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The faded beauty of abandoned cars across Europe and the US

79 points| Kaibeezy | 5 years ago |bbc.co.uk | reply

70 comments

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[+] 205guy|5 years ago|reply
Because of the extensive photoshopping (and HDR as the other comment mentions), none of these photos look real to me, more like a video game background. Which I think is a shame, because I like ruins and scenes of industrial decay, so I do like the subject matter. And the author clearly did a lot of work to find these old cars and photograph their interesting character. I understand the desire to fix the light (and certainly the dark forest settings were difficult to capture), but it just looks overdone to me, no longer real life.
[+] mcbuilder|5 years ago|reply
Maybe check out Kyle McDougall, he is a photographer interested in similar themes (decayed motels, cars, ghost towns, etc), but his photographs are much more compelling.

Edit: link to his website https://www.kylemcdougallphoto.com/

[+] ekianjo|5 years ago|reply
We don't see much "real pictures" anymore - everything is so edited to the max (extreme saturation, filtering, color adjustment, unreal sharpening, boosted highlights) that pictures look fake about everywhere now. At least if it were done in a subtle way I would not mind, but 90% have no taste when doing it.
[+] ordu|5 years ago|reply
> I understand the desire to fix the light (and certainly the dark forest settings were difficult to capture), but it just looks overdone to me, no longer real life.

It seems for me, that the goal of editing was not to fix the light, but to move away from real life. Probably something along lines "to reduce level of detail, to let onlooker's mind to fill gaps in details by itself". Or maybe not: this possible explanation is a result of my mind filling gaps, so it is a projection of my mind onto reality which speaks more about me than about reality.

[+] mc32|5 years ago|reply
Some of them are way overdone. So much so they’re hard to look at because they look garish. Others are more muted and add some “atmosphere”. Overall I agree that natural light or even stage lights would have been preferred.
[+] Ididntdothis|5 years ago|reply
I guess it's a matter of taste. Your probably could process them in different ways. Maybe a gritty black and white would work.
[+] throwanem|5 years ago|reply
Okay? And? Go take your own shots and develop them however you see fit.

Purely documentary photography only happens in news stories, crime scenes, surgical theaters, and morgues. Everything else is art, to some greater or lesser degree. If you don't like impressionism or whatever, fine, but you add nothing to the conversation in just saying "this is bad because I don't like it" as if that had any use to anyone - that's not even valid criticism, which is an embarrassingly low bar to fail to clear.

[+] gherkinnn|5 years ago|reply
I agree. Reminds me of the HDR craze around 2010.
[+] pgreenwood|5 years ago|reply
Love the subject matter but the hyper saturated over blown HDR makes me feel like I have a brown acid hangover.

HDR is great, but if you can tell it's there its too much.

[+] fireattack|5 years ago|reply
Since we're on this topic, is there any explanation why these over-processed images (particularly when they're over-sharpened) make me physiologically uncomfortable/disgusted? Like, literally vomit-inducing.
[+] drcongo|5 years ago|reply
I spent the whole time I was looking at them trying to imagine them without the HDR. It's horrible to me.
[+] roel_v|5 years ago|reply
Reminds me of this one from a few years ago: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/classic-cars-abandoned...

Seems like straight out of a boys book - abandoned shed, dozens of cars stored in there, nobody knows that they're so valuable. I don't know anything about cars but from looking at the pictures in the OP, I can't help but think that some of them would be worth quite a bit? Certainly more than the scrap metal value?

[+] WalterBright|5 years ago|reply
I know that people build replicas of expensive Ferraris. But they always seem to take a shortcut and put a modern engine/driveline in it.

Most of the magic of a Ferrari is in the engine, driveline and running gear. When some Ferraris fetch north of $20m, if I was super rich and wanted one, I'd just have a machine shop build a duplicate - including the engine, etc. It can't be that expensive to do it, after all, the originals were built in a machine shop.

