I Love to Photograph Old Cars

19554-55 Pontiac. Georgia Highway 192, Stillmore, Emanuel County.

 

I first began photographing old/abandoned cars on my Sunday afternoon rambles around northwest Georgia in the late 1970s.  I think that fixation goes hand-in-hand with my interest in photographing old and abandoned buildings, which began a few years earlier. It definitely fits with a statement I wrote some years ago about my aspirations as a photographer:

I am a visual historian of mid-twentieth-century America and a recorder of the interface between man and nature; a keeper of vanishing ways of life. I'm drawn to the old, the historic, the quirky and offbeat, the strange and unusual, and the beautiful. Old houses, old cars. old churches, old courthouses, old mills, covered bridges and historic sites. 

It's something the Japanese call Wabi-Sabi -- the art of finding beauty in imperfection. That's what I do. I seek beauty in the imperfections with which life surrounds us. Because, imperfect or not, life is beautiful. As Robert Lewis Stevenson wrote in his A Child's Garden of Verses, "Life is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

1959 Edsel. U.S. Highway 89, southwestern Utah.

 

 An interesting side note: Louise's mother had an Edsel like this when we were dating and first married. Hers was blue and cream.

 

About the photos: Both of these pictures were made with my favorite combination for photographing old cars: the Fuji X-Pro-1 with the Fujinon XF 27mm f2.8 lens. The picture of the old Pontiac was made on September 29, 2021 and the Edsel was photographed on September 25, 2018.

 

If you like my pictures, visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    travel photography     Fuji X-Pro-1 camera     Fujinon XF 27mm f2.8 lens      digital photography     old cars    Pontiac    Edsel    Wabi-Sabi