The faded beauty of abandoned cars across Europe and the US | Hacker News Reader

The faded beauty of abandoned cars across Europe and the US

bbc.co.uk

79 pointsKaibeezy70 comments

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.

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/

I really like those. Thanks for the link.

At the other end of this same spectrum, there’s Troy Paiva, who has gotten quite a bit of press for nighttime “light painting” of abandoned aircraft, cars, rural buildings, etc.

https://lostamerica.com/photo-items/the-mojave-airport-boney...

Thanks for the link, I have an impression of Kodak Portra film on his photos.

Check out his YouTube channel, that's one of his favorite film stocks.

Those are nice, and they remind me of pulling the exposure with film (overexposure and under-developed) to give that slightly washed out look. But it works with his subjects—and still looks natural to me—because it matches the bright light and slight haze of the high plains and desert.

BTW, I found the original submission photos to be compelling, very cool compositions just jarring colors.

My personal favorite photographer on social media is Nick Carver out of Orange County, CA. He covers similar themes (Americana, forgotten architecture, desert landscapes) all on medium and large format film. He walks through his techniques and is very enjoyable to listen to!

Link [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLcKQhTO6i0oq10S234vWyA]

Those remind me of a Stephen Shore aesthetic but maybe with less social commentary.

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.

It's also about your monitor compared to the editors monitor. Those cheap displays that are set to look good in the store next to all the others will make you do things to photos that won't look good anywhere.

> 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.

You’re probably right that the photographer intended to make the images slightly surreal on purpose, and then it’s a matter of taste whether it resonates with the viewer. I suppose all I’m saying is that I prefer to see photography that is still based on real conditions.

I realize all photos are enhanced, either in post or in the phone camera. Sometimes it’s necessary to “fix” bad lighting or make something “pop,” but I prefer it when it’s subtle and still realistic. Ansel Adams tweaked the heck out of his prints (contrast and dodging and burning), but the result still looks like a natural scene, as it might appear when the light is just right.

Instagram filters have the same problem, they might convey a mood but many of them look unnatural, for example an outdoor shot with fluorescent sunlight. I probably shouldn’t call it a problem, it’s just an artistic statement (for example choosing a hue to match the mood), though with filters it does feel a bit commodified nowadays.

This is highly subjective, what one likes another doesn't, and over-processing photography is definitely there. Kind of artistic taste topic, one reveres Rembrandt school and another Warhol/Picasso.

I for one agree with OP - fix what you can from RAW since it rarely looks like reality, unless having ideal lighting conditions. But this 'overprocessing' (aka moving away from real look) is too much for me, I like how reality looks like already.

I see it everywhere these days - street photography, landscapes, even portraits. Folks often tend to do the same effect over and over for all photos, so everything looks the same. Almost like copy&paste in Lightroom. I mean great photos done in full frame/medium format cameras, then changed to look way too unrealistic. I've done similar when I was beginning in photography with 'the more the better' logic, but the appeal is just not there anymore.

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.

I guess it's a matter of taste. Your probably could process them in different ways. Maybe a gritty black and white would work.

> I like ruins and scenes of industrial decay

You might well like this:

https://www.abandonedamerica.us/

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.

I agree. Reminds me of the HDR craze around 2010.

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.

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.

Maybe something to do with the uncanny valley [1]? It's mostly real, but just fake enough to feel... off.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

Probably an evolutionary response for ingestion of psychedelic compounds? I would also like to know more so if you know the name of this phenomenon please share.

Literally? Surely that is an exaggeration?

Maybe not; those deep dream zoom videos that were popular some years back made me physically uncomfortable to the point of nausea and bad lightheadedness ..!

It's a very milder one but yes.

These images (the ones in OP aren't that bad, but some in /r/shittyHDR [1] definitely) do make me uncomfortable in a way similar to these "Deep Dream" images.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/shittyHDR/

I spent the whole time I was looking at them trying to imagine them without the HDR. It's horrible to me.

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?

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.

Here's an example of the kind of work you're talking about.

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-p...

That's a massive amount of work (and money) and he's re-using and modifying existing castings and using off the shelf rotating assembly components. If you're not doing it yourself it's going to be cheaper to just buy the Ferrari you want.

I don't think you understand just how much having everything be one off pushes up the cost.

I think the value of these cars is in their rarity and originality - the replica would be worth a tiny fraction of that, because its not original, and many buy them because of their investment potential not because they are a great car to drive (a lot don't get driven as it reduces the value and is risky).

Also, don't underestimate the cost involved in making something like this. While obviously not $20m, having every part created from scratch involves creating accurate drawings and understanding the specifications of the materials and processes involved, which isn't simple. Even creating a replacement set of gears for an existing gearbox takes an immense amount of investment in time, and creating something complex such as an engine block or gearbox casing would be considerably more.

Yes, the originals were built in a machine shop, but also a foundry, and a design department, with a larger supply chain for many of the smaller components, and you'd need to replicators, or all of their work - a substantial effort.

Oh, I know it would be expensive. But Ferrari doesn't make those parts anymore, and people go to great lengths to restore them. So somebody is making these parts.

There are lots of shops that make drag racing engines, including forgings. I know, I put forged rotating parts in my Dodge. They aren't particularly expensive. Ditto for things like special gears for your differential. So these foundries exist, and I'm sure you can write them a check and they can build whatever you want.