[+] Ididntdothis|5 years ago|reply
Most likely they are worth nothing. This is like finding an expensive painting at a yard sale. It happens, but very, very, very rarely.
[+] Akinato|5 years ago|reply
These would be cool photos if they weren't so overly processed. The current technique makes them look like poorly composited images.
[+] olivermarks|5 years ago|reply
A lot of these 'abandoned' cars are valuable at this point. There's a forest near Chatillon in Belgium where US servicemen parked their cars at the end of WWII, hoping to return one day and retrieve them. https://www.digitaltrends.com/dtdesign/belgian-car-graveyard...
[+] lexa1979|5 years ago|reply
I lived in Chatillon for 15 years and was going to tell you that this US servicemen story is made up, but I read the article you've linked and was pleased to see that the truth is finally out ;)
[+] userbinator|5 years ago|reply
Based on the popularity of YouTube channels aimed at restoring or even just getting abandoned cars' engines to start, I'd say they have a lot more than just intrinsic value.

(It makes me wonder if, e.g. 50 or 60 years from now, people will be finding abandoned Teslas and such and trying to get them moving again.)

[+] Tade0|5 years ago|reply
Coming from a country where the average age of cars is over 14 years, I'm afraid that modern vehicles won't look nearly as good abandoned and exposed to the elements.

I've seen my share of VW Passat B3, B4 and B5s rusting away around allotments and they bring to mind images of illegally disposed of appliances like washing machines etc.

Farming equipment on the other hand - new and old - doesn't give off this vibe. Perhaps being designed to bury into dirt they don't invoke an expectation of being clean and tidy.

[+] sixstringtheory|5 years ago|reply
There was a 99PI episode about abandoned cars here in Alaska: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/dead-cars/

Plenty of specimens around my neck of the woods. Also many grizzly twisted wrecks laying on the side of the road. Good reminders to drive carefully in a place where you could be hours or days away from help!

[+] Kaibeezy|5 years ago|reply
Should self-driving cars be required to have a failsafe where under specific parameters of disuse and remaining power they drive themselves to a repair or storage facility, like my robot vacuum does? Probably not.
[+] gregoryrueda|5 years ago|reply
The Japanese call this wabi sabi, the authentic earned look of aging/rusting.
[+] isoprophlex|5 years ago|reply
... upon which we then apply gratuitous HDR and oversaturation in post processing
[+] vagab0nd|5 years ago|reply
Somewhat related: There's a car that's parked in front of my house, on the street, for over a year now. Never moved, no sign, just parked there. I find it hilarious and annoying that there's no legal way for me to report it, or have the authority check the owner. Is it stolen? Abandoned? It just seems wrong that a car can be legally parked at one spot for so long.
[+] eiji|5 years ago|reply
Whenever I travel down to the desert south-west (Arizona, Texas, NM, ...) I'm amazed how many abandoned or half-abandoned (still on private property) cars there are everywhere visible. It must be a mix of better weather and them not rusting down in matter of month when outside instead of a garage, and different regulation not enforcing their removal.
[+] ndespres|5 years ago|reply
I'm in upstate New York where even the cars I drive regularly are rusting out constantly, to say nothing of the rusted junk that doesn't get used. When I bought my house and talked to the homeowner insurance agent about risks on the property they asked if I had any abandoned junk cars in the yard. When I said no, she said "you will."

Nearly everyone here has some junk cars sitting around rotting, whether it's a future project that they'll never do, spare parts for another vehicle, or just something they know that a pinch they can roll down to the scrap yard for $100-200 (or waiting for the price of scrap metal to rise again so maybe they can get $400).

[+] FpUser|5 years ago|reply
I love ruins and old things in general. Often photograph those myself. However the ones mentioned here look over-processed to me.
[+] brenden2|5 years ago|reply
Just looks like trash with too much photo editing to me. It's kind of funny because I did a trash photo exhibit a few years back where I literally took photos of trash with good lighting and such. The photos were aesthetically pleasing to the eyes, but it was literally trash.
[+] izzydata|5 years ago|reply
Maybe it is just me, but I find these vehicles to be a gross blemish on an otherwise beautiful scene. Like a natural wonder that has been destroyed by humans.
[+] modzu|5 years ago|reply
its cool and brought back memories of some old abandoned cars ive happened across on hikes over the years. but that level of hdr.. oh my.
[+] d0100|5 years ago|reply
Are these salvageable? And is it legal to just take them and use them?
[+] RickJWagner|5 years ago|reply
Nice. I've been a gearhead for nearly 50 years now, I just like cars.

Lately my thoughts have been turning to Teslas. It feels weird, almost like I'm losing part of myself.

[+] Gibbon1|5 years ago|reply
I'm not a gear head but I feel it, a whole esthetic and art is starting to slip away. 250 years of thermal machines and it'll be gone in a generation.