Gazing At The Galaxie
My friend John has a pretty cool car.
A 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 XL with a 390 engine.
Cars like this one are in his blood. His father, Gas Ronda, was huge in the California stock car and funny car scenes, and is in the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame.
John doesn’t race or anything but he does have this beauty in his garage.
For the longest time, he wanted to get nice photos of it. We’d been trying to do it for awhile, but things, life, kept getting in the way. That said, I always had the idea to do it against a beautiful evening sky…but also somewhere nearby.
Sunday was beautiful day here, sunny with lots of great cloudage. I had a feeling we’d be seeing some nice October evening light, so I shot John a text to see if he’d be around at 5:45 pm or so.
He said he would be. So around 5:30, I grabbed my camera back, the Neewer Vision 7 strobe and a speedlight, and did a quick little scout of our area (John only lives a couple of miles from me) to see where would be best.
There’s a sod farm nearby, and they had a little cut-out that held a farm stand this past summer. When I pulled into it, I knew this was the spot….or at least the best we could do without driving too far away.
We had to work quick, though. The light was changing fast and pretty soon the pretty colors streaking across the sky would be gone.
On top of that my strobe battery wasn’t fully recharged, it was starting to get hinky – not firing, firing multiple strobes. (my bad for not fully charging it after my shoot last Friday. Amature mistake)
So I got with what I could while it was still firing, then switched over to my speedlight with a diffuser.
Again, go what I could.
To be honest, I learned a lot here.
First, this kind of car photography is challenging. Either of my light sources really weren’t big enough. I won’t lie – there’s a good bit of post-processing going on here to pull out the underexposed areas.
Then, too, with the flash…that reflects in the shiny paint job. Again, more post work to remove it.
Had to do one in B&W, of course. Might use it in a noir shoot at some point.
This was a fun, albeit quick, shoot as we chased the light – literally. A beautiful baby got her beauty shots, though!
© Mark V. Krajnak | JerseyStyle Photography | All Rights Reserved 2020
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Mark, you did the car justice. It’s a beauty.
Much thanks. Got lucky with the sky.