It was a Snowy January in 1944 in the Ardennes Forest on the border between Germany and Belgium when, the “Battle of the Bulge” began. In this battle there were more than one million soldiers —500,000 Germans, 600,000 Americans and 55,000 British troops—including my own father, Joe Farace, Sr.

It was an Army medic, who might have looked much like the young man below, who pulled my Dad out of a mortar crater where he had been wounded and patched him up so he come home after the war to my Mother, sisters and me.

This image is an homage to all the brave young men and women of our armed forces and was made in toned black and white to look like it too could have been made in 1944.

For readers outside the US, Veterans Day is a United States holiday honoring armed service veterans that is observed on November 11th. It coincides with other holidays such as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day that are celebrated in other parts of the world and also marks the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice.

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there. Lewis Carroll

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there are at least one million motor vehicle accidents involving large wildlife each year, killing 200 people, injuring 29,000 and causing more than $1 billion in property damage. All I have to do is look out the picture window in my office and see small groups of mule deer walking across my lawn, pausing to have a snack on my landscaping before proceeding across the road behind the house.

Here’s a few thing to think about today

1. Watch out for wet leaves: Once leaves fall onto the ground, they create slippery roadways, that are similar to icy conditions. Leaves can also get stuck to windshields and wipers and prevent drivers from seeing properly. Slow down on roads that are covered in leaves (especially on turns); be sure to remove all leaves from the windshield before driving and avoid parking under trees, if possible.

2. Be mindful of the light:  We lose one minute of daylight every day until Daylight Savings ends on November 7. The fading light of dusk often makes it difficult to see pedestrians, children or wildlife. Turn on your headlights earlier and reduce your speed.

3. Watch out for Frost: In many parts of the country, Autumn can be damp, rainy and/or foggy and this moisture can quickly turn into frost overnight. Drive slowly in the mornings, particularly when crossing bridges or overpasses, as these tend to frost quicker than other areas.

4. Drive with low beams in fog:  A common mistake drivers make is to turn on their high beams in foggy conditions. This aims the light high and into the fog, when your light should be low and hitting the road.

5. Keep your headlights clean: Over time, some of the headlights that are on modern cars become yellow, foggy and scratched due to environmental elements like UV rays and road debris. Not sure if your headlights are in need of repair? A simple look at the car in daylight and examining the headlights will help you determine if they need restoration:

Quixx’ Headlight Lens Restorer Kit & Sealer can restore headlights back to 95% of their original clarity. The all-in-one-box solution includes everything necessary to achieve professional results, allowing you to repair your vehicle’s plastic lens surfaces at a fraction of the cost of replacing them.

“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”– Martin Luther King Jr.

Labor Day always makes me think of my Dad. You see, my father was a steelworker. From the day he was discharged from George Patton’s army to day he retired, Dad worked at the Bethlehem Steel plant near Baltimore, at that time, the largest tidewater steel mill in the world. Like all of my uncles—my mother had 13 brothers and sisters—he was a staunch trade unionist and felt if that you owned a car he believed it should be made in America. But like many kids, I didn’t always agree with my parents.

In 1964, I bought a used 1958 Volvo PV444 sedan —it cost me $395 at the time—  and my Dad was upset with me about purchasing the car because it used Swedish steel. That was before my cousin Mike would shock the family further by purchasing a Triumph Spitfire, In those days the largest customer for American-made steel were US car makers like General Motors. Ford made most its own steel at its River Rouge steel mill. Dad wasn’t a big Ford fan either.

Fatherly Advice

Labor Day reminded me of one of the few times that my Dad felt it was necessary to dispense fatherly advice. While I was in high school and long before any of those “take your kid to work” programs got started, Dad took me to work with him and introduced me to his workplace at the Open Hearth furnaces at Sparrow’s Point. There are many ways to turn iron into steel, the Open Hearth process being the most brute force way to do the job. Iron is heated in giant furnaces and then blended with other minerals at extremely high temperatures to produce molten metal.

The building where he worked housed several open hearth furnaces and was so huge you could have parked the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise inside. Both ends of the building were open to the air and inside, creeping along the roof like a demented spider, a giant crane moved back in forth to grab and then pour immense ladles of molten steel into I don’t remember what. The heat was oppressive. Before introducing me to some of his friends, Dad waved his arms in front of this spectacle as if to say “some day all of this will be yours” but instead, he being a man of few words,  simply said to me “don’t work here.”

