Sunday, September 6, 2026
I wasn’t really expecting to be out doing photos this weekend, but the weather presented a perfect opportunity for a subject that I have been thinking about for a number of years. Now this subject isn’t one that I have specifically talked about here in the blog. At least I don’t think that I have spoken about it. It is just a location that I pass regularly which kind of sticks out to me. I probably first took notice of it back in 2021 or so when I was starting to take the back roads into Winston occasionally. This route has become a regular run for me several times a month usually. There is no telling how many times I’ve passed by this place over the last few years.
There is no real secret to what this place is as the sign is still showing on the front. Of course, it is located in Jonesville, and I remember seeing it when there were still cars in the fenced in lot. I’m not sure if it was in business back then, but I think that it probably was still open in some capacity or another. It was in a state of decay at that point and that is what caught my eye. However, I never really cared that much for the photos that I could picture myself making here. It was an interesting subject, but I was sure that it was better left to my imagination than to actually pull out the camera.
I’ve started to come off of that thought process here in the last year or so though as the state of decay has stepped up a bit. I’ve also taken notice that the cars that were in the fenced lot are now mostly gone. It has started to take on a different mood altogether and no longer looks like an old commercial location. The shift has moved this building into a kind of creepy place filled with mystery. If you’ve been following my work for anything length of time, you will know that this is when I start to get really interested in capturing some photos.
The issue has been that for the most part, every time that I have been through here, the weather has been sunny which is completely at odds with the mood that the building exudes. It really needed cloudy or foggy conditions to work well, or at least that was what I was thinking would fit the subject the best. I knew that sunny and clear skies wasn’t it and that was for sure.
Having just come off of a very successful trek into Yadkin County a couple of days ago, I had the opportunity to check out this building once again. I did actually slow down and pull into the driveway to the gate. I looked at things briefly and determined a few important details that I hadn’t really paid attention to in the past. The gate was attached to a fence, but it was set up to keep vehicular traffic out of the parking lot. The fence didn’t continue through the width of the property. There were no signs within the fence that would indicate that I wasn’t allowed to be there. There was a vehicle and a piece of heavy equipment in the rear lot, but they were far enough over to allow me to get a good composition on the building. One of the things that had bothered me about the building in the past was the intricate ramp system that was at the front of the building. I originally saw this as a visual hurdle for the viewer to get past in order to see the building. I was now seeing it very differently as I was looking at this as a wide-angle composition where I could visually stretch out the ramp system for some added interest to the building.
The trees were still full of leaves, but there was some early Fall change going on which added some yellows and oranges that I liked to balance out the cool tone of the actual building. One other detail that I had never really been able to see before was the signage on the front of the building. The part that really interested me was the line that read “Free teletype service.” The reason that this hit me the way that it did was that it placed an age on the building that I would not have guessed. I remember learning what a teletype was when I was a kid and building plastic models.
The model that I was building happened to be a police car from the early ’70’s I believe and included this odd looking contraption for the interior that was similar to a typewriter. I had asked Mom about it because she knew everything and she knew immediately what it was. She told me it was a teletype machine and then went on to tell me that it was a way of communicating a typed document between two locations. I guess it was like a prehistoric text message in a way. There was no Google to verify any of this, and I never saw any other reference to a teletype machine as I was growing up. I’m 52 years old right now and I was asking about the teletype when I was around eight or nine, and I believe that they had already passed their useful time. Now that I was looking at this sign, it took me right back to that little apartment that we lived in some 45 earlier. It was now the second time that a teletype had crossed my path, only this time it was a sign on an old building. This put the building into a historic timeframe in the ’60’s and ’70’s which is a bit earlier than I would have thought. For me, the signage now made this a must photograph spot and I had to start thinking about how and when to shoot it.
I was comfortable that I needed it to be cloudy and that fog would be a nice addition. Now, I was looking at more specific things like the direction of the sun and what season would work best. I liked the idea of bare trees, but looking at the angles that I was going to be working with, I figured that the bare trees would add too much texture to the background and they might be distracting. I did like the leaves in the early stages of the Autumn change and the leaves helped to smooth out the background a good bit. I was also seeing this as potentially a blue hour composition where the lighting was dim to add to the mystery of the whole setting.
That was the concept for the trek and that left me with looking for the right day to make it happen. As I was looking at the weather after getting the yard cut yesterday, I saw that there were storms in the forecast for Sunday evening and with those storms would be clouds. With the storms happening right around sunset, I saw my chance for a dimly lit scene with loads of ambiance that would go along with the state of the building. That was my plan, I would head out around 6:30 or so to get to the location in time to see the light start to fall so that I could pick the right time to make the shot.
I even stayed up a little extra late Saturday night so that I could sleep in for a bit knowing that I was going to have a long night with a sunset shoot followed by editing and blogging. The plan was in motion. Then the plan fell off the rails around 8am when the rolling thunder outside woke me up. It would appear that the storms were hitting earlier than expected. I went ahead and got up and while I was eating breakfast, I was noticing that the light levels were falling fast. It was almost as if it were about to be nighttime. These were great conditions for the photos that I had in mind, but I wasn’t even close to being ready to head out considering that I had planned on leaving roughly 10 hours from now. I looked at the weather forecast and it was still showing storms around sunset, but the cloud cover was between 70-80% which may or may not be enough for what I was wanting to do. There was also the chance that I could get rained out and once the light was gone, that was it.
