A note about pictures...

If the name of the blog is "The Cars of Ralph," I suppose we can't wait too long to get started on the topic at hand. But first, an excuse explanation:

My father was a photography nut—Nikons, Hasselblads, dark rooms, dangerous chemicals, the whole thing. As a young man after WWII he worked at a photography store in Oakland, CA where Ansel Adams bought some of his equipment. Dad even went on a photo trip to Yosemite with Adams!

Needless to say I was hounded as a child to have my picture taken and as a result grew up desperately avoiding cameras. I became good at it.

Hurricane Fran - September 1996

And then came September of 1996. Hurricane Fran hit North Carolina with a fury, killing 27 people and destroying billions of dollars in property. My losses were minor; a storage shed I rented was flooded and the contents destroyed. But one of those boxes contained most of the few photos I had from college and my years in the Army.

So, while I will use actual images of my own cars whenever possible, mostly after '96, many of the early cars will be represented with images as close to my recollection as possible.