Hal’s Garage

Posted on May.25, 2011, under black and white

(Nikon D700, 70-300mm at 125mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/500 sec @f/8)

In my quest to find new material to shoot I took a short road trip into northern Ohio this weekend. I had seen a picture of this structure posted by one of my Flickr contacts and I thought it would be interesting to see it myself. I headed down to Toledo, Ohio, where I picked up US-20 heading west. Once I got out of the Toledo area, the road opened up to wide open farmland. I was hoping I might see an old barn or two, and I was really hoping I might find one with a painted “Mail Pouch” tobacco sign, but no such luck. I did see one barn which I’m pretty sure used to have a sign painted on one end, but it had been freshly painted over. Anyway, I pressed on until I reached Fayette, Ohio, a small town in western Ohio. There, on the eastern side of town, is “Hal’s Garage”. My understanding of this building is that it is just a private garage, not a working garage, but I still think it is pretty cool. I love the old signs and the way trunks of cars are used as awnings.

My thought for processing was always to create a black and white image, but conversion posed a couple of challenges. I wanted the yellow Shell sign to show up, but as I played with various sensitivities it tended to blend in with the wall color. It took a little tweaking to separate it from the background, but that caused the Speedway sign to be too dark. I solved this problem by making an initial black and white conversion with Silver Efex Pro 2 and then masking out the Speedway sign. I then used a simple Photoshop black and white layer to do the conversion on the Speedway sign. The one thing I wanted to keep was the rust spots and streaks and in order to do this I had to lighten the blue background a bit.

Got comments or questions? Feel free to leave them below.

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6 Comments

Chris Nitz says:

May 25, 2011 at 9:35 am

Great b/w! I like all the grungy textures that are on the building wall. Also, great job on choosing a nice crop to bring in some symmetry and focus on the main structure. Nicely done!
Chris Nitz recently posted…But Look at the Truck

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Curt Fleenor says:

May 25, 2011 at 5:38 pm

Nice work James! Great b/w conversion and all of the work with the signs paid off.
Curt Fleenor recently posted…The Crusher

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- James Howe says:
  
  May 26, 2011 at 7:40 am
  
  Thanks!
  
  Reply
Mark Garbowski says:

May 27, 2011 at 9:17 pm

Love this. The black and white treatment is great, and I’d also be interested to see you produce a processed color version.
Mark Garbowski recently posted…Propped

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Brad says:

November 17, 2011 at 11:40 am

Hal’s Garage. You should see his tow truck. It is just as time fitting as the building. This location has been as gas station / repair shop for as long as I can remember.

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Randy Scott says:

July 18, 2012 at 9:54 pm

This is a working garage. Stopped in two weeks ago and caught Hal working on his hotrod which was on the lift.The inside of the shop is better than the outside. You go back to the 40s-60s when you step inside. It is not museum clean,but authentic in working atmosphere.

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