It’s been a year since I did my knee in, mentioned in this post. Several months of physiotherapy and finally, a visit to the sports med for a second opinion later, it turns out this injury is permanent, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
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The only time I’ve been compelled to play with artificial lighting (in this case, 3 speedlights and 2 video lights), is when there’s a great looking vehicle involved. Case in point:
The first digital camera I owned was an Olympus point and shoot, and it opened up a whole new world: post production. The idea of being able to do something with the photos i’d taken, all by myself, was too exciting for words. See, I am a fiddler of the fidgety-hands sort (not musical, unfortunately) and any excuse to waste time playing, I am interested in.
The very first thing I learnt to do in Photoshop, was bump up the contrast… largely because it was the only tool whose name I could understand. And i was amazed at just how different a photo became when you’d pulled the contrast up about 5 points, never mind to the end of the slider. So for a while all of my photos were stupidly contrasty (i guess you could say that they still are). I was in heaven. I had it made.
Armed with newly acquired camera and software, I’d practice, of course, on the vehicles. Some posts from back in the day: my beautiful old Prelude and the very first diesel Patrol we owned, my friend Audrey’s fabulous R33 Skyline, and of course, the all the motorbikes. Vehicles make for good subjects.
I was whizzing around on the creeper, under the Patrol the other day, in one side and out the other, to see how far I could go with one shove (without scraping any skin off). I find being underneath the Patrol while she’s standing, four square, feels very much like hiding under the bed as a kid, playing games. It’s fun, and a bonus that there are so many interesting things to look at while you’re there. I often wonder that the relatively dainty arms and struts and supports distributed throughout the length of her undercarriage, can withstand the abuse of her 3 ton mass interacting with force on uneven terrain. It’s marvelous.
But of course, no afternoon of pointless, rubbish activity would be complete without some pictures. And so, a regression to those early days, here are some textures from the truck at maximum contrast.