Then it was time to meet his boss, a rough-looking red-haired man named “Brick” and then one of his co-workers they all called “Jaguar Joe.” Since my Dad’s name was Joe and he was first on the job, the new guy became “Jaguar Joe” because he owned the only foreign car parked in the acres of parking lots around the plant that was brimming with Detroit Iron. His car was an XK140 and while drivers of lesser European cars—the Japanese were not even a blip on our radar yet—were hazed and had obscene remarks scrawled in the red dust that spewed from the smoke stacks and landed on every car on every parking lot, Jaguar Joe was left alone, because his fellow workers admired the style and performance of his Jaguar roadster.

A few years later, while standing on the running board of my 444 Volvo, I reminded Dad about Jaguar Joe and he reminded me that “this car was no Jaguar.” Thirty-six years later, I finally got my first Jaguar, a 1986 Series III XJ-6, pictured above, but it was a real Jaguar and my Dad was finally proud of this foreign car. He didn’t get to see my second Jaguar, the XJ-S before he passed away and I think he would have liked it even more.

If you liked this post and enjoy visiting this blog,  you can show your appreciation by buying me a cup of Earl Grey tea ($3.50) by clicking here or you can just click on Contact and offer a simple “thank you.”

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.—Mark Twain

Many of this blog’s readers live outside the USA and may not be familiar with the Independence Day holiday in the United States.

In the USA, the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday that commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, that declared the country’s independence from Great Britain. The written Declaration of Independence may have been dated July 4 but it wasn’t actually signed until August 2, 1776.

Out here in the world, however, Independence Day is typically associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games and family reunions. In addition there are also other public and private events that celebrate the United States’ history and traditions.

As we move through this difficult time into a post-pandemic world, I expect that many of these celebratory aspects of the holiday will resurface.

How I made this shot: The above image was made at a junkyard automobile recycling center near Erie, Colorado using a Canon EOS 1D Mark II N and the seemingly-discontinued EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens with new copies available (as I wrote this from the Canon Store on Amazon. Exposure was 1/80 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 800.

May is notable for several reasons. It’s the month of my birthday (it’s the 21st, in case you were wondering), its also National Photo Month.

May also the month of the Indianapolis 500! The Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy 500 are synonymous and while I have yet to see that race in person, although I was able to photograph the penultimate US Grand Prix at Indianapolis a few years ago. This is how I made my favorite image (below) from that race.

How I made this shot: The photograph of Michael Schumacher driving a Ferrari F1 car was made either during practice or qualifying, I don’t remember which one, during the 2003 US Grand Prix. It was captured using an Olympus E-1 Four-thirds DSLR and 50-200mm Zuiko Digital f/2.8-3.5 ED lens. The camera has a 2X multiplication factor so the lens had the equivalent angle-of-view of a 110-400mm lens. The Shutter Priority mode exposure was 1/1000 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 200, while I was standing on the roof of one of the garages at Indy.

Schumacher won in the rain but I never got as a good of shot of him actually winning the race. So I decided to use the image I did have to create an impression of that win ala LeRoy Neiman.

I applied Photoshop’s Watercolor (Filter > Artistic > Watercolor) and then the Poster Edges (Filter > Artistic > Poster Edges) filter was used to give the image an even more artistic look.

Then I applied the Motion Blur command ((Filter > Blur > Motion Blur) but instead of using the kind of blur that follows the direction of the car, I made it more vertical with a forward slant to provide a more impressionistic touch.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($3.50), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.

plural noun: ruminations

I have always tried to be honest with my readers about my opinions of the pros and cons of any of the cameras, lenses and techniques that I used or tested. It doesn’t matter to me whether any of these approaches to photography was done for therapy (like this and my other blog can be for me) or for publication because I feel that not doing so honestly would be doing all my readers a disservice.

That’s why you should know that no manufacturer, their representatives or agencies has ever paid me in money or merchandise to say what they wanted me to write; to say anything other than what I believe in my heart to be true. This approach to photographic ethics has, as I’ve found to my chagrin over the past forty years, had an adverse affect on my income and visibility as a writer.

As the photo magazine scene and photo book publishing industries imploded removing a traditional outlet for me to reach out to photographers, I wanted an uncensored and creative outlet for my writing but more importantly wanted to let my original book and magazine readers know that I was still alive, had images to share and something to say about this pursuit that we all love.This and all my previous blogs have accomplished part of that goal.

While this blog remains free to access, it’s not free to produce. There are costs associated with producing it from the cost of domain renewals, server space and software that both runs and protects the site. My Webmaster must be paid to keep this and my photography how-to Blog up and running and unencumbered by the inevitable software and security issues that plague all on-line activity.

