Old Cars And Old Men
So I was taking a walk around my neighborhood up in the highlands in Hudson Valley, and I saw through the spaces in the houses this old van. It was this great old rusty Chevy van. I walked around the block, and went down the alleyway to get to it. It was just sitting there as it had sat for the last 10 years probably.
After I had gotten a few nice shots, this old guy came out wondering what the heck I was doing. He was a nice old guy, and really I should have asked him if I could take his picture too, but I was too intrigued by the van. Anyways he asked me why I was taking pictures of his van, to which I replied, “because it’s such a cool old car”. I think that subdued his concerns. After that I got a little back story on the van.
Apparently It was use
d in Hawaii Five - O for a few scenes out in California. Then that’s when he bought it from the studio for cheap. He says that he restored it in the 80’s but then it got all run down again, and he planned on restoring it again. Whether that will actually happen or not is a different story, it looked like it had been sitting for a long long time. He said the last time it had actually been running was sometime about 10 years ago. That seemed about right. He says that he did drive it all the way out from California to Czech Republic back a long time ago. I thought that was interesting imagining him driving the big van all the way out from California. He seemed like the type that would have made that trip a lot of fun, probably involving peyote along the way.
As far as the shot goes, I just really enjoyed seeing the kind of texture that was on a steering wheel that was that old. It was so cool looking. I felt like that was the only part of the van that had a focal point. So I took a lot of shots of the steering wheel and tried to find the most interesting one out of the bunch.
This shot was the same sort of thing. Old truck in an alleyway over by my house. It had great character, like it had been through a ton, and this was its final resting place. The other interesting thing was how brightly colored the front badge was compared to the rest of the truck. It was pretty much a rundown white color, but the front badge was this bright red color. I thought it looked great in contrast to the mostly white background.
Old V8’s rock!
-Dave
