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A couple of days after our jaunt to Harpenden we were on the road to another classic car show, but one with a difference. The Festival of the Unexceptional is the show for the sort of cars we all grew up with - everyday vehicles which wouldn’t have turned heads at the time. These days they tend to be the last survivors of their type - the cars that no one thought to care for at the time because they were so ordinary.
Photos taken 29 July 2023
My photographic strategy at classic car shows tends to vary according my mood - sometimes I’ll go digital for the spontaneity; on others occasions I’ll take the slow route and use a pinhole camera. For Classics on the Common in Harpenden I chose the latter, using my 6x9 pinhole camera to capture the cars and the people milling around them.
Classics on the Common is an all day event, so lots of people bring their own seats and picnics along to socialise.
The interior of a Bond Bug
Trotters’ Independent Traders even turned up!
Photos taken 27 July 2023
We’ve had a busy summer with numerous car shows. At some I’ve used a digital camera to take pictures, but at Welwyn I plumped for my pinhole camera. The advantage of this is I have relatively few photos to select from when the films are developed so I’m not left wading through hundreds of digital files!
Photos taken 1 July 2023
My usual hunting ground for car photos is the classic car shows we visit with one of our Minis. Back in June I had the opportunity to explore a whole field of beautiful classics, right in the heart of the City of London. The London Concours takes place each year at the Royal Artillery Company which is hidden away behind high walls near Moorgate - an oasis of green I had no idea existed.
There were plenty of exotic cars to see but, as ever, my eye was most drawn to the older ones, dripping in chrome.
The only small fly in the ointment was the harsh sunlight, so I found myself focusing on details rather photographing whole cars - and there were plenty of interesting details to be enjoyed!
Photos taken 8 June 2023
My experience of teaching a smartphone photography workshop last month proved to be a great way of learning more about my own phone’s camera, but not without its temptations. As I researched what the cameras we all carry in our pockets can do I realised just how much more the latest iPhone can do now.
After much indecision I took the plunge and upgraded from my three year old iPhone SE to the latest iPhone 14 Pro and I haven’t regretted it for one moment. Yes, it still does all the phone stuff the same as any mobile, but having a larger sensor and three different lenses to play with brings many more possibilities when I want to travel light. The day after I bought the new phone I decided to use it as my sole camera for our monthly visit to the Barrington car meet and it was strangely liberating.
The super-wide angle lens offers some fun possibilities if you get really close.
On the new phone’s camera it will allow you to use the portrait mode on subjects which aren’t human which allows for all sorts of creative possibilities.
A beautiful 1948 Healey.
Photos taken 2 June 2023
It’s been so long since I had an opportunity to photograph any cars that the first Barrington car meet of the year (a monthly gathering in Cambridgeshire) felt like an oasis in the desert!
I spent an hour or so exploring the cars using a longish lens which gave me the chance to isolate some interesting details among the chrome laden classics on show.
I’ve seen this beautiful classic BMW there several times before and am always drawn to its unusual shade of green.
A duo of door handles…
It was lovely to see that Gordon the Gopher has finally been released from his broom cupboard. Readers who weren’t teenagers in the 1980s can learn more about him here!
Photos taken 7 April 2023
Back in September we went to the monthly car meet in Barrington for our fix of classic cars. Instead of taking a digital or pinhole camera I went with my uncle’s loaned Rolleiflex - a camera I haven’t used for a while. Photos are composed via the camera’s focusing screen, which presents everything reversed horizontally. This messes with my brain and makes me slow down, although that’s probably no bad thing!
Photos taken September 2022
Following our day at the Festival of the Unexceptional I had some photos left on one of my film cameras so I took it with me to the Friday evening car meet at the pub in Barrington. The RETO ultra wide and slim camera is very simple - a plastic body with a 21mm plastic lens, although you’d never know its minimal budget from the sharpness of the photos!
It was a beautiful summer’s evening and the light became even more glorious as the sun gradually dropped in the sky.
Photos taken August 2022
Every summer the antidote to most car shows takes place. Most classic car owners want their vehicle to stand out because it’s exceptional in some way - the best preserved or most beautiful. At the Festival of the Unexceptional the opposite is true - to be eligible your car must be the sort of model which was once familiar but is now rare because no one’s really cared about saving them.
We’ve been threatening to attend for years, but things have never quite worked out until this summer. The centre attraction is the Concours d’Ordinaire - the creme de la creme of ordinaryness. The competition was won this year by a Vauxhall Astra 1.3 which was so ordinary we walked straight past it! There were lots of other fascinating cars to see in the Concours, mostly beautifully restored examples of the sort of cars we grew up with. There was even an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, very similar to the one my Dad had when I was at school!
For those who’d come in cars which either weren’t eligible for the Concourse (we couldn’t have entered Morris as he’s now too old) but were still pretty unexceptional, there was a huge parking area where your pride and joy could be admired. This is where I took most of my photos.
Another car from my childhood driving into the display area - an Austin 1800.
Details from a Citroen DS - definitely too exceptional!
I went minimalist for my photography, taking two small film cameras - a Rollei 35S and a cheap and cheerful RETO plastic camera. This slowed me down and I rather enjoyed the experience of shooting retro cars with retro cameras.
A brace of Bond Bugs!
An Alfa Romeo Sud - a great little car, but most of them have long since rusted into oblivion.
Photos taken 30 July 2022
On the same roll of film as the Duxford images I shared yesterday, I found a collection of cars from the Enfield Pageant of Motoring. Shooting classic cars on a 1970s film camera seems rather appropriate - retro photography and motoring!
Photos taken August 2022
