With spring approaching for many collectors, and it’s time to take the old truck or car out. And while it’s out and clean, why not take some nice photographs of it?
Taking good photographs isn’t very difficult, especially with today’s idiot-proof digital cameras. Thanks to these cameras, hobbyists capturing the image of their car or truck only have to look to the details to obtain a well-composed shot.
After years of taking photographs of my own cars and other people’s cars, and looking at other people’s photos, I’ve captured some “how-not-to” images. The images below show what to avoid when photographing a car, and use an immaculate, unrestored 1962 Ford Thunderbird that goes unflattered, thanks to the poor photography methods exhibited here. Don’t let your car end up like this poor Thunderbird!

No, the gap in the door isn’t due to poor build quality, it’s caused by an inattentive passenger who hasn’t figured out how to shut the door (without slamming it, of course). Make sure the hood, doors and deck lid are shut before doing the same with your camera’s shutter.




There are a lot of things wrong here. That’s sure a nice, orange plow truck in the background. And that light pole appears to have fresh paint, as do the yellow stripes in the parking lot. Oh, wait, this photograph is supposed to be centered on a 1962 Thunderbird. Also notice that, even from afar, the door is clearly not shut all the way.



What’s that growth coming out of the Thunderbird’s roof? Did a linear meteor fall from outer space and penetrate the T-Bird? Did Jack plant a bean between the ‘Bird’s bucket seats? Nope, it’s a light pole. Before snapping a picture, make sure there are no distractions behind the car, especially vertical signs, trees, poles, etc. Also, notice how the lines in the parking lot fight with the car, particularly because they are perpendicular to the car. Even avoid taking photos of the car while it’s parked parallel to such lines, as they remain distracting and often reflect in the car’s paint.




Who is that photographer? Oh, wait, who cares? The subject is the bumper end, not the person behind the camera. Few care what type of camera you are using, and those who might won’t be impressed enough to care since a composition that includes the photographer and their equipment is poor. Detail shots are great, and not enough people take them, but be sure to adjust your angle by moving side to side or crouching down to stay out of the shot.





Sins abound in this view. There’s the sumo wrestlers on the dash, the hat hanging from the rearview mirror and the partially open window, as well as the reflection of a light pole. Sure, this is a close-up view that few would take, but even with the car in full view, these distractions would show up.




See? I told you they would show up. Here’s a view from a step back. Notice that the reflection of the light pole can be seen in the windshield and how the condensation coming out of the tailpipe makes it appear this car burns enough oil to make the Saudis salivate. And does the window not go all the way down? Or all the way up? Button up the car’s windows, shut it off and take your picture, preferably in a location without those lame yellow stripes.




How many things wrong can you spot in this photo? There’s that green swap meet sign poking up from behind the car. That background has many different depths, which only make the viewer want to walk past the car. The worst sin of all, at least to someone such as myself, is that the car is parked on grass when there’s a path nearby. Cars are driven on roads, driveways and other established paths, not on your crabby neighbor’s well-manicured lawn. Therefore, your car should be pictured on an established path for a more realistic shot. When a car is pictured next to a path or a road, but not on it, the viewer is given the impression the car was pulled over due to a malfunction. If that’s not what you’re trying to portray, stay off the grass!




This one is simple: Get your car or truck in the middle of the camera viewer! Also, unless you’re selling the car, no one cares if you remembered to set the date on your camera or when you took the photo.



Clean, non-distracting backgrounds are great, but get too bland and it doesn’t help the car. In this spot, the T-Bird looks like it’s parked in a dark alley while its owner is off to conduct some illegal activity that may or may not put the French Connection to shame.




Don’t be afraid of your car – unless it’s Christine, it won’t bite. Get your car square in the center of the view finder with a little space around the edges.




There are many other tips, such as avoiding taking photos on sunny days to avoid shadows and making sure the wheels are not turned towards the camera. This will only help you get started towards better photographs that emphasize your car’s beauty. If captured correctly, photographs of your car should appeal to the senses and make you feel like hopping in for a long cruise. If not, take another picture until you do!

Club publications are an excellent resource for their articles, photos and networking resources. Equally as importantly, club pubs often provide excellent sources through display and classified ads for the small bits and parts that keep old cars like yours on the road.

As a dreamer who loves many different types of cars, I often find myself paging through the club publications of many different clubs. Among those is Woodie Times, the publication of the National Woodie Club. This magazine-format club publication is edited by Old Cars Weekly columnist John Lee, who does a fantastic job. However, it wasn't just Lee's editorial skills that caught my attention in the February issue of Woodie Times, it was a classified listing for a picnic table. "A picnic table?," you ask? It's not just any old picnic table, but one actually used by Ford Motor Co. employees at the Iron Moutnain plant where the bodies for Ford woodies were constructed.

