I took a recent trip to see my sister’s family in southern Utah. En route, I put my new camera through some paces.
First, taking photos at 80 miles per hour through the window of a van usually produces little more than a blur, but this surprised me. I counter-moved the camera as we went past a rock wall, and hoped for a decent shot. This is what came of that little experiment. The diagonal focus band is what really surprised me, and this is one of my favorite images from the trip.
rocks by road at 80 mph
Then there’s the rather largish gas station that is, well… abandoned. The sunshine went dark, I guess. Just my sort of playground. There’s more at the Picasa site for this, but here are a couple of my favorites.
Sunshine Station Close
Looking Up
Last but not least, there’s the little burned tourist trap shack by the Cove Fort gas station. It was built to look like an old log cabin, but it’s suffered some hard times. Naturally, this makes for some great photos. (Again, more at the Picasa site.)
Burned Panel
Burned Door
Now, to plan some other trips to see some natural wonders and ghost towns. Maybe even Yellowstone someday. It’s not that far away.
I don’t quite know why, but I like the rocks shot – it has such a feeling of impetus to it, though it’s just rocks! Kind of feels like that was an intentional effect? Even though you say it was a test shot. I don’t know anything about cameras, but that seems a remarkable camera.
On the other pics, awhile ago you posted one from the abandoned places blog (I think), of Pripyat – spooked me out when I recognised one of the buildings in a photograph by a regular person. So used to fantasy ghosts that when one is suddenly grounded as real, it creeped me out. Just saying, because that petrol station seems the exact same sort of creepy place! And how come if they smashed the front signs, the windows of the building seem intact?
I’m not sure why the windows are still intact, really. There’s only one instance of graffiti, too. All in all, it’s remarkably intact… just… abandoned. It’s almost as though it’s teetering between needing a quick remodel and it’s up and running again, or falling into really creepy disrepair. It *is* 100 yards or so off the freeway exit, and that exit is about 10 miles from any homes (and those are a subdivision of a sleepy almost-farming town), so it’s pretty out of the way. That’s probably why it failed as a business venture… but it also insulates it from the sort of decay we’d see in, say, Detroit.
It didn’t really have a creepy vibe to it, the gas station is more forlorn and sad than anything really negative.
Oh, and I certainly wanted to get a cool shot of rocks at high speed, but what came out wasn’t what I was expecting. It was just an experiment that I wound up liking quite a bit.
Several years ago the wife and I drove up PCH to Carmel, and along the way I freaked her out by sticking our