Friday, June 6, 2025
The weather these days seems to be either rain or sun with nothing in-between. On the dry days, I’ve been out taking care of things around the house and have finally gotten most of that under control which leaves me with some more time to dedicate to photography. The problem is, on the days when the light is good, the rain is falling, and when there is no rain, there is abundant sunshine. I wasn’t really planning on doing any photography and was looking forward to just taking it easy around the house with nothing looming over me to do. However, when I was all finished with my morning routine down in the studio, I came upstairs to find that Toni was wanting to clean the house. Since she likes to do this when I’m not around, I quickly decided that I would head out for a while. I could have taken the Miata out for a nice spin, but there seems to be a surprise shower or two every afternoon and since I had just finished a two-day detail on it, I didn’t want to take it out with the risk of rain, especially since it has never seen a rain covered road before. The weather wasn’t great for photography, but I did have the camera in the truck from the last time I went out a few days ago, and figured that I could go and scout some new locations if nothing else.
I grabbed my socks and shoes and headed out with no real destination in mind. I had a passing thought of going down 268 to see if the roofing company was occupied where there was a nice Ford sitting out behind one of the buildings, but after at least a dozen times trying, I didn’t want to try again with the weather not really all that great. I decided instead to hop on 18 and head into Lenoir that way. The drive was nice and I was just enjoying the music playing as I went South.
Nothing was really jumping out at me photographically as I drove and there were no side roads that were calling my name. In short, I was just not inspired by much of anything that I was seeing. When I got to Lenoir, I started to pick turns that I rarely pick to see where they would lead. Just when I thought I was on a new road, I would see something that was familiar and I would know just where I was. The further I went, the more I realized that this was a route that GPS would take me when I was going to South Mountains. I could now start to think ahead in the route to consider subjects before I got to them. There wasn’t really much out this way that I had seen over the years, but I was looking for some new side roads to take.
Sadly, there wasn’t much that grabbed my attention and I found myself thinking about an old Chinese restaurant that I had seen the first time through this way many years ago. It was closed down and had the typical architecture that you would expect. It had always interested me, but I had never stopped to photograph it because it didn’t really fit the decay bill as much as just an old building. I figured that since I was out this way, I might as well see if I could find this again and maybe it would work out better than it had the last times I’ve looked. Time is my friend in many respects when it comes to decay photography. Time will make a subject look more derelict, but it can also result in a building being demolished, or a car being towed away. I had no idea what this attempt would bring.
I was actually kind of surprised that I found the building as easy as I did from memory, and going in the reverse direction from when I would normally see it. There were a couple of things that I noticed right away. First of all, the building was now mostly overgrown with vegetation and was almost buried from sight. The second thing that I noticed was how much all that vegetation made the red trim stand out against the blue sky above. There were some puffy clouds in the sky that weren’t doing much for the lighting, but did help to fill the sky with some interest. With all that in mind, I pulled into the parking lot and started to look at the building critically for the first time.
What I found was that there were enough architectural clues here to let the viewer know what they were looking at. There was also a panel by the door that had what I believe to be Japanese writing on it. There were signs out front for both a Japanese and a Chinese Restaurant so I wasn’t sure which I was seeing. It really didn’t matter because it helped to tell the story of the building and helped to make sense of the the design. The overgrown nature of the greenery really added to the sense of abandonment and filled that last bit of the puzzle that the building needed to fit in my decay portfolio. I just needed to figure out a composition that would work out.
I drove slowly through the parking lot looking at the angles and found that from the adjoining lot where there were some box trucks parked, I could get a good view of the entryway of the business which was the part that was mostly visible. Beyond the building was a power pole and the associated power lines, but they didn’t both me at all because this was a building that at one time needed power and the lines made sense to me. There was a nice tree to frame the scene to the right and balance out the tall vegetation on the left. There was a median in the parking lot that I enjoyed for a bit of foreground to fill what was more than likely going to be a lot of asphalt. The composition wasn’t as strong as I would have liked, but it seemed to work enough to give it a try.
I parked the truck and got the camera out. I was pretty sure that I was going to be in the normal to wide end of the focal lengths, so I selected my standard zoom along with a polarizer. I moved around with the camera to my eye to find the right spot to place the tripod. When I did, I started to dial in the composition. Once that was done, I worked on figuring out the exposure which wasn’t really all that easy with the deep shadows. I didn’t mind the shadows all that much because what they were hiding wasn’t all that important to the image. What I really liked here was the red trim and the shapes of the front of the building. I knew that this was going to be in color because the three main colors in the scene complimented each other quite well I thought.
I ended up shooting two variations on the composition with slightly different exposures for each one. After that fourth frame was shot, I didn’t see any reason to stick around to try anything else, so I loaded up the camera and went back on my hunt for more subjects. I wasn’t sure if this restaurant was going to turn out or not, but it was nice to have one in the bag after driving for so long.
I ended up going through Hickory, Taylorsville, and then back up into Wilkes County before calling it a day. I had found nothing else to photograph, but I can’t really blame it on the weather. The lighting was decent, there was just nothing that I felt like putting in front of the camera. I’m glad that I did end up stopping at the restaurant because without that, it would have been a day of driving for nothing because I didn’t really scout anything that would be worth coming back for in the coming days which are likely going to be cloudy. We will see what happens, but at the moment, I am at a loss of where to go and what to shoot when the weather looks better for me.
Stick around and see how this turns out. In the meantime, I hope that you enjoyed this one photo and the shorter than typical blog entry. Thanks for joining me!
Until next time…