According to the ad, the maple picnic table was constructed of the same solid maple used to build Ford wagon bodies and came in to posession of an Iron Mountain Ford employee upon the plant's closing in 1951 (In 1952, Ford went to steel wagons).

What's interesting about the table is its proof of provenance. The table features two tags on its leg: one simply gives a number (perhaps some type of property number), and a second tag that states "Property of Ford Motor Co." and "If detatched, forward to tag dept." There is a also number on this tag that reads much like an automotive serial number.

If you're a collector of all things Ford, a cooler collectible you will not find! Plus, you can eat your hickory-smoked barbecue off it the next time you have fellow woodie members over for dinner.

To learn more about the National Woodie Club, write to: John Lee, PO Box Lincoln, NE 68506, or e-mail johnlee@neb.rr.com, or go to www.nationalwoodieclub.com.

To give dues-paying club members a fair chance at responding to this classified ad, I will post the seller's contact info in the next week.

All right, Camaro owners and fans -- I can’t take it anymore. If you misspell the name of your car one more time, I am going to internally combust like a 302 running premium, except it won’t sound as pretty. And then I am going to take your keys away until you respect your car enough to spell its name correctly.

With the new Camaro getting ready to hit the streets, it’s a problem we need to nip in the bud now: There is no “e” in Camaro. Not one. Not two. None. In fact, the name is written in several places on the car to help you spell it correctly: on the door panels, on the front fenders, on the header panel, on the instrument panel and on the deck lid, depending on the year. In fact, the common misspelling of Camaro is not even a word, and if it weren’t for the Chevrolet pony car, Camaro would not even be a word at all.

I won’t give you the satisfaction of misspelling “Camaro” here, but you know the spelling I am talking about. The one with that “e” where the second “a” should go. And it’s a widespread problem. If you type the misspelling of Camaro into “Google,” you’ll get more than 17 million web pages. That’s ridiculous, but that’s not what got my blood boiling most recently. It was when I received a letter from a retired GM employee who worked at the company during the muscle car era and even he misspelled Camaro, finally sending me over the edge.

The pressure has been building for decades, since I started reading auto shopper-type publications as a kid. Frequently, the Camaro name was misspelled, and it always drove me nuts, even though I was ten. And if a ten year old is annoyed, there’s no reason that a 20 year old (or older person) should be misspelling the name of their car.

So, let’s join together and start spelling Camaro correctly. The Camaro is a legend worthy of this small honor, and the new model is poised to continue that legend. It’s the least we can do for a car that brings smiles to so many, including me.

I love year-of-manufacture (YOM) license plates. Nothing tops off a fine restoration or a good original better than a pair of license plates from the year the car was built.

Fortunately, I was able to run YOM plates in Minnesota, and took advantage of it by running them on both '55 Cadillacs. (I never added them to my '62 Caddy, since the 1962 Minnesota plate is almost identical to the black-and-white collector plate.)

I received a note from a fellow Caddy collector in Wisconsin who said he's working with a representative who may write a bill allowing YOM plates in Wisconsin, and all I can say is "It’s about time." Because YOM plates are not permitted on cars in this state, I still register most of my old cars to Minnesota under my parent’s name so I can run year of manufacture (YOM) plates. (In Minnesota, you also do not have to run a front license plate on a pre-1968 car, which I also like to take advantage of. This may also be part of the Wisconsin bill.)

They tried passing a bill to allow YOM plates before in Wisconsin, and just a few years ago, but they were not successful. As I understand it, people who helped draft the original collector license plate policy in Wisconsin had a hand in drafting the YOM plate bill that did not pass. When working on the previous YOM bill, these hobbyists were trying to make it so every collector had to have their car registered to a collector license plate, even if they displayed a YOM plate. The problem would be, when an officer pulls up the number for a YOM plate displayed on the car, it would not be in the system since the car was actually registered to a collector plate stored in the car. The officer would have to have the owner pull out their collector plate from the trunk or glove box in order to find its record. Of course, such a process is ridiculous and the bill didn’t get anywhere.

In Minnesota, and in many other states, owners can register their car to the YOM plate or a collector plate. The state collects the same fee for YOM plates as it does the collector plate, but the owner gets to choose which one to register their car under. If the owner wants to register their car with a YOM plate, they must bring the plate to the DMV, which checks to make sure the number is not already taken and the plates are in good condition (and are dated to the year of the car).

The only problem is, when buying a used YOM plate, the purchaser doesn’t know if the number on the plate is taken until they get to the DMV, but I have heard very few people grumble about this or even encounter a problem. Also, if the owner of a 1955 Chevy runs collector plates, they can change to YOM plates at a later date and back again, though they have to pay a processing fee of some kind.

If Wisconsin follows policies enacted by Minnesota and other states, Wisconsin hobbyists with low numbers can keep and continue to use their collector plates, or they can register their car to YOM plates. Just not both.

