Rusty, Old and Artistic: Don’t Miss Michael

Posted by pikesan on Dec 4, 2011 in Art & Photography | 0 comments

Hot Rod & Custom Car Photography & Writing

Through some good luck and a willingness to talk to everyone I meet… “Hey Do you use the internet!?” is a favorite thing my buddies tease me about… I bumped into Michael Harrington up at Bonneville Salt Flats in 2010. He was photographing a sick gasser Corvette (yes, on the salt!) and I asked who he shot for. Well, he’s worked for a few Primedia/Source Interlink titles you’ve heard of, most recently, Super Chevy.

 

Flash forward to present and Michael and I are back in touch and we’ve worked out a deal to publish his incredible photography and musings here at MyRideisMe.com. It’s incredible to publish professional pictures like this! Michael’s got a gift and I know I’ll learn from staring at his work.

 

I snaked this info from his photography home page Automotive-Photography.net to let you know more about him:

I don’t know how it happened, but it did. I guess most of us enthusiasts can blame it on our fathers. In my case, I can definitely pass the blame. My father was never a huge Hot Rodder by any stretch of the imagination, but as a child I do remember him working on other people’s cars and his own Grand Torino. From an early age I learned to appreciate the aesthetics and sounds of the American automobile. Then in the late 1980’s my grandfather gave me his 1973 Camaro. That act of generosity pretty much sealed my fate. A 17-year-old kid behind the wheel of a muscle car is altogether an exciting and stupid thing. That love — the love of feeling the torque throw you back into your seat; the curves, the chrome — it has always stuck with me.

In college I would daily drive my lowered ’59 Buick Lesabre to school, attracting the strangest stares of curiosity (even from fellow “art” students). To them I was known as “that car guy”. How I became an automotive photographer was really quite by accident and not by my own design. If I was smart, I would have learned something practical like business or finance. But sometimes we don’t choose what we become, it chooses us. Besides, I think I would rather be strangled by a piano wire if I had to chain myself to a desk every day. Taking a beginning photography class for “fun” steered me into a whole new direction and ultimately became my career choice. After doing some freelancing for various automotive magazines during college, I was recruited and offered a job at Super Chevy magazine. I quit college and took the job, working for nearly five years writing and shooting stories all across the country. Working for a magazine and traversing the country was quite an exciting experience. Working for a giant corporation that owns nearly all the popular titles on the shelf, however, was not quite as exciting.

These days I have gone back to freelance photography, shooting and writing for various publications and companies. Of course, everything I do is still related to the automobile — that love will never die.

So as you can see, he’s a car guy that’s been into it forever.

 

Michael’s got an impressive resume of pictures and has an easy reading way of describing them too. Car Tech agreed and published a book of Michael’s work called Rusty Pickups: American Workhorses Put to Pasture. You can grab it over at Amazon.

 

So enjoy the stories and pictures and let Michael know you’re dig’n it by leaving a comment here and there. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it and we’ll both know if we’re on the right track with the stories we’re publishing.

 

 

Thanks!
pikesan