PHR's Third Annual Photo Contest - Hometown Heroes

Finalist
Bobby Radke's '67 Chevelle is pretty much the same one that all of us doodled in our notebooks in grade school when we were supposed to be paying attention in English class. It's every 12-year-old's dream car come to life. Huge honkin' 33x21.5 Mickey Thompsons? Check. Blower sitting on top of a stroked and breathed-on small-block? Yep. Bright red paint with flames? Got it. A glovebox full of 10-second timeslips? It's in there. And it's an SS Chevelle on top of all that. And photog Wayne Ninnemann was paying attention to our photo tips big-time when he searched out the ideal location, waited until the right moment, set up his tripod, and composed a shot that would make it in any major car magazine on the planet. (And he's a trained machinist, not a pro photographer, too.) There's no telling what Wayne could do with a real camera and a few hours of training. In this day, it's good to have a second career to fall back on!

Finalist
The story is a familiar one. Boy sees car in neighborhood, boy wants car but can't afford it, then car's owner has family emergency and sells car to boy for a fire-sale price. That boy in this case would be Larry Riley of Taylorsville, Kentucky. One of the little problems with Larry's story, however, is that in buying the nearly completed car, very little accurate information was passed from owner to owner, so Larry doesn't even know what's inside his mystery motor, or even what size it is. On the bright side, Larry has a patient and understanding father-in-law in the form of photographer Bruce Decker. The photo shoot on Larry's Camaro was all planned out in advance-super locations, cute model, the whole enchilada. Then the day of the shoot, the model bugged out, the weather turned hot, and the car overheated. What is it they say about the best-laid plans of mice (even of an unknown size) and men?