Automotive art

Recently, as I was scanning over my library of photos, I came to the realization than I have a thing for old cars. I’m pretty sure that I will never own one myself as much as I would love to, but I really do love to take photos of them. This got me thinking about where this interest came from. I didn’t have to think long. There were two simple reasons. First,  I grew up in the house of a mechanic. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad’s Shell station. Today the smell of grease and oil takes me right back to when I was five, visiting his shop and begging for a chocolate bar and a coke. Unfortunately, I wasn’t smart enough to realize that my father was a font of knowledge that I really should have taken advantage of. I most assuredly did not have the patience to learn from him, and I’m pretty sure it would have been hard as hell for him to teach me. As a result I am absolutely hopeless with cars other than changing a tire. Sorry Dad.

The second reason for my interest in old cars is this photo of my dad from when he was about 22, standing in front of his first new car, a ’59 Mercury. Dad worked on the oil rigs in Alberta at the time and had made enough money to get himself a new car. As you can see by the photo he was pretty proud of his ride, and rightly so. She was a beauty. As the saying goes, “They don’t make them like they used to!” The chrome bumpers and grills. The funky headlights. The lines of the pressed metal. The fins. It’s the details that I am drawn to most, and it is the details I like to photograph most. But when I find a situation to capture the whole car I’m going to do that too. So with this being said, laid out for the world to read (or the six of you who may read this), may I present a few of my tributes to the beauty of automotive art. More images can be seen on my site at http://www.dhanni.com/automotive.htm