Monday, June 30, 2025
I wasn’t really planning on doing photos today. The weather was pretty much like it had been for the last week or so with clear skies, moving into clouds just about the time that the storms started up. The plan was to stay home and get some of the end of the quarter stuff done on the business end of things. Of course, that didn’t really sound like much fun, though necessary. I had an alternate plan that popped up when I started to discuss delivering a print from a recent trek into Ashe County. Oh, you didn’t know that I sold prints of my work. Well, I most certainly do, and that is a huge motivator for me going out to get all of these photos. They aren’t for my walls, though I wish I had some extra room to add some more here for me to look at. No, I go out and shoot these scenes with the hopes that they will appeal to folks and they will love them enough to hang them on their walls. I’ve sold prints all over the United States, and have several hundred hanging in hospitals and doctor’s offices between the Piedmont of NC and the coast thanks to working with Hampton House Art and Framing who has a long list of commercial clients looking for wall art. Of course, you don’t have to be a big business to have one of my prints on the wall. I love working with my own clients to match them up with their very own special print that they choose, and where we work together to get the right size and media for their needs. All it takes is a quick call or email to get the process started and you will have your very own piece of unique wall art that will be a conversation starter for years.
Oh yeah, by the way, this blog entry has been brought to you by….me. I’m not sponsored, nor do I sell advertising here in the blog. It is just a little dear diary entry that I share with you so that you know what I have gone through to get the photos that you see in the different galleries here. One of the best ways that you can support me is to purchase a print, or two and letting me know which of my photos most appeal to you. You get a great quality print, and I get a little support in my endeavors to create more and more photographic art. It really is a win-win situation when you think about it.
Anyway, the plan for the day was to take the print to my client near Jefferson which would put me back on top of the mountain where the weather has seemed to be a bit more forgiving for photography and at least a little cooler in comparison to down here in Wilkes County. Since I was going to be up there a couple of hours before the storms were set to start, I figured that I might as well take the camera with me and see if I could find something worthwhile to shoot. I have been up in that area several times now over the past week and have started to get a feeling for the area and where the subjects might be located. Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve been out this way, but it has been a while.
I left around mid-morning and set out to Jefferson under a clear blue sky. It was hot, but not as bad as what it had been over the last week or so. The trip was nice, and I enjoyed the air conditioning which made me happy that I took the truck over the Miata. When I got to my client’s business, I dropped off the print and he was very happy with how it turned out. This always makes me very happy, and when I can, I like to hand deliver my work just so I can get that feedback. I also like to stand behind my work and that is kind of hard to do when I ship it and the client never sees me. After a quick chat, I was back in the truck and on my way down the road.
I decided to continue heading North for a bit and ultimately decided to take a route that would eventually lead into Virginia. It was a route that I was quite familiar with from years ago and knew that there were several really great subjects that I have shot from time to time. As I am getting used to the area once again, I wanted to start out with some familiar areas so that I could get on the same wavelength as the environment. This is kind of like listening to the landscape, as every area that I work has its own personality which kind of dictates how I want to photograph the scenes. I had gotten off to a great start when I shot the red barn early last week which then brought me to the spot where I worked with two different Volkswagens. That second location was a new spot for me and one that I had never seen promise in before. If luck would hold, going out to some familiar areas would prompt me to find more new spots to work.
As I was driving down the road I was thinking about things that I had worked out this way before. I was also thinking about spots that I haven’t photographed yet but had interested me. One of those spots was not too far from where I was and I decided to give it another look because I had only ever looked at it in the Fall and Winter months. The Summer foliage would make things look quite a bit different, and I was hoping that the scene would improve because of it. I remembered it being a little house on the hill with a large porch surrounded by trees. The scene had just been too complex in the past, but I remembered it looking good under an interesting sky. The clouds were starting to come in and I thought I might be able to pull something off.
When I got close, I slowed down because I couldn’t remember exactly where it was but would recognize the side road after spending many attempts pulled off on that road looking at the house. I did spot the road, but something was wrong. The house wasn’t where I expected it to be. There was nothing where the house had been actually. Even some of the trees were gone and it was just an open yard. I knew that this was the right place because I saw the house that I had stopped at to ask about getting closer to the house on one of the visits. I was at the right place, but the house was totally gone. This is one of the risks of being a decay photographer, and I’ve talked about it plenty of times in the past. There is always a chance that when I see a subject that it will not be there the next time, I’m through the area. I try to photograph things when I see them for this very reason, but I just never found a way to photograph it that I liked.
