Archive for the ‘Decay’ Category:
Number Eighty One
This my friends is Number Eighty One. She’s a Wissota B-Modified dirt track stock car – and she’s the pride of Jared Boumeester of Waseca, MN. Jared just finished building this Skyrocket-framed beast and yesterday was her maiden voyage at the Deer Creek Speedway in southeastern Minnesota. I was in Waseca yesterday to have my taxes prepared and I stopped by to take a few glamour shots of #81.
I decided to have some fun with these pictures and went for something really grungy and radical looking. It’s a dirt-track racer, after all! The processing is over-the-top, and some people are going to instinctively hate it. Others are going to love it. This image was made by taking 9 different exposures and merging them as an HDR with Photomatix Pro. Once I merged them, I tonemapped them into the wild scene you see above. This technique is like cilantro – little bits of it are good, but you’d never want to eat a whole bowl of it. I’d never use it on a nature shot – but unfortunately others do. Because of that, this technique gets an ill-deserved bad rap.
Because I stepped out of the box and went for it – I’ve got a vibrant image that I love. It fits the subject matter perfectly, and the car just looks fast sitting there. There’s your lesson for today – don’t be afraid to ditch the comfortable and do something that isn’t your style.. you may get some wild fun results!
Wanna hear her roar? Check out Jared revving her up yesterday on this iPhone video: http://yfrog.us/6bpj9z
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17mm TS-E f/4L. ISO 200, f/6.3, exposures bracketed from 1/6400 to 1/25 sec.
Cash for Clunkers #2
This ancient pickup has certainly seen better days.. probably about 75 years worth of better days. The remains of this pickup is sitting at almost 12,000 feet above sea level – it is just above Animas Forks on the way to California Gulch. It is so fun shooting in the San Juan mountains – there are mining relics scattered everywhere. This shot was taken just before the sun popped over the mountain behind the truck giving it that cool halo-like glow. I drove up to Animas Forks to take dawn shots only to realize that a) the sun didn’t hit the town until about 9:30 AM due to the mountains and b) it was really cold waiting in the dark for the sun to rise.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @24mm ISO 200, f/16, +/- 2 stops
The Writing Is On The Wall
Here is one of the iconic spots in Wisconsin’s beautiful Door County. It is Anderson’s Dock in Ephraim, WI. Back in the old days, the winners of the yacht race would paint their boat name/team name on the building. Today, anybody can write their name on the building, provided some simple rules and respect are followed. If you want to join in the fun now, prepare to bring a ladder since the lower 9′ is pretty solidly covered.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 24mm ISO 100, f/16
Needs Curb Appeal
This is the Walsh House in Animas Forks, CO. The Walsh house is the signature landmark in this well-preserved late-19th century ghost town just outside of Silverton, CO. It’s on the scenic route that takes a 4WD tourist over Cinnamon and Engineer Pass, but it can be reached by a cautious passenger car driver that has a little bit of extra ground clearance. This house was owned by Evalyn Walsh Mclean – a wealthy socialite that once owned the Hope Diamond.
The morning I took this picture, I drove up to Animas Forks pre-dawn hoping to get some striking first rays of light coming through the ghost town. It didn’t quite work out as planned – due to the high mountains surrounding the town, light didn’t actually make it into the town until about 90 minutes after sunrise. It was also about 25 degrees that morning – so I was good and frozen by the time the sun rose. I still ended up with great pictures – but none were exactly what I planned. Sometimes it works that way!
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 135mm f/2L @ 135mm ISO 100, f/2, 1/1000 sec
Cash for Clunkers
The amount of industrial age refuse in the San Juan mountains is staggering. Mines, boom towns, and giant mills were born and died in the space of a couple of centuries a hundred years ago. Some made it a little longer – most didn’t. Want to know what they did with their debris? Nothing! All the rubble of an entire silver boom still lies scattered in the San Juan mountains.
This truck obviously isn’t part of the silver boom in the late 1800′s. Like I said, a few of the mines struggled on longer. This is probably a relic of one of the last casualties. It currently is lying in state on a hillside halfway between Animas Forks and the Frisco mine in California Gulch. It’s only about a hundred yards away from where I stood to take yesterday’s picture of the day. It’s obviously in very bad shape.. but it is in better shape than most every other leftover from the mines. In a way, it is proudly lording over a bygone era.
The surreal look to this image is on purpose.. and I’ll concede it’s not for everyone. Enjoy it for what it is – a hyper-realistic piece of art.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 22mm ISO 200, f/23, 3 exposures combined with Photomatix Pro
Keeping Cinque Terre Safe
As you walk down the final parts of the Via del Amore’ in Cinque Terre into Monterosso, if you look on the left at the base of the castle you see a cool bit of history left over from World War II. During WWII, the Germans built the low rounded bunker to defend the coastline against invasion. I’m not really sure why – you’d be insane to try to invade the rough territory of Cinque Terre. It obviously must be to protect the wonderful seafood, pesto, and wine from the region. There’s nothing to see inside the bunker – but it’s amazing how cramped it is. It would not be fun fighting a battle from inside of there!
Vital Stats: Canon 350D w/Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 @ 17mm, ISO 200, f/10.0, .008sec.
I’ve Been Working
This is another image taken last fall at the same time I made this image: The Bridge To Somewhere. It’s the Nicollet Island Railway bridge to downtown Minneapolis. The framing is a little different and less dramatic – but it looks better in color. I purposely gave this the classic Velvia look to make the colors really pop out of what was really a grey day.
Vital Stats: Canon 40D w/Canon 10-22mm @ 10mm ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/250 sec.
A Date With Destiny
Kind of a small picture today for you – but one with a lot of impact. Okay, second stupid joke in as many days. The watermelon pictured had only a few hundredths of a seconds left on this mortal coil before splattering itself in a 15 foot radius. What’s the story with the picture? It was actually an egg carrier for an egg drop competion. For what it’s worth, the egg survived!
Vital Stats: Canon 40D w/Canon 70-200 f/4L @ 98mm ISO 400, f/9.0, 1/1600 sec.
Wheels of Yesteryear
Today was my mother’s birthday – and we spent it as a family together in Waseca. During the afternoon, we went to Farmamerica – an Agricultural Interpretive Center because they were having a family day with a petting zoo. William had great fun milking a goat, looking at pigs and ducks, and getting inside the old cars. Here is a beautiful 1931 Model A Ford they had on display.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 24-105mm @ 24mm, ISO 400, f/4.0, 1/800 sec.
Lake of the Dead
Sorry Charlie – I can’t remember exactly what lake this is. I do know that it’s very near Flying Lake just off the Gunflint Trail. I seriously think a swamp wraith lives in there someplace. Heather and I were on our way in for 5 days of canoeing with our friends the Tufvanders when we reached this lake. We had to put in and paddle straight across to reach the portage to get to the next lake.
Vital Stats: Canon 350D w/Canon 17-85 @ 53mm ISO 200, f/8, 1/80 sec.