This experience reminded me of how I've always preferred natural light photography over studio or flash photography. (I'm not knocking studio photography, as great art can occur there. It's just not for me, as I prefer to venture out and search for the unexpected. As for flash photography - it's fine for ribbon cuttings or shots from the office Christmas party. However, it imposes an artificial blast of light on the subjects and obliterates whatever mood was set by the existing light.) Sometimes working with natural light is matter of navigating low or highly selective lighting conditions to find a compelling focal point, like a beacon in the darkness. Other times, as with this event (which I attended in the early evening), there is an overabundance of light, and so in addition to providing uniformly adequate lighting (where appropriate), it also presents opportunities to use the excess light to great effect. After all, chrome is meant to gleam, and so if you position yourself to catch the sun glinting off a shiny surface, it can give a picture the extra something it deserves, be it an enhanced sense of depth or contour, or merely a sort of photographic 'jewelry'.
Although I have always been infatuated with the overall forms and lines of classic cars, the graphic design and calligraphy geek in me has also become increasingly fixated on details and markings that hark back to an era where industrial design and lettering could be by turns brash, delicate or swanky, or some combination of all three. This was a time that was more free hand and open-ended, in thinking as well as execution, whereas today is an age of point-and-click plasticity.
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