Yes, there are a few sponsors here but they don’t begin to cover the cost of operating this blog. I also don’t have the kind of personal sponsors that many manufacturer-paid bloggers have that are paying them to write and do presentations saying favorable things about their gear and helping these companies sell their products. The sponsors you see here are companies owned and run by people who respect what I do and my ethical approach to photographic writing. The current, and all of my former sponsors, never tell/told me what to write and what to say about their products or their competitor’s products.

On this special day, I would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you who have taken this little blog to your heart. In a few weeks it will have been our twelth year of operation and while the site is not as active as it once  I wanted to thank each and every one of you who takes the time to visit the blog and our sister photography how-to blog/website.

Caption: Photograph of me and my daily driver and brand-new 1971 Porsche 1.8 liter 914 was made by my friend Bob Geldmacher when we were out driving around in the snowy Maryland countryside back in the day.

There is no doubt that 2023 was a challenge for all of us automobile enthusiasts with a volatile new and used car marketplace that seemingly defied all previous trends. That may have contributed to my personal lack of wheels. It has a challenging one for me to even keep up with crating, writing and photographing twice a week posts. Hopefully 2024 will offer more opportunities to participate in more car related activities in the coming year.

So on behalf of myself and Mary we would like to wish you all the merriest of holidays and as Tiny Tim once said…

“God bless us one and all.”

I don’t want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need—Mariah Carey

…a car.

It has been a little more than three years since I said goodbye to my Mercedes Benz CLA 250. And I don’t miss it—much. In fact, I really don’t miss any of the cars that I’ve owned over the years with the exception of my 1968 Porsche 912 and 1984 Jeep Wagoneer. Like Tyler Hoover has said many times, its seems that all recent German luxury cars, including those from Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi. are moving away from high quality materials and build quality to focus on electronics.

The CLA while relatively attractive looked so generic that when my neighbor Freddy came over to look at it, he told me that from across the street he couldn’t tell if it was an Acura, Lexus or even an Accord. Yikes! If I had purchased the less expensive Accord the ownership experience would have been more pleasant and maintenance costs would have been much less. These days the homogeneity of design is epidemic and most cars and especially SUVs all look alike. Have you taken a peek at any of the new Jaguar sedans? When the XJ40 was launched in 1986 Prince Philip while looking at it reportedly said, “Thanks God it still looks like a Jaguar.” Now that he’s no longer driving, I don’t know what he would think of their current generation of boring-looking sedans.

The Myth of German Build Quality

In the Bloomberg article, The Worst Luxury Cars of 2020, featured the $161,550 Mercedes-Maybach GLS stating, “I wondered why, when the decidedly cooler S-Class already exists, anyone would buy this vehicle in the first place.” Also on the list: Porsche’s 911 Speedster. Bloomergs’ Hannah Elliott exclaimed, “the now-irrelevant Speedster felt woefully behind the times—and not yet old enough to be cool again.” Sadly Devon Dalio, co-founder/partner at P-Squared Private Equity, died when his Audi crashed into a Verizon store in a shopping center recently and burst into flames like a scene from a Lethal Weapon movie. Burst into flames? German build quality?

Since I still am driving my wife’s 2016 VW Beetle Convertible, there are two cars that are currently on my radar, hopefully for next year. To be honest only one of them is on my Christmas list, an Audi Allroad of 2013-2014 vintage, which I consider to be the anti-SUV. The other car that’s on Mary’s Christmas List for me is a Range Rover Sport.

Before I address the first question that just popped into your head, I want to address one that popped into my head; consider it another one of Farace’s Law or maybe just Farace’s Bad Luck: Every time that I’ve purchased a car I really didn’t want to buy but had my arm twisted by a woman, it has been an unhappy experience. In Mary’s case it was a Porsche 924 that could have been a nice car but the costs of maintenance and repairs quickly exceeded the purchase price, much like her VW Cabriolet (which she loved, by the way.) The CLA 250 was another one of her picks and another Mercedes Benz she insisted on was a  ML350 diesel SUV. It was dependable enough but I didn’t enjoy driving it, which was pretty much the same experience I has with a 2-door Range Rover Evoque. But that was my purchase, so my bad. I guess I’m not an SUV guy.

On your mind

OK, I know that both of these cars are well-known nightmares when it comes to the cost of ownershio and especially maintenance and repairs. But let me tell you this: I owned that very same 2-door Evoque for three years and my only expense during that time was for oil changes and a set of new 19-inch tires. My neighbor, Tommy, on the other hand, liked mine so much that he bought a 4-door Evoque. His was more of the typical Range Rover experience and he now drives a Toyota Tundra.