The silver lining was that I knew that just a mile or so down the road was another spot that I had spent quite some time at a few years ago. It was a property owned by a moonshiner and it had a lot of really great rusty cars and trucks. I wasn’t sure that I was wanting to revisit that place, but I was happy that I would get a chance to see how things were looking there. The last time I had been there, it was to deliver a print to the owner after he had let me spend that time there. I was actually kind of excited to see how things were looking after all these years.
When I approached the property, I recognized it from the fence and immediately slowed to take it all in. The only problem was things were not as I remembered. The house was still there, as was the garage. All the cars were gone though. The yard was kind of grown up and the cars that were there looked like it was probably family coming to take care of some things at the house. From all the clues I could see, this house was now vacant and was being cleaned out. That was kind of a punch to the gut because I had really had a great time here some three and a half years ago.
I wasn’t really out anything considering I was just exploring and had no plans on photographing either location. It was just still sad that two places that I was interested in now essentially ceased to exist. It did get me thinking about one other spot that I had photographed a couple of times in the past. It was a barn near Virginia, in Alleghany County, which I still have a stunning black and white print of on my wall in the studio which was shot in 2018. In fact, that same photo made the list of most significant images of that year. That framed print is available for sale if anyone is interested in it.
Anyway, I continued on down the road in search of the long barn in the middle of the field. The sky was looking really good, and I was actually getting quite a bit excited about the prospects of this barn. I started working through the different compositions in my head and tried to plan for what would work the best. When I got to the area that I expected it to be, I slowed down and started to look for it. There was an open field and no barn. Could it be, could it be that this too was gone? Oh wait, there was no pullout on the side of the road where I would normally park, and I remembered that there was a similar spot before I actually got to the barn that confused me in the past. Whew….I was really not happy about the fact that this barn was gone too. It was just a couple more miles up the road.
When I got to the next area that looked very familiar to the first, I recognized the house where I had stopped and talked with folks the first time I shot the barn, and the driveway that I have turned around in a time or two. I then saw the small barn off in the distance, and the hill that is pretty well burned into my mind from looking at that awesome print on my wall. There was no sign of the barn anywhere though. I could see where it had been, but it was all covered in grass now. The barn was gone, no doubt about it this time. What a disappointment that was. I loved that barn and while I didn’t shoot it often, I always felt like I came away with a winning shot of it which left me feeling great after spending time with it. Now, it was gone and never to be seen again. That makes the print on my wall, and the other photos that I have shot of it over the years even more special. They are photos that can never be recreated and are now representative of a piece of history. That is the other side of that coin for decay photography. I might miss out a chance to photograph something if I don’t jump on it, but there are often times when I have photographed something that soon after just up and disappears. These are the wins for me, and while I miss having the chance to revisit certain subjects, I’m always thankful for when I have had the ability to photograph them before they got gone.
At this point, I was starting to feel a little down because I had found nothing at all to photograph and everything that I knew to be out here was no longer here to photograph. There were rain drops starting to fall on my windshield which made things even more pressing because historically, once the rain started, it would become a washout storm making photography impossible. I had one more spot that I thought about which was a bit further up the road still. I had stopped here years ago because there was an old Ford truck sitting out in front of the shop as yard art. I knew that the setting wasn’t the best, but it was something and there was a chance that things had changed with the setting, and I knew that I was better able to deal with the problems that faced me all those years ago. It was worth a shot, I just didn’t know if it was going to work out, or even still be there.
The closer I got, the more worried that I became that the truck was gone, or there was something next to it that would greatly detract from its visual impact. I had just about convinced myself that it was gone long before I actually got there. Fortunately, I pressed on and when I got to the top of the hill where I felt that the shop would be, there was the truck sitting right where it had been the first time I had shot it. I was excited and while it was not the ideal subject to work with, it was something and I was here. The rain had stopped, and the sky was still looking great. I pulled into the parking lot and looked around. It didn’t look like anyone was home, which was not a terrible problem since what I was wanting to shoot was right out in front. However, there was something in the back of the shop that caught my eye. It was a Red Ford truck with tall weeds grown up around it. I wasn’t sure about a composition, but this was a really nice looking truck when it comes to colors in the landscape. I needed to get permission to shoot it though, because of where it was located.
