Images from the Id – Doc or What Came First the Motel or the Movie?

One the basic requirements of being a photographer is luck. Now don’t get confused, luck has nothing to do with some magical ability to win at roulette. I firmly believe in making your own luck. In photography, this means you have to get out there to find the stories you want to tell and the best will eventually come to you. You roll the dice enough and you will roll a 7.

On the way back from the Grand Canyon, we decided to go through the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. The bit of luck occurred in Holbrook Arizona. It’s always fun to visit the towns along the old Route 66 highway. These are like small spots of history in the middle of the super Interstate monotony. A surprising amount of the town economy comes from encouraging the Route 66 tourist.  Holbrook is no except. It’s a gem of what the highway was during the 50’s and 60’s before Eisenhower’s great highways chopped the countywide into high speed blandness.

What fun it was to discover the Wigwam Motel. Driving east on I-40 (yes Interstate 40) from Winslow Arizona (Remember the old Eagles song…”Well, I’m a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona and such a fine sight to see. It’s a girl, my Lord in a flatbed Ford slowing’ down to take a look at me.” I digress. Now knowing the time period of the Wigwam Motel it obviously came before the “Cars” movie but there it was and there was Doc. Now if you don’t get to animated feature films very often you may not recognize my reference but it is a great movie and worthy of watching if for no other reason than Paul Newman’s last roll as the voice of Doc Hudson the Hudson Hornet. Well, there’s Doc in all of his rusty splendor along with gaggles of other rusty “characters”. What a great shoot, the angles and textures. The characterizations of when cars had a certain anthropomorphic presence and people gave the pet names, loving them more than their cats (notice I did not say dogs), stood out all around the motel. Take your time. Have fun. Are you getting the point?

Image 1 “The Wigwam”

One of the motel’s “units” 1/750 sec, f/8.0, -1/2 EV ISO 100, 95 mm/142 mm equivalent , I removed the top three power wires in Photoshop CC 14

Image 2 “Doc” Old cars are great for HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography even if the shot wasn’t bracketed. This single image was processed as three images each about 1 f/stop apart. To give a very bright, a normal and a dark result they were then processed in Photomatix Pro a s if they were bracketed. 1/60 sec, f/22 (really need that depth of field), 0 EV ISO 100, 12mm.

Image 3 “Pick’um’up Truck” a real HDR stacking of 5 images in Photomatix Pro. I little negative vignette added to hide some edge flaws. Basic normal exposure 1/500 sec, f/9.5, ISO 200 (hand held HDR needs ISO a little higher to compensate for a slower shutter speed at the darker end) 18 mm. When bracketing for HDR change the shutter speed and not the aperture. Changing the aperture would effect the focus by changing the Depth of Field