If I buy either car, it will be from CarMax and with the CarMax extended warranty. If you familiar with Doug DeMuro’s experience with a CarMax extended warranty on a Range Rover you know this long-term warranty can be a good idea. especially for cars like these that have a checkered repair history. You don’t need this warranty for an Accord or probably any Japanese car but German and English cars are another story and, I think, an extended warranty represents a smart investment.

These are just a couple of cars that I can’t afford and vehicles I don’t think Santa has on his Christmas list for me. And I think I’ve been a good boy. I hope that Santa has lots of goodies for you in his bag and hope that all of you have the Merriest of Christmases.

PS. And if you’re wondering why I don’t just buy a nice low mileage Accord, here’s why. Whatever kind of car I buy next might be the last car that I own at for a long time. And I would be prefer that it has some character. OK, so maybe I’m nuts…

Since I can’t afford either car and If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat Joe to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, thank you.

Still don’t know what I was waitin’ for—David Bowie

When it comes to cars—new and used—and car related events, the pandemic has played havoc with automotive enthusiasts. Car shows have been canceled, postponed and rescheduled but attendance at some Cars & Coffee events remain strong, at least for the time being, New and used car prices have climbed to historic highs, with crazy dealer markups for new cars, especially for popular models, limited editions and high performance cars.

Recently the wholesale price of used cars has been dropping each week but I have yet to see any downward pressure on retail prices, especially here in Colorado. It might be different where you live. Most industry analysts expect used car to bounce back again in the Spring of 2023—not that means anything. What does all this means is that when it comes to finding a replacement for my Mercedes-Benz CLA 250: I have pretty much given up hope of getting any kind of Joe Car in the relatively near future. On the other hand, family car-wise it seems Mary’s Subaru Crosstrek’s days may be numbered…

While this blog is free to access, it’s not free to produce. There are domain and server costs associated with producing it including the software that runs and protects the site. My Webmaster has to be paid for keeping the structural and technical aspects of this and my original photography how-to Blog up and running and free from the inevitable issues that plague all on-line enterprises. I don’t have any personal sponsors as so many manufacturer-paid bloggers have and the few sponsors the blog does have do not cover its cost of operation. The difference comes out of my own pocket.

Because of that and the time pressures of running this site and writing three blog posts a week for it, seven posts a week for my photography how-to Blog, and posts and images for my wildly unsuccessful boudoir photography business, I’ve decided to integrate future automotive photography and car show posts into my main Blog and website. I started doing that occasionally with posts such as this (click) and you can expect to see regular car-related posts on that blog. After this post, I will no longer be writing any new posts for this website but the site will remain active for the foreseeable future so that you have access to the more that 500 posts that will be archived here.

Thanks for your support over the years and I hope that you visit JoeFarace.com from time to time.

According to the facts and figures that Your Advocate Alliance (YAA) has been featuring on their YouTube channel, the wholesale price of used cars has been going down for the past for month. Not that I’ve noticed anything resembling lower used car prices here in Colorado for the past few months. But that’s not unusual for us; any trend that seems to benefit the average consumer seem to lag for us Coloradans. OK, that may not be 100% true. Until very recently gas prices have been going down fairly steeply here, keeping in mind that our “regular” gas is rated at 85 Octane for some BS reason. Today Regular gas was $3.33.9 at my local Murphy’s, if you’re interested.

In other used car news: A ValuePenguin study has that found that states in the Midwest and West purchase the oldest used cars compared to other regions. And…

• The 10 states where people look to buy the oldest used cars are evenly split among the Midwest and West.
• Northeast states make up half of the 10 states where people seek the youngest used vehicles.
• The metro area where residents look to buy the oldest used cars — Spokane, Washington — isn’t in one of those top10 states.
• The only metro where people seek cars less than 5 years old, on average, is in Florida. Interesting since the average age in Florida is 42.2, so maybe they are at the peak of their earning power? Overall, 19.1% of the Sunshine State’s population is 65 and older, the highest percentage in the nation. By comparison, the average age here in Colorado is 36.9; I apologize for moving the average upwards. The 65 and older population account for 15.1% of the population.
• Nearly one in five inquiries for used vehicles are for those with a 2020 model year.

What all this means to me is that I still haven’t found a car—or been able to afford one—to replace the Mercedes Benz CLA 250 that I sold nearly four years ago. I’ve been driving the Subaru Crosstrek and VW Beetle convertible from Mary’s fleet of cars, with varying degrees of tolerance. Don’t like the Subie that much. The brand, while beloved by many, seems to have lost the funky edge it had when Mary and I bought the white ’82 Subaru GL  wagon (for around $10,000) pictured all those years ago. Now the Crosstrek is just a transportation module, more than a car.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($3.50), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.