It was hot, and I was a little lazy, so I called the number on the shop sign to see if I could make contact with anyone. I was really expecting nobody to be here, but I have had great luck with calling business numbers, and they go to the owner’s cell phone which allows me to talk with them even when they are not at the location. The phone was picked up within a few rings and I was very happy to speak with the owner. He let me know that they were open and, in the shop, but had everything closed up trying to keep it cooler inside. I completely understood and proceeded to explain the purpose of my call. He was happy to let me get some photos, so I pulled over on the side of the parking lot and got out to come talk with him for a moment.
After a quick conversation, I was all ready to get started with the photography. He had apologized for not having the weeds cut back, but I assured him that this was what I loved about the scene. The first subject that I went to was the red truck in the back of the shop. I had not photographed this truck before and felt that it was probably the one that offered the most potential of the two. I started out by looking for the overall shot that I felt was there but was going to have a time finding. There was a white Ford Explorer parked right behind it, a four-eyed Mustang off to camera left and a later model Suburban off to camera right. There were also spare parts laying on the ground right beside the truck which included a white hood. All of these elements worked against the story that I was trying to create with the photo. This meant that I was going to have to get creative with positioning and focal length to get the composition to exclude those elements that I didn’t want in the frame.
As I moved around, I could tell that my best chance was going to be getting low and wide. This would allow me to focus the attention on the front of the truck while masking the Explorer due to the focal length. I was hoping to be able to keep the bookend vehicles out of the frame by carefully framing the shot. I was also hoping to minimize the hood on the driver’s side of the truck. I started off with the standard zoom because it keeps me from going overboard with the perspective distortion in situations like this. I worked out the position that I liked and found that I was racked out to 24mm and still wanted more to cover what needed to be covered in the background.
With that in mind, I went back to the bag and swapped out lenses for the wide-angle one and found that 21mm worked out perfectly for what I had in mind. I ultimately tried three different positions with that lens as I progressively got closer and closer to the truck. It was the second and third compositions that won me over and I liked them both equally as well. The extreme close-up shot was very immediate in composition while the mid-range one told more of the story of the conditions and location. During the culling, I decided to process one each and decided that I was going to need to really make them say different things if I wanted to keep them both in the collection. The more direct composition from closer in felt like a great chance for a black and white presentation to really focus the attention on the front of the truck. The one from a bit further away seemed to lend itself better as a color image because there was enough of the sky to balance out the red tones for a more pleasing overall look.
In the end, I had a color and a black and white photo of the front of this truck that said two completely different things. The basic composition was pretty much the same, it was just how much of the frame that the truck filled. I think that the missing hood on the truck actually helped a lot with the composition because with as close as I was the front end became very large compared to the cab of the truck. Without the hood, I was able to get low and still see a good bit of the cab which kept the proportion of the truck in line with reality. The dramatic sky set both of the photos off and made them full of energy, especially with how the sun was lighting the truck during both of the shots. It was truly magic light because the sun was mostly out behind me which provided a great deal of lighting on the scene while the sky overhead was dark and stormy with the clouds that had been raining on me just a little while before.
I had my first shots in the can which got me motivated to move on with some more compositions. I was really liking the idea of the red truck and the green vegetation, so I started to look for another way to capture those colors. This happened to be a Custom Cab truck which you will probably recognize as one of my favorite details when it comes to the emblem under the windows. I try to photograph these whenever I can, and this was going to be one of those times. The tall weeds were framing the emblem quite nicely, but I needed something more interesting than that. I started to look around to see how I wanted to get this photographed. The wide-angle lens was still attached, and that gave me a good idea at how things would line up from different angles. I found something that had promise from the rear of the cab and from pretty high up. It was the wrong lens to actually photograph the scene though, so I went back to the bag and once again traded lenses for the standard zoom.
With that lens now back on the camera, I flipped it vertically and returned to the door. I found the rough area that I felt would work and started to frame up the shot. As I dialed things in, I moved the camera slightly to get things all lined up the way that I thought they would look the best. It was actually coming together quite nicely, and I liked that I was able to include the open glove box on the dash for this photo. The angle that I was shooting from also gave some really nice diagonal lines which made this composition anything but stagnant. It only took a couple of frames before I was happy that I had this one in the bag.