Looking at the radar, it was looking like the band of precipitation was coming in from the Northwest and would hit here about an hour before it hit Jonesville. It was just starting to rain outside, and that meant that I would have similar conditions over the area that I wanted to work for the next hour or so before the rain hit. I knew that it took 45 minutes to get out there which would give me about 15 minutes to work if the weather radar was accurate. I decided to grab my gear and head out as quick as I could to see if I could make this work.
It was raining pretty good when I left the house, but I left the rain within about ten minutes from home. The sky had no texture, but the light was good for what I wanted which was the main thing. I needed the thick clouds more than ever because I would actually be shooting into the sun which could easily cause problems with the lighting on the building since it was shrouded by trees on the East side. As long as the clouds remained thick, I would be fine, and I knew that there wouldn’t be too much sky in the frame with most of the scene including the trees.
When I got to the spot, I pulled into the driveway and did a final look of things. This time, I got out of the truck and walked along the fenced lot to see about the angle that I had planned. It was more than likely going to work out and would definitely require the wide-angle lens that I was thinking would be best. There was a little drizzle falling, but nothing terrible. Since I had brought my wet weather kit which included an 82mm Color Combo Polarizer as well as lens hoods, I stripped off the Lee systems ring and went with the screw on filter and hood to shield the filter from the rain. I don’t do this often, but it made sense for what I was wanting to accomplish here as I wasn’t going to need any grad filters.
I walked the rig over to the side of the building and started to look through the viewfinder to find the right angle and distance from the building. I made several exposures as I was moving around in the hopes that one would work well. The longer I worked on the composition, the closer to the store I got. This changed the perspective dramatically and did just what I was counting on with the wooden ramp and steps along the front. What had been seen as a visual blockage to the building was now an interesting foreground thanks to the perspective of the lens. The polarizer wasn’t making much difference because the sunlight was very diffused, but I could tell that there was some glare being taken out of the windows and that was enough to justify keeping the filter on.
I worked the location quickly because of the coming rain and also because I wasn’t sure if I would be welcomed by the property owner at any point. I only lingered here for a total of 13 minutes with the camera out. In that time, I shot 13 frames with each one being at a different spot. The exposure was pretty much locked into the camera as the lighting wasn’t really changing at all. I just had to get the best possible composition and that meant moving inches in all directions to change the perspective. Having shot 13 frames, I really wanted to do one in black and white as well as one in color. I figured that I had enough to choose from that I would have no problem finding two compositions that I liked.
As it turned out, the fourth exposure I made turned into a great black and white with the focus more on the front of the building, while the eleventh frame earned the honor of being the color image. This one had more emphasis placed on the ramp and stairs. The color helped to balance the image by highlighting the colors in the leaves and the overall cool blue tone that gave the image the evening look that I was going for.
Both of these images were very close to what I had envisioned after deciding that I did want to shoot this building. The mood was captured exactly the way that I intended, and I was very happy that I went out when I did. I could have very easily stuck to my original plan and gone out for sunset, but now that I’m looking at the forecast for this evening, the conditions have changed a bit. It is now looking like partly cloudy and no storms. This could have still worked but would have introduced a very different mood into the photos from what I had captured. Like I told Toni while I was deciding to head out, I would rather go out with known conditions rather than wait for unknown conditions that might not be as good as what I had in the present. I think that I chose wisely here and I have these two keepers to show for it.
There is also another fold to this decision to go out when I did. The trek isn’t over yet, but had I waited until sunset as planned, this would have been all I would have gotten. Since the sun was still pretty new in the sky at this point, I still had plenty of light to head over to another location. I even had a location in mind that I thought would work quite well. I had seen it just a couple of days ago while getting the photos of the Galaxie in East Bend. I didn’t mention this subject in that blog because I really hadn’t paid that much attention to it at the time. As I was leaving, I spotted an old flat nosed Ford truck sitting behind and to the side of the office building next to the workshop. The truck had been sitting for a long time and showed all kinds of patina and growth on its surfaces. Under the bright sun, it was not even remotely a good subject though. It just looked like a dark blob in the shadows at the time, and since it was a flatbed truck, I didn’t really see all that much interest in a composition since there wasn’t really anything else to share a frame with. However, I did pack that one away in my memory just in case I felt inclined to shoot something like it in the future.
I had a feeling that today was going to be a good day to capture that truck. The mood that was set by the weather seemed fitting and I wanted to give it a closer look now that the lighting was infinitely better than what it was a couple of days ago. It wasn’t that far away and was on the same road, so that made it all very simple to work out. I’ll be back soon with the photos from that truck, and I hope to see you back here then. In the meantime, I thank you for joining me on this trek and I hope that you have enjoyed the photos from this historic location in Jonesville. I have a feeling that the building won’t be here much longer, so I am very happy that I have managed to capture a couple of images of it. If you would like a print, don’t hesitate to reach out to me as I would love to see either of these done as a piece of large wall art.
I’ll be back soon with the next part of this trek.
Until then…
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