Ten years ago, in 1996, I bought a 1993 Ford Ranger in the spring in Alabama. I drove that car all over the place. Seriously. I took it with me when I lived in the high desert in Utah, and drove into all kinds of places it probably shouldn't have gone. I drove it for the 4 years I lived in Seattle. I drove it all through the Canadian Rockies and Montana. I drove it from Seattle to Alaska, and I've been driving it for the 5 years I've lived here. I drove it nearly up to the arctic circle in the Yukon. Maybe I've gotten lucky, but it's never broken down and it's got 150k miles on it.
A Speedo-Meter is included in every vehicle at no extra charge
Styling that can only be described as "Sufficient"
Now it's 2006 and this late spring I bought a 2003 Ford Ranger. Kinda weird how the dates match up. This one is much improved, with an engine twice as big, an extended cab, and 4 wheel drive. 4 wheel drive was the most important factor for me, because I'm sick to death of driving around in the winter here with just a "one wheel wonder" (as they call it up here). I didn't set out get another Ranger, I'd actually prefer to have a Toyota, but those are hella expensive, and this particular Ranger was the only good deal that I came across.
So since I got a new truck I had to go take some pictures of it. Car advertisement type pictures. It was fun, but you'd be surprised how challenging it is to make a Ford Ranger look like a desirable vehicle. You have to get it nice and shiny, and then drive it to a good location. BUT you can't drive it very far or it won't be nice and shiny any more. And you have to do it on a day with perfect car advertisement lighting. If you pay attention you'll notice that car advertisements rarely feature direct sunlight on the vehicle, unless they are in the desert. In the desert it's hard to avoid direct lighting so they often compensate with weird superpolarizing filters that I think is more often post processing than an actual lens attachment. But photos with great reflections you want the area behind the camera to actually be in direct sunlight. So that's an bit of a limitation in the location of choice. Great reflections make the car look like a piece of candy, but if you want to focus on the details of a car, and it's actual color, an overcast day works well. So there's lot's of fun little details you can play around with.
Alright. Enough car stuff on this blog. Next time I'm putting up some real scenery.