There was one more element in this area that I had liked and had initially tried to photograph with the door emblem. This was the broken windshield right at the corner. The composition was far too complex to really work out, so I decided to make that one concept two different photographs. This is a very helpful technique when shooting isolations with these old vehicles. It is very easy to try and include too many elements at once, and it is usually a better idea to break up the concept into a couple of different compositions instead. That was what I had done, and I was now focusing on the cracked windshield which had a nice rhythm to the striations.
I knew that this was going to be a black and white image because the frame included too much red, and the main subject was all about contrast. To solve both of those issues, I decided to strip the color away and just focus on the shapes and textures in the frame. I needed to keep this one simple because the main subject was just the cracked glass. I had enough of the window frame included to frame the cracked glass and a portion of the wiper was used to point to the central impact zone. It was all done in a vertical orientation to draw more attention to the shape of the crack rather than the fact that this was a windshield. The end result of the concept turned out better than expected after I did some processing with it.
That kind of brought me to the end of working with the red Ford. After doing a quick walk around to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything, I moved my attention to the Ford sitting in front of the shop. This is one that after spending time with it before, I had decided there weren’t that many compositions available with it. I was hoping that I would be able to come up with some new ideas this time. When I got around to it, I started to do a walk around to see what angles would work. It was looking like anything from the passenger side would be a no-go because of all the cars that were parked in the parking lot. I moved back to the driver’s side and if I was going to get anything from the front of the truck, it was going to have to include the building. My other option was to shoot from the side, or slightly behind the truck which is what I had done before. It was kind of a stagnant composition and not one that I really loved. I wanted to get the front of the truck and decided that the building was just going to have to be part of the story.
As I was coming to this conclusion, I noticed that the guys were leaving for lunch, and the cars were clearing out of the parking lot. I moved quickly back to the passenger side and started working out a composition. There was still a restored pickup in the background that I needed to deal with which I was able to do by positioning the truck in a way to conceal the restored one. There was also a grid structure in the background which I tried to minimize by placing it behind the cab of the truck. All of this left me with a very specific placement for the Ford in relation to the building. Fortunately, there was a window that was perfectly placed above the bed and behind the cab. It was exactly where I would have wanted it had I been given an option.
I went ahead and shot this composition with a few different frames to take into account the breeze that was moving the grasses a bit. I also had to be careful about reflections in the glass as I was only able to deal with some of them through the use of the polarizer. The easiest course of action was just to wait until there was no traffic, and no wind to take the shot. Since the truck was on the shaded side of the sunlight, I had to wait for the sun to dip behind the clouds as well. Yep, photography is a lot like fishing. There is a lot waiting for everything to line up nicely before you can make the shot.
It did eventually work out and I was able to get a keeper out of this group of photos. I went ahead and made this one a black and white also because I felt that it needed the simplification of omitting the colors. The shapes defined this photo more than the colors did, and I felt that this was the most effective way of showing that. Now, I did move to the other side and shoot the truck and the building again but kept it as a color image for that composition.
The colors helped to define the composition quite a bit because the reddish hues of the rust really stood out against the more muted tones of the building, the grass, and the sky. I did compose the image in a way where the windows of the building fit into the overall composition by lining them up with the windows of the truck. I also took the time to make sure that I had a pleasing relationship between the windows on the building and the different elements on the truck. You might notice that the mirror sits completely within one window, while the pillar of the cap masks another window, yet the pattern of windows is very obvious. How the truck related to the windows was a big factor in the visual flow of the image and I wanted to keep everything as organized and simple as I could make it. This is just one of those things that I do with my compositions that rarely gets noticed but makes for a much more pleasing image in the long run.
At this point, I had done two different overall shots of the Ford and felt that it was time to do some isolations. I had worked on the grill before, and tried that again, but didn’t like how anything was coming together. Instead, I looked around for other options and found the gas cap with most of the chrome flaked off revealing some rust and heavy pitting. I liked this and started to work out a composition that included the door handle but really felt that the different ways I was framing this up were just too linear and boring. I wanted something with more visual appeal, but that didn’t necessarily mean drama within the photo. Instead, I chose to simplify things and get a shot looking from the front omitting the door handle altogether. This allowed me to use the step bed as a background which supplied a lot of shapes and some shadows to the composition.
