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I’ve been wanting to work on this piece ever since I shot it but haven’t been able to find the spare time to do so. I captured this old antique car on a recent excursion to the mountains with friends to see some autumn color. We had actually stopped for a car accident that we happened upon, while one of our party assisted the victims until the rescue teams got there. The accident happened in front of a couple of old country stores in a stretch of road called Echo Valley, so I got out with my camera and started exploring. This old car was parked out by a shed behind the stores in a fenced lot that hosted an interesting array of ducks, geese, ostrich and other assorted critters. I had to shoot through a hole in the chain link fence, and was limited in the angles I was able to try because of the fence and the layout of the scene. In the original photo, there was a tangle of chain link directly in front of the car, and an old metal bar round pen in front of a lean-to off to the left of the car. My exposure wasn’t great and neither was the background scenery, sooooo, I CHANGED it up with some elements from some other photos in my collection. The shed behind the car seemed dull somehow, even after all the editing and effects, so I added an old weathered coke sign to it. Ahhh, yeah…just right! Too bad the ugly things in LIFE aren’t so easy to change and improve.

One year, the grandkids and I took a drive to the mountains to celebrate Kendall’s birthday. After an adventure at Chimney Rock state park, we drove toward Asheville, then hit the Blue Ridge Parkway for the drive home. It was the first time I had driven on mountain roads and I had not yet learned the usefulness of 2nd gear in my new compact car, so we had to stop several times after some steep declines to let my brakes cool off. This gorgeous stand of trees was located at a picnic area on the side of the road.

I suppose the composition of this shot is nothing spectacular, but nature’s blazing array of color certain was. Not much I could really add to that.

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