I also think that, if we're going to start messing with collector plates in Wisconsin, the DMV should change the color of the collector plates to something legible. I don’t know the color wheel very well, but I do know red and blue do not mix. And whey the colors are mixed on a license plate, making out the numbers is impossible. Why not the old yellow-and-black again? Nothing says "dairyland" like yellow. Am I right?

If I learn of any traction to YOM plates in Wisconsin, I'll keep you posted right here on my blog.

Not too long ago, I told you about the trailer exhibit leaving the Petersen Automotive Museum. Well, officials at the museum came through with some wild photos of a mid-air Airstream and a hanging Hunt House Car.
Enjoy!

Trailers Take Flight After Museum Closes Exhibit

(Los Angeles, CA February 13, 2009) Eight pre-1940 camping vehicles took a road less traveled on Tuesday during the move out of the From Autocamps to Airstreams: The Early Road to Vacationland exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum. This six-month exhibition was one of many themed temporary exhibits that the museum uses to capture the imagination of its visitors in order to educate them. These vehicles were arranged in chronological order in an illustrative campsite setting.

To get these large recreational vehicles in and out of the Grand Salon on the second floor was no easy feat. The spiral ramps at the ends of the attached parking structure are too confined to use for anything that large, so a crane from Specialty Crane and Rigging was brought in to assist. One by one, the vehicles were loaded on to an adjustable purpose-built platform and gently took a 30-second flight down to Fairfax Avenue where they were off loaded.

Ironically, one of the campers that took flight was custom-built for Charles Lindberg, who was the first person to fly non-stop from New York to Paris in 1927, and another was a 1935 Curtiss Aerocar built by the company of the same name founded by aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss.

The Grand Salon is currently being prepared for the next exhibit, What Were They Thinking? The Misfits of Motordom, which opens February 28th. This new exhibit will explore vehicle ideas where "thinking outside of the box" didn't live up to the success that it may have promised.

The Petersen Automotive Museum Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) charity. The Museum is located at 6060 Wilshire Boulevard (at Fairfax) in Los Angeles.  Admission prices are $10 for adults, $5 for seniors and students with ID, and $3 for children ages 5 to 12. Museum members and children under five are admitted free. Covered parking is available for $8.00 per car. Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 10am to 6pm. For general Museum information, call 323/930-CARS or visit the Museum’s Web site address at www.petersen.org.

This week’s issue of Old Cars Weekly is packed with how-to stories to inspire you to head into the garage, whether you’re in warm or cold climes. Gerald Perschbacher covers the replacement of a leather top on his 1937 Packard Formal Sedan, while John Gunnell shows you some tips on replacing the heat duct work on postwar Pontiacs. You’ll also be able to follow the procedure for replacing floor pans in a finned Chrysler Corp. products, although the process is the same for nearly every type of car.

For collectors living in areas where winter means sub-zero temperatures and several inches or feet of snow, this time of year is often looked upon as an opportunity to catch up on improvements and maintenance of an old car. For those who are even braver, this down time is seen as a chance to dive wrench first into a complete restoration.

With my Cadillac engine at the machine shop this winter, I hoped to proceed with several small projects around the engine compartment. There is a bundle of wires that need replacement, correct hoses and clamps to order and some engine decals to search out. My progress has been slow, but here are some things I have done during the cold to help my project move along that may also help you with your project:

Order catalogs and check Web sites: Now is a good time to make a list of all the parts your vehicle needs and perhaps even those you might want. While searching through catalogs, you may find parts you didn’t know your vehicle even needed.

Research: To the benefit of its members, the Cadillac & LaSalle Club offers authenticity manuals for several eras of the cars it represents. Perhaps your club offers a similar product. Use factory photos and literature and compare the pictured features with questionable items on your car. Unanswered questions may be directed to a club technician.

Used parts hunting: Even in northern climates, winter weather lets up every once in a while, providing great opportunities for hitting the local salvage yard.

Restore components: If you have the appropriate space and ventilation indoors, sand and paint the parts to your vehicle and re-install them when the weather warms.

Perhaps these ideas will get you started or help you complete a few projects so your vehicle is ready for the road on the first, nice spring day.

The Petersen Automotive Museum's popular “From Autocamps to Airstreams” exhibit will close February 8, and if you hang around Los Angeles for a couple days after the exhibit closes, you might get to catch a few of the trailers hanging, literally, from the top of the museum. The exhibit is in the second floor and requires craning 9 of the pre-1940 trailers down to street level, because they are too large to go through the curved ramps of the parking structure. It will be quite a spectacle on Fairfax Avenue on Tuesday, February 10th. If you missed the installation craning last June, this will be a good time to experience and record something that you are not likely to see again.
 

Here's my near-perfect, first-generation Riv: a 1965, with the clamshell headlamps and the tail lamps in the rear bumper. I'll take a GS model with a dual-quad 425-cid V-8.