Since I had a feeling that this was going to work as an abstract shot, I decided to really limit the depth of field to use the bed as more color and shape rather than texture. I wanted all the attention on the gas filler and the texture there. The rest of the image was basically just color and background. I wasn’t sure how this was going to work but felt like it was worth a try. I’m really glad that I gave it that try because I think that it turned out really well in the end.
This led me to look around the truck for more isolations or abstracts that I could shoot. One aspect that I really liked about the truck was the tailgate area. You could still see the stamped Ford lettering and there was a nicely bend bumper to go along with the patina. There was a nice tall weed that was growing between the bumper and the tailgate which added to the visual interest. While I was looking at the compositional possibilities here, I noticed that there were beetles on one of the leaves and they happened to be in an area that would be prominent in the composition which included the letters.
I decided to work out a composition that included these elements and spend some time trying to find a way to frame all of this that would tell the story in an interesting way. Once I found the right framing and composition, I had to wait for the sun to dip behind the clouds a little bit because the background was much too bright when the sun was out. As it did get diffused, I would fire off some shots checking the shutter speed to make sure that the beetles were being frozen in the frame. For the most part they were, but I wanted to get a few frames so that I would have options when I got home, so I stuck here for a few minutes as the sun did what it would do.
When I was finished with that composition, I did another look around the truck to see if there was anything else that I had missed. After I was satisfied that I had everything, I moved back to the red truck and decided to shoot a simple vertical composition which would isolate the truck from the Suburban and the Explorer. I had to shoot over a car dolly which added to the involvement with the camera placement, but I finally landed on something that looked good in the camera. Sadly, when I got the images home, I looked at the photo and decided that there was just not enough breathing room on either side to make it work. There had been no way to enlarge the frame because of the location of the other two vehicles, so that one ended up in the trash.
I had shot a total of 48 frames at the location in roughly 45 minutes. I was pretty happy with the day and was content to call it quits so I could get home and start processing the photos. I thanked the shop owner and started on my way home. instead of backtracking, I went a slightly quicker way which took me through Sparta. I was hoping that I might find one more target of opportunity along the way. The sky was still looking really good, so I had the right conditions, I just needed the right subject.
Shortly before turning onto 18, I spotted a tall red barn sitting in a field. It was kind of plain, but at the same time, it was a red barn completely isolated from distractions. This is a great recipe for a solid composition, or at least the start of one. I got turned around and went back to the barn. I pulled off the road and started to look critically at the scene. There were some yellow grasses that helped to add visual interest in the foreground and the sky was looking awesome in the background. The color of the barn worked well in the scene as a whole. The lighting was decent on it with the diffused light thanks to the clouds. It was probably as good as this scene would get in normal circumstances, so I decided that it was worth shooting.
I knew that it wasn’t going to take but a minute, so I didn’t even turn the truck off. I just grabbed the camera and tripod and set it up roughly where I thought that the shot would be. The standard zoom was plenty enough lens to get the composition that I was after with a lot of the sky and enough of the field to get the shapes and colors that I liked so much. The barn took up a very small portion of the frame, but it was just part of the story and thanks to the red color, it more than pulled its visual weight which was benefitted by being so small in the frame.
For the first time today, I was having an issue with the exposure latitude and felt that I needed to add a grad filter to control the sky just a little bit. I added one really quickly and it made all the difference to the shot. I was now confident that I had a good exposure though the entire scene. I made several different exposures as the sky moved so that I would have some options when I got home as to the location of the blue portion and where it actually looked the best. The best option turned out to be the second of the four shots that I made of the barn.
that was it, I had shot only four exposures of this barn while the truck was still running. That brought my day to 52 frames which really wasn’t that many for all the compositions that I shot. Out of those, I ended up with nine keepers which I really liked. I might go back to the one vertical of the red truck at another time, but for now, I am pretty happy with trashing it. I’m still looking at something like a 20% hit rate with changing light. I’m really happy with that, and with this trek as a whole.
Thank you for joining me for this one, and I hope that you have enjoyed the photos that resulted. Remember that I do offer prints and love making them for my clients. It is exciting for me to think about them being displayed on your walls to be looked at an appreciated in a way that is much more meaningful than scrolling past them on social media. If you would like help in creating your own photographs, remember that I do offer mentorships as well. These can be informal, or something very structured depending on your wants and needs. Just contact me for a free consultation so we can determine if I’m a good fit for you and what a mentorship should look like for you.
Until next time….
