We’re deep into the show season by now, and it looks like I’ll only make a few shows this year. With three magazines to oversee (I’m also responsible for sister publications Farm Collector and Motorcycle Classics) finding time to do everything I’d like to gets harder and harder.
I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll make Portland in late August, but I know I’ll be at the Old Threshers Reunion at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, over the Labor Day weekend and then the annual Power of the Past Antique Engine & Tractor Show, Sept. 7-9, 2018, in Ottawa, Kansas. Just about everyone knows about or has been to the Mt. Pleasant show, now in its 68th (!) year, and more people are hearing about and taking in the Ottawa show, a relative young-un with “only” 23 years under its belt.
That leaves me taking in much of the show season via other people’s photos of the great engines and tractors they see, and to that end I’d like to encourage everyone to send photos of the shows they attend and the engines they see during this year’s show season. Whether it’s just a few photos of especially interesting engines or a report on your club’s show or a show you attended, I’d like to hear from you and share your experiences with the rest of GEM’s readers. I know that like me, many of you will only have time to attend a handful of shows, and it’s always illuminating and entertaining to learn what’s going on at other events across the country.
Making things easier, the cameras in cell phones keep getting better and better, and it’s surprising how well they’ll often, but not always, reproduce. I still prefer a good digital camera, but I’m constantly amazed at the results I can get with my phone’s camera.
Digital photographs can be submitted directly to me via email at rbackus@gasenginemagazine.com. Send full-size, high-resolution images if you can, and if your email provider won’t let you send large image files there are plenty of free internet services to make it easy. Two that immediately come to mind are Dropbox and WeTransfer, with the latter probably being the easiest. You can send up to 2 gigabytes of images on WeTransfer, which is more than enough for most folks. And there’s always the tried and true U.S. Postal Service; you can mail me print images, a CD of images or put the images on a storage device like a thumb drive. Either way, I’m encouraging everyone to get out and take photos, then send them to me so we can share them with the rest of the old iron community.
And don’t forget to keep us posted on your latest engine finds and restorations, because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that we all love seeing and reading about the interesting engines that continue to come out of the woodwork.
