Cruisin' Grand

I love vintage cars. They've always been such a joy to shoot. The love and care that their owners pour into each sparkling piece of chrome or every polished fender is obvious. The cars come in all different shapes, sizes and colors, and OH the colors! Reds, greens, yellow, blues, splashed on as flames and stripes or candy colored marvels.

I've found that shooting from a low angle with a relatively wide angle lens gets some of the best results. It accentuates the cars and can bring palm trees and blue sky into the picture giving the scene a very Southern California feel. I'll sometimes close up the aperture (a high f-stop number) if I want to get everything sharp in the whole view or open it up wide if I want to focus on something specific like a hood ornament or nice shiny hubcap.

The atmosphere at Cruisin' Grand has a small-town feel. Kids spinning their Hula Hoops while the Beach Boys blast out over speakers. You can smell the food and kettle corn from blocks away. There is nothing small-town however, about the quality of cars that you can see here. Hundreds of classic, vintage cars come from all over Southern California to show up and slowly roll down Grand Ave. or park with their hoods up to show their stuff. 

You can find out more about Cruisin' Grand here.