In the summer of 2007 I heard that there was a car show in the parking lot of a Walmart (ya rly) two towns over. Being as ADD as I am, I arrived entirely too late and got there just in time to see a bunch of cars leaving. I did hastily snap a bunch of photos with my 30D (not a particularly good camera) and its "better" kit lens, the 17-85mm (which sucked at the wide end.) I had the camera set for jpg+RAW and at the time I processed them as pseudo-HDR in Photomatix. I also invariably cropped the shots entirely too close (a bad habit that would take years to break.) I've revisited these shots a number of times in the last 17 years, most recently a few months ago. I now use Luminar 4, which makes use of its own pseduo-HDR math. Unlike Photomatix and every goddamn smart phone camera app ever, Luminar's faux HDR processing can be adjusted to remove most of the cartoonish qualities. Luminar also makes use of lookup tables, which are a lot of fun when used correctly.
None of these shots are spectacular. I didn't know a thing about framing in 2007 (I still don't but I didn't then, either.) In almost every case I wish I'd back up a couple feet and gotten more of the background and people milling about. At this point the photos are a fascinating time capsule. 17 years is a long time. 2007 was after 9/11, but before the 2008 financial crash (two watershed moments that have steered us directly to where we are.) The 1990s were still a relatively recent memory. Most of the attendees are aging boomers and exactly none of them know what "social media" means. A global pandemic was the stuff of bad thriller films. The cars are timeless of course and made all the mores so by how, ahem, absolutely fucking hideous current vehicles look. The 30D's sensor (a permanent "unsharp mask" and the processing in Luminar gives everything a slightly dreamy quality. I quite like this photo set as both a moment in time captured but also a tone piece.