My Love Affair with Heavy Metal!!!

1954 Concept Dream Car, Oldsmobile F-88 Convertible

All my photographer friends have realized by now that I have a passion for shooting automobiles.  Not just any automobiles... Big, shiny, chrome-encrusted things that glitter and intimidate are the ones I usually like the best.  For me cars don't have to be new or fancy, but they do have to have to exude character and attitude.  

Last week I had the chance to visit a place that gave me more than 3 hours of photographing and exploring the coolest, shiniest state of the art vehicles in Western Colorado.  These cars represent the evolution of automobile design and ingenuity that spans the majority of the 20th century.  Ron and I visited the Gateway Colorado Car Museum, a part of the Gateway Resort in Gateway, CO owned by John S. Hendricks, (Discovery Communications founder).  The tasteful exhibits and the ambiance really makes you want to celebrate the manufacturing history of Detroit and rejoice at their recent comeback!  What fantastic American ingenuity is on display.

1928 Cadillac Phaeton Convertible

1929 Packard Roadster

Located 54 miles west of Grand Junction, the museum was a delightful surprise and gave me a unique opportunity to photograph cars to my hearts content.  A big bonus was the fact that we were the only visitors in the place (Early March is their slow time of the year)and so tons of tourists were not present to get in the way, plus we had the docent all to ourselves.  Lighting was a challenge but I was able to boost my ISO way up to 3200 and use of flash was permitted.

                                       

                                  Ron next to a 1928 Dusenberg

One of the most phenomenal vehicles in the museum is the 1954 concept car, an Oldsmobile F-88 convertible designed by Harley Earl, that was never actually manufactured but was introduced at the 1954   General Motors Motorama as a response to the Corvette introduced in 1953.  This car, hidden away in pieces for many years, was bought at auction in 2005 by the Hendricks family for a winning bid of $3,240,000.00.  Wow!!!  Breathtaking!  


If you are coming anywhere near Western Colorado and you love cars, you won't want to miss this great tribute to design and functionality .  Follow this link for directions:


http://mapq.st/znjDWm


Go to this link for a fun video showing some other dream cars of the past.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5eTkXkMpYg&feature=related