At The Carwash
The Daughter is teething and generally miserable, so I took her out on a drive to take her mind off things. On our way up the road we passed this old carwash with one of those sweet multicolored structural signs that covers the whole of the building. Then it hit me – why don’t I have a photo of that? So we stopped at the Jack in the Box across the street and proceeded to take a horrible picture.
I couldn’t quite get any decent angle without running into traffic and leaving my child fatherless, so I stuck with what I could get standing on my truck, which wasn’t great. I ended up with a shot that just didn’t do the structure justice.
When I got home I started screwing around with cropping to see if I could pull out a good image or at least plan ahead for how I’d like to shoot it later. What I ended up getting was a cool landscape shot that I decided to desaturate and then colorize – just for fun.
I have to admit – I like this image now. It’s what I imagine a postcard from the 50s celebrating Monrovia, California might look like. Make sure to take a look at the detailed version on Flickr too.
EDIT: I’m including the original shot, just to show how bad it was.
Responses and Conversations
I really like what you’ve done. next time make certain to have a chainsaw for that pole. You might try just moving to the left a little to place the pole between the S and the H. It’s still a very cool image. Late… Baddog
Comment by Lance Calvin on March 1st, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Thanks!
I thought that about the pole after I got home. In fact, I seriously considered making it look like it was coming up from the back of the building.
But then I remembered a number of photos like this that I’ve seen and they always seemed to have weird stuff like that in the scene, so I left it. Always true to the era. Heh.
Comment by Christopher Frazier on March 1st, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Awesome! I really like your final image, very Googie. Always remember my favorite quote: “Ansel Adams would have Loved Photoshop!”.
Comment by JimmyD on March 1st, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Love it! What’s the little watermark in the upper right say?
Comment by John Koontz on March 1st, 2006 at 9:36 pm
Jim – growing up in Los Angeles, I’ve always loved our Googie heritage. My mom would always point out buildings she remembered from her youth. I’m planning to shoot some of the other wonderful signage in Monrovia over the next week, so I’ll see if I can get some more good examples of this. Also – nice quote.
John – the numbers up in the right are meant to be like a serial number on the negative. Any time I find an old picture I try to decipher how they coded their serial numbers. I just figured it fit. Oh – and it’s a Photoshop brush too.
Comment by Christopher Frazier on March 1st, 2006 at 10:24 pm
[...] Man, this photo-a-day thing is crankin’! It also must be the place for old signs like Chris’ Carwash, and BadDog’s funky old piece. [...]
Comment by Digital Photography Blogs - slightly out of focus - Blog Archive » Day 10…already? on March 5th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
[...] What I’m finding with photographs of old signs is that if you want to give them a timeless feel, you might have to edit out some of the modern day details. (See Chris’ photo of an old car wash sign near our home from last year’s 30 Day Photo Challenge for an example. He so wished he could have had more time to set up the shot without the power lines.) [...]
Comment by Shooting the Kids - » Day 29: Old Signs and Sepia — A Winning Combo on March 29th, 2007 at 8:46 pm