You would need an original engine to get the specifications off of. You might be able to get a blown one for a reasonable price. You may also be able to examine the parts from someone who is doing a restoration of the same engine. You might be able to share expenses with someone who in a pickle because he has the car with a blown engine.

As for driving it, one of the points is to be able to enjoy driving it, rather than have a $37m museum piece too valuable to drive. I'm not terribly interested in a museum piece. I wanna drive it. It would likely cost a couple million to do this. But it would be a way cool project!

Besides, an "original" car is hardly original. It's got new paint, new coachwork, new rubber, lots of rusty parts replaced, new oil, new bearings, etc.

Also, for low production runs, a forging can be replaced by a "billet" chunk of metal machined to size. I seriously doubt Ferrari was relying on some secret exotic metal for their engines in the 50's and 60's. A top fuel drag engine builder should know everything needed to make a very suitable clone of the originals.

> But they always seem to take a shortcut and put a modern engine/driveline in it.

YMMV. For me that is not a shortcut (although it is a lot less valuable) but a prerequisite. I will like modern technology and I like old style.

The sound of a Ferrari V12 is a big part of its charm.

I drive an old 72 Dodge. Many people re-engine them with a modern engine, but I like the sound, feel, and balkiness of the old engines. Other people do, too, as when I took it to a car show it would draw a crowd when I'd start the engine :-)

Most likely they are worth nothing. This is like finding an expensive painting at a yard sale. It happens, but very, very, very rarely.

These would be cool photos if they weren't so overly processed. The current technique makes them look like poorly composited images.

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...

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 ;)

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.)

The beauty of older cars are their simplicity and the fact they were designed to be owner maintained. Teslas and virtually all modern cars require expensive unique software diagnostic tools, getting past drm hurdles and a lack of workshop manuals. Modern cars are also typically sold with services packages included for a 3 year/mileage amount after which value drops significantly. It would be great to get back to basics with a simple EV that is owner servicable in the future

In 50 years an old 'barn find' Tesla might seem stupidly simple compared to contemporary transportation devices. It might even function without network connectivity.

How do you expect an old 'barn field' Tesla to work in 50 years when some are suffering failures being parked for 20 minutes? That's not just a Tesla issue BTW, but all modern cars with too many computers. Mechanical components are more predictable to time decay than hardware and firmware.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30361800/tesla-model-3-lo...

That's just simple survivorship bias. Many cars from 50 years ago haven't survived just like that Tesla.

OTOH electric cars are much simpler than IC cars, so getting one running again in 70 years will probably be mostly an issue of finding a new battery.

Electric cars are simpler mechanically, but electronically much more complex and electronics can fail super easily, as in not necessarily the hardware itself but the firmware controlling it has no idea how to account for 70 years worth of decay to the mechanical components so it'll probably not let you run it until you visit a service and have if reset with the manufacturer's proprietary tools with DRM and online connectivity. Good luck sourcing those in 70 years.

A Tesla Model 3 suffered a catastrophic failure while parked[1], I have no idea how people expect them to last 70 years in storage. That's not just a Tesla issue BTW, but all modern cars with too many computers.

OTOH, old school ICE cars are much simpler to get started if they've been sitting for 70 years. Replace battery, sparkplugs, fluids, gaskets and any other rubber bits and flip the ignition. Done.

[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30361800/tesla-model-3-lo...

I downvoted you because the complexity of the software and electronics in a modern electric car is much higher than an old ICE car. The source code is private, schematics are hard or impossible to get, and replacement chips can't be fabbed at home like metal engine parts.

Fair enough, but I was also assuming that integrated circuits wouldn't wear out from sitting in a cow pasture quite as fast as a steel engine block would. Software doesn't rust.

Then again maybe I'm being naive. Lightning strikes happen, power supply glitches happen, and the lack of schematics and source code would indeed be a huge barrier to debugging. Unless somebody develops AI-enabled JTAG reverse-engineering systems in the future.

Software does not rust but the board it sits on does. Not to mention we still haven't managed to create any longterm storage that does not loose data...

> OTOH electric cars are much simpler than IC cars

Unfortunately, not in the case of Tesla.

Every subsystem is a computer, even the door handles.

Also, the battery is at the wheel level, so Teslas are more prone to flood damage than any other car.

If you buy a Tesla, get a warranty.

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.

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!

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.

The Japanese call this wabi sabi, the authentic earned look of aging/rusting.

... upon which we then apply gratuitous HDR and oversaturation in post processing

I am a sucker for these. I don't know what it is about decay that just piques my interest, no matter which era it might be from. There are a bunch of channels for similar pictures if you are interested:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AbandonedPorn/

https://www.instagram.com/itsabandoned/

https://www.instagram.com/abandonedafterdark/

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.

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.

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).

If you enjoy this type of thing you might like Barn Find Hunter, a YT series about traveling around the US and finding stored cars in various states: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHKCmmH-x9mLN0PNeFBtx...

I love ruins and old things in general. Often photograph those myself. However the ones mentioned here look over-processed to me.

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.

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.

FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carhenge

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.

Are these salvageable? And is it legal to just take them and use them?

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.

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.

Tastelessly overdone HDR is ____.

Show us some rust!

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