EXCEPT for the security guards toting machine guns, this could have been any Caribbean island airport.

Until we walked outside, that is. Then it was apparent that we had either entered a time machine or landed in Cuba.

Actually, it was both.

As we left the terminal, the taxi lane was crowded with vehicles I hadn’t seen since childhood. Brightly colored American cars, all built before 1960, crowded the passenger pick-up area. It’s a time warp created by the suspension of trade between Cuba and the United States after Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries took control in 1959, cutting off the flow of new American cars.

That was no drawback to a group of five automotive historians, including me, who had been invited here to research the Cuban Grand Prix sports car races of 50 years ago.

In particular, we hoped to learn more about the 1960 race for a 50th anniversary celebration to be held in March at the Amelia Island Concours d’Élégance in Florida. The race was won by Stirling Moss in a Maserati Tipo 61, known as a Birdcage; both Moss and the winning Maserati will attend the March 14 concours. (Full disclosure: I am co-chairman of the event.)

Our host for the research mission was Eduardo Mesejo Maestre, curator of the Depósito del Automóvil, the country’s official antique car museum. Our group had received Treasury Department permission to travel directly to Havana from Miami on cultural exchange visas. Call it spark plug diplomacy.

From the airport we went straight to the Depósito, housed in a open-air warehouse in the heart of Havana’s historic district. We had hoped to see Castro’s personal cars on display in this former navy facility, but that was not the case.

Castro’s cars, it turns out, are stored in a warehouse at Communist Party Central Headquarters, Mr. Mesejo told us; the museum’s collection comprises about 40 cars, trucks and motorcycles that represent the last 100 years of Cuba’s automotive history.

Just past the admission desk — admission is one CUC, or Cuban Convertible Peso, or about $1.08 — visitors are greeted by a 1926 Rolls-Royce Phantom I with coachwork by Letourneur & Marchand of France. We were told this car was found abandoned after the 1959 revolution and kept safe by the government until the museum opened in 1980.

The Rolls, like all of the cars on display, is not the sort of pristine example seen in most modern museums. The vehicles are well used and unrestored, but clean. Mr. Mesejo told us the cars were given a daily sponge bath to remove the potentially caustic dust that blows in from nearby building renovations.

The Depósito is arranged in two large rooms. The first room allows visitors to get close to the cars. In the second room, velvet ropes keep visitors at a distance. All informational placards are written in Spanish, so a translation guide is needed when the only English-speaking person on the staff, Mr. Mesejo, is not available.

While some auto museums apply faux finishes to give floors and walls a patina of period correctness, the Depósito’s concrete, stucco and painted surfaces are authentic. The rough-hewn building reeks of character.

Most of the cars in the collection are American, including a Chevy touring car and Model T and Model A Fords. Against the back wall are two 1959 Oldsmobiles, one originally owned by Camilo Cienfuegos, a revolutionary leader considered a hero by his countrymen. The few European cars include a 1953 MG TD, a 1920s Fiat (discovered hidden behind a secret wall in a mansion) and a bright red Alfa Romeo roadster.

“I know that car from when I was a child,” Mr. Mesejo said of the Alfa. “My father would not let me stand any closer than one meter from it, which is very hard for a little boy. When it came here to the museum, I sat in it for an hour.”

Some of the newer cars — a 1970s Daimler and a 1980s Chevy — were left to the museum as gifts by departing foreign diplomats.

The museum’s most important car is a 1905 Cadillac, which was in continuous use until the 1980s. The Cadillac is now being restored, the first such project for the museum. Much of the technical information needed for its restoration came from collectors in Philadelphia.

Fords and Oldsmobiles were assembled on the island in the 1940s and ’50s, Mr. Mesejo said. “After the Revolution the car companies left, and Cuba, as an auto assembly country, was paralyzed.”

We were told of the country’s dire economy, where street sweepers and doctors make the same wages. So auto repair for the island’s vintage cars becomes a creative endeavor: shampoo is used for brake fluid; iron pipes are cut up for piston rings; Coca-Cola is used to loosen rusty bolts; and cars are painted with sponges, then buffed with toothpaste.

“We call it the Cuban way,” Abel Contreras de la Guardia, our translator and tour guide, said. “We do anything to keep our cars running.”

Besides hoping to one day display the personal cars of Fidel and Raul Castro, as well as the Chevrolet Impala of Che Guevara, Mr. Mesejo said he would like to secure what is perhaps Cuba’s most important car.

