Sometimes You Just Want to Have Fun

This image started out life as a photograph. We were on a road trip and on the way back from Tennessee. Now, Tennessee to Connecticut is a fairly straight shot, but we wound up driving through West Virginia. Sometimes we don't exactly travel the most direct route. The trips are more fun that way and avoiding the highways lets one get a glimpse of this great country. As we drove north on some byway (this was before the GPS attachment for the camera) we spotted an old gas station with an old car sitting out front. Had to stop, had to get a couple snaps of the joint. As you might guess, it was pretty dark under the canopy of the station. Look closely and you'll see one of my speedlites on top of the gas pump. It bounced enough light around to get a decent exposure.

The image is obviously "highly" processed. Things you can't see would be the removal of the tow bar at the front of the car, the replacement of the hand printed "out of order" signs on the pumps and a fellow walking into the scene from the left. Once all that was done, making it into the "cartoon" style was fairly easy. Corey Barker, over at Planet Photoshop has an excellent tutorial on how to do the cartoon effect. Check it out over there. The added title is a nod to West Virginia and the Sunday funny papers.