Pinstriping Perfection...

I've done stories on Steve Cox before and he's an amazingly talented guy. He hand pinstripes cars and the work he does is nothing short of amazing. So, when I heard we were doing a story featuring him for our coverage of the World of Wheels it was both good and bad. It was cool, because I knew the work that he'd be doing would look really cool, but I also needed to get something different than what I have done in the past. Then I found out they needed me to shoot his pix and get them and then go shoot a basketball game 40 miles out of town. Luckily, he had one car to work on, a junior dragster. After he got set up, I only had about 15 minutes to shoot, but it turned out well, he got quite a bit of the design done.

One of the (very few) good things about being crunched for time is, I usually end up leaving without a lot of shots, which means less photos to edit and less time to get done to move on to the next assignment. Sadly, this is quickly becoming more the norm than the exception across the newspaper/photojournalism industry with the cutting staffs. I guess the only thing left to do is make due with what you get.

World of Wheels...

The World of Wheels is an event I shoot nearly every year. So, trying to find something new gets rather tough. I know I could probably shoot a similar photo from it every year and I doubt anyone would notice, the problem is, I would. So, it becomes sort of a challenge to shoot something a little different every year. This year we were looking for a full slideshow from the event. It was really easy to shoot a bunch of detail photos of the cars and people looking at them, as well as some photos of former University of Texas wide receiver Jordan Shipley signing autographs (we had another story about that), as well the the hundreds of people waiting in line to meet him and I was done. However, for the photo for the paper I wanted to find something decent. I walked around the place a couple times people watching and gawking at the sweet rides on display. After a couple laps around the civic center I decided to go upstairs and make a few frames from up high. I waited around until there was a big group around the cars and had my shot.

It's not a pink Cadillac...

It was actually a Ford, but it was still a pretty car. And the owner had quite the crowd around the car. With all the plastic and fiberglass that cars of today are made of, it makes it a lot easier to appreciate the just how beautiful the old cars of the 50's and 60's really were. I actually have come to enjoy shooting car shows, not just for the photos that can be made, but just to be able to gawk at these old cars I could never afford.