Houston Garages, December 2010

Houston, TX

As soon as I bought my plane tickets to visit my family, my mom got on the phone and told me that her friend John had invited me over to visit and shoot at his garage. The day after I arrived, we piled in the car and drove out to meet him at JLD Classic Enterprises, where he does stainless steel restoration as well as restores his own cars. He keeps everything as period-correct as possible.

John and his '41 Olds:

The ration sticker was still stuck on the inside of the windshield:

Detail and engine of his other Olds:

He took us for a ride in the '41, and I just kept shooting. There were no seatbelts as they weren't required yet in 1941... the seats were nice and bouncy. The car had some pick-up, and you felt invincible speeding down the road. It's huge!

Come on, if you grew up in the 70's like me, you know I had to take this shot as John Travolta sang "Greased Lightening" on my internal soundtrack:

After we admired the Olds', he uncovered the Packard:

The walls were covered with parts, as they should be:

And then the Studebakers:

We took the '41 down the street to his buddy George's shop - GAP Racing - to see the muscle cars he was currently working on:

Are you drooling yet?

Then across the street to another to see a Skorpion Crosley in the process of being restored.

Special thanks to John Doerfler and his friends from the Gulf Coast Region Antique Automobiles of America for sharing their enthusiasm for classic cars and their history. I *will* make it to Houston on the second Monday of the month for one of your cruise nights. Thanks also to George Palazzolo of GAP Racing for letting us poke around and generally get in the way of his mechanics while drooling over his Chevelle. And, of course, Mom, for bragging about me taking photos of cars and getting us invited in the first place.

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I hope you like my shots. I prefer to keep my shots realistic, bordering on documentary, and don't do any special post-processing; I'll leave the HDR and desaturated shots to those who do it well. I think real is what I do well. I took over 200 shots in an hour and a half on this day, and it was hard to edit down to 20 for this story. If you want to see more, please visit my gallery on SmugMug by clicking this link.