of the car- the engine, the suspension, etc. Perhaps there already was an engineer in my brain at that time that drew me to those types of images, but it's always interesting to look at everyday objects from a completely different perspective. There's so much more to a car than just its external appearance, hidden away under all that metal and plastic, a whole different world.
Reaching the level of being able to draw those cutaways will probably not happen for me, but with the magic of today's digital photography and editing software, it's possible to achieve similar effects. I've seen plenty of transparent hoods from photographer friends, and I decided that this summer, I was going to try it for myself. Well, summer is basically over, and I hadn't tried out this photography technique yet. So, I put aside the moving-in-and-getting-ready-for-class stress and activities for one evening to take these pictures of my dad's Mustang.
I knew that the procedure is actually pretty simple: take two pictures of the car from the same position, one with the hood down and one with the hood up, adjust each picture accordingly, and then blend the two images together in Photoshop. Luckily, I have an awesome photographer friend who also gave me tips on making the picture look much, much better than my original result (I wanted to focus on the engine only but made the transparency too tight on the engine itself, he told me to make it a more gentle fade/transition). Thanks Alex Schreer for your help! I will definitely be taking more shots like these in the future. Seeing the metal vanish to reveal the engineering below both makes my inner-engineer and inner-child smile in delight.
My favorite from my experiment, and also the picture that helped me get into the hang of making transparent hoods with the help of my friend. There's something magical about seeing beneath the metal to see the heart of the car beneath.
A closeup of the heart that lies hidden beneath the hood, glowing orange from the sunset.
Trying to be more creative with the angles so it's not just a straight-on shot or a close-up shot.
San Diego/Coronado Island Long Exposures
Since I don't sleep until late, and I managed to fit my tripod into my luggage, I was able to play around with long exposures. The Silver Strand Bike Path on Coronado Island gives amazing views of the San Diego skyline, with the bay glimmering below. Since Phoenix, located in a desert, lacks such bodies of water, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to take long exposure photographs of a city that actually can be identified as long exposure due to the water becoming glossy. So naturally, the first pictures I took were of the city. The first photo was taken in the late evening, so the blue of day still faintly remained. The other three were taken in the dead of night.
The locations I took the photos at of the skyline were around a mile away from the hotel I was staying at. Thus, it was a bit of a walk to get back and forth, so I wanted to get my money's worth when it came to subjects and photos. So, I turned my attention to the bay and the ferry landing. The USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) was still in port the first night I was there, with her registry number on her bridge glowing bright. I wished I could've gotten a picture of the Carl Vinson and Reagan's registry numbers as well, but their positions meant they were facing the San Diego side of the bay. Also, facing Coronado was the USS Midway museum, with her registry number, as well as decorative lights, glowing. I thought the pictures of their registry numbers glowing in the night would look fantastic, so after trial and error I managed to snap pics of them. Since I had to be on the ferry landing to get these pictures, I also decided to photograph the pier and local beach area, once filled with people, now completely deserted, save for the fishermen... more on that later. It's interesting what happens at night; while taking photos, I ran into a group from Turkey and talked with them a bit- turns out one of the men in the group studied engineering at the University of San Diego some 20 odd years ago. Night time is always interesting; a whole new group of people are out when the sun sets.
Back to the fishermen, the pier that is usually filled with tourists or people simply seeking a relaxing, fun time on the island was now filled with fishermen. Fishing poles and people lined the sides, with some quiet music thumping and muffled chatter filling the air. This being the first time I've ever been out late in Coronado Island, this was a completely new side to the place that I never knew existed. Despite it being so late, they had an energy with them, that I decided to try to capture with long exposures that would show their movement and activity. I call these photos "The Fishermen of the Night".
Of course, how can I forget the Coronado Bay Bridge and the shipyards beneath it? To be honest, from the Coronado Island side the bridge isn't really in an attractive position; it just looks like a thin line stretching across the sky. But, the bay below it stretched far out in all directions, and the lights from the bridge and the shipyards certainly made things interesting, especially in the water reflections.
The walkways emptied out by around 10:30pm or so. Cleverly, the LED lamps that illuminate the walkways stay at half power unless someone walks under them. I always thought the walkways were paved in a fun way, like a race course, and with the lights over them and city skyline in the background, I thought they would make for a perfect picture. Of course, when I first tried taking photos, the half-illumination status of the lights didn't create the bright, dramatic effect I wanted, so I had to run underneath each of them to trigger them before taking the picture. I find a beauty in empty roads and paths; perhaps its the philosophical and metaphorical parts of my brain romanticizing the images. Maybe the stillness invokes ideas of tranquility and quietness. But to see only portions lit makes the effect even more dramatic.
However, these are the images I am the most proud of. Why is the sky so wispy, and why is the water smooth as glass? Well, each of these pictures were 8 minute exposures. I first noticed on one of my bridge pictures that lasted for a minute that the long exposure caused the clouds the clouds to be drawn out and the water to be even more smoothed over than my previous 15, 20, and 30 second exposures (naturally). So, I decided I would use my ND filters to try to create an ultra-long exposure, and after messing around a bit, I got these two photos. Since they took 8 minutes each to take, it was pretty time consuming so I didn't have a chance to take many. But, I am extremely happy with these.
I also decided to take a blurry picture of the pier and edit it, for l'art:
