What’s it like exploring and photographing 4,000 vintage automobiles at night in a forest? We explored rare rusty vehicles with trees growing through the hood, vines, mist and more.
Tim Little and I photographed there one December evening, just hours after a torrential downpour. Here’s how the weirdness and adventure in the foggy trees went down.
Where is this forested car graveyard?
Old Car City USA is located in White, Georgia, not far from Atlanta. It’s the world’s largest known classic car graveyard. Imagine a beautiful forest with vines and other vegetation of the Deep South, intertwined with the thousands of automobiles, trucks, vans, buses, and even an ice cream truck. There are 34 acres of this in rural Georgia, about an hour north of Atlanta. The same family has owned Old Car City since 1931, when it began as a general store.
34 acres of trees and collectible rusty vehicles is a lot to explore. But it seems like five times that size when enshrouded in the inky veil of night!
“I’m walking in circles!”
In the farthest reaches of the forest are clusters of beautiful, decaying 1930s vehicles. I wanted to photograph that first. So many beautiful cars. I began by setting my tripod down on the damp December forest floor. I used a rugged Ants on a Melon RGB Critter for light painting the rusted automobiles.
Moving on, I attempted to find some 1940s DeSotos and Clippers, the latter made by the Studebaker-Packard Corporation. I had passed them on the way in. No problem. I would just walk back the same way.
Wherever that was.
After a while, I realized that I had passed some cars before. It was difficult to tell in the dark. More rusty cars, more trees.
That’s OK. I knew there was a road on one side. I would follow the sound and know where I was.
Except that there were no longer any cars in the distance. I walked further. The mooing of cows from far away echoed off the trees. I walked around some trails, pretty sure I was going in the correct direction, only to come across the same group of cars again.
I called Tim on the two-way radio. “I’m walking in circles!”
He wasn’t far away, but in this place, you could be only several hundred feet away and never realize it.
“Yeoooowwwww, that’s COLD!”
I had set up my camera and tripod to take a photo of one of the vintage grilles of these amazing automobiles. I was still in a state of enchantment. Trees intertwining with 1940s automobiles, growing through hoods and rust, the amazing hood ornaments, twisting vines, and strange, mysterious, foggy surroundings — it was magical.
I wanted to scoot around to the back and backlight one of the cars. I carefully stepped around some of the roots, vines and branches. However, I shook some of the vines. KHRISSHHHHHHHH! The leaves and branches above trembled. This immediately brought down a cascade of shivering cold water. This poured onto my head and neck and ran down my back.
“Yeoooowwwww, that’s COLD!”
“That looks amazing!”
The fog grew thicker, wrapping around the trees and cars. Ordinarily, night photographers might not want this. It would block the stars. But we were in a forest. And we had dew heaters to keep condensation off the lens.
But more than that, we embraced the fog.
I mostly photograph in the Southwestern desert. There’s rarely any fog there. But I quickly discovered that we could backlight the car and light the very air around us. This created a greater sense of mystery.
When Tim and I caught up with each other again, we peered at each other’s LCD screens.
“That looks amazing!”
Being able to light up the air was an added bonus I never expected. I still saw the night sky. It was still there. But the fog hugging the trees and the lake was so special.
“Can I move here for a year?”
Time zoomed past. We had been tromping through the forested car graveyard for hours. For me, it had been a blur of rusty automobiles, trucks, ice cream trucks, buses, motel signs, and old buildings. But it was time to go.
We met the owner by the gate.
“How did it go?”
“I barely scratched the surface,” I replied. “Can I move here for a year?” He laughed. He did live there.
What a dream it would be to photograph here, night after night after night. Lakeside, forest, open meadows, open sky, forests with vines, and so many vintage and unusual vehicles.
Three nights at a night photography workshop
Tim and I are holding a three-day night photography workshop here. We can all at least photograph there for three nights, if not a year.
The Old Car City USA night photography workshop will include one day and three nights (with a fourth night add-on at a location photographing abandoned school buses). It will be from Oct. 25-28, 2023. We will be staying just 10 minutes away at a nice hotel.
And we’ve figured out a way to make sure no one gets lost. Actually, several ways.
For a variety of reasons, this will be the only time we ever offer this night photography workshop. And to the best of our knowledge, no other workshop has granted this much access and lessons ever. If this sounds enticing for you, I would encourage you to find out more about the Old Car City night photography workshop here.
Where’s Waldo? Well, he certainly didn’t get lost in the forest during our night photography workshop!
Very cool! I’ve heard of Old Car City before, but never seen it photographed like this before. Well done.
Thank you very much! The reason is that it is ordinarily rather cost prohibitive to get in there at night. The night photography workshop there in October allows this access as well as expert instruction, so it’s a great opportunity to create unique images of some of the 4000 rusty vintage automobiles there.
Fantastic images and workshop! But the tyranny of distance (and age!) makes me a non-starter from Australia.
Thanks. And I get it. Australia is a long way to travel. As always, best wishes for health and happiness. Australia is a beautiful country, so I hope you can get out there and take night photos.
Per the website link, the event had to be *canceled*.
It is canceled. That was a very sad and challenging decision to make, but we felt that we had no choice. The description you saw in the link is a rather polite recounting of what happened. We couldn’t in good conscience continue offering the workshop knowing that it had changed and continued to have the possibility to change in ways that were completely out of our control. The participants have all been very understanding. In over 100 workshops, this is the first time this has ever happened. Thanks.