“I have seen Ernest Hemingway’s 1955 Chrysler New Yorker convertible,” he said. “It is hidden, but it is still in the country and still restorable.”

Front and center in the museum’s second room is a replica of the 1957 Maserati raced by Juan Manuel Fangio, the five-time world champion. If this bright blue sports car were real, it would be worth millions of dollars, but this one was cobbled together from Citroën parts for a movie about Fangio. It was donated to the museum after filming was completed.

Parked next to the fiberglass Maserati is a car that holds special meaning for Mr. Mesejo: a plain-looking dark brown 1953 Dodge sedan.

“That was my father’s,” he said of the car he inherited. “With this I learned to drive and work on cars.

“This car never let our family down.”

•

Depósito del Automóvil is at Oficios No. 13, Habana Vieja, C.P. 10100, La Habana, Cuba. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Reading the new Photo District News today, I was impressed by the young talents showcased there. After 30 years of shooting advertising photography I know that talent just isn’t enough to make it in this tough business. Well what does it take you ask? I’ll tell you. It takes perseverance, cash, cash, more perseverance and most important a serious desire to succeed, to win and the will to work harder than you’ve ever worked before.

But that’s not really enough either. It takes two, just two skills at a high level. First and foremost is the ability to sell yourself. To pick up the phone and cold call , to market by mail, to BS, and then to say to a prospective client: “I can do it, here is the proof in my portfolio and when do we start” You’ve got to learn to sell, sorry there is no way around it. And then you must also be an artist. You’ve got to be a damn good photographer or you won’t be able to keep the accounts which are the basis for the business. It’s all about regular clients with budgets that need to show off their wares.

The art part is best learned in school, college, learning basic photography and then in my opinion learning to draw, maybe paint to become a sensitive viewer and see light, form, texture that you create and capture. To learn to compose to visualize a finished piece before you shoot it.  Then of course Photoshop. No way around it. Learn it!

But how do you learn the craft of salesmanship? Much harder to find college classes in sales that are more than theory and academics, but real life sales. There is a difference. But the one place I know that works is the Dale Carnegie Course in salesmanship. Every city has a Carnegie training office and though it’s not cheap, those 15 weeks of evenings will change your attitude and if your smart enough it will change the rest of your life. You won’t have to ever look for employment or put up with a jerky boss. You’ll put up with jerky clients as necessary though. You won’t have your own corporate cubicle, and you’ll be able to point yourself in any direction you care to go.

Only about 4% of the working public is self employed. Probably 50% would like to be. But they don’t have the balls, the brains or the VISION to get away from their corporate gigs. Are you up to the task? Only one person has that answer. But I will leave you with this thought. If the idiot writing this blog can do it, what’s your excuse??

Let me know.

Neil

For 30 years great photo assignments have kept me challenged, travelling and paying my bills with my cameras. Check out my website and you’ll see what I am referring to. I’ve made my pile of cash, and I still have a lifetime of good assignments coming my way. I have 400 active clients. Yes that’s 400 companies that call me regularly and don’t fuss over the money. Now I have decided to quit fighting off you young turks who are after my accounts and share some of the real world issues that seperates me ( man, best photographer), and you, (wannnabee, sadly, maybe, likely, soon to be failed photographer, or newcomer or not so newcomer to this rat race).

What’s the matter? No business, declining sales? Need new camera or computer? Not enough hours in the day to edit all the images you made on that last assignment?  Welcome to the real world of full time, big time, expensive professional photography. You may be talented. You may be smart. You may have all the gear or a ton of money available to keep you going for awhile, but how do you actually get people to pay you several hundred dollars an hour to hang out with your camera and be cool.

In case you haven’t noticed, the headlines these days are all “The sky is falling and the nation has run out of credit”. What does tha mean? Basically you’re screwed if you can’t creatively maneuver through this minefield. After 30 years in business this is the 4th or maybe 5th time my thriving business hit walls as the headlines and economic reality force themselves into my life and the life of my clients and my employees. It’s not unusual (averaging every 5-7 years or so) and it’s always going to be that way. So what do you do for cash for several months every few years when the economy and markets take a major dump and  leave you screwed?

These are a few of the tough subjects I am going to address and which I will answer questions about. So if you are looking for a photo blog that tells you which camera has which feature and doo dad, this ain’t it. If you want to figure out how to deal with  tough times, tough assignments, tough customers,  while always delivering the best work you can do EVERY SINGLE DAY, DAY AFTER DAY, I’ll try to help.

Let me know how I can help.

Neil

Neil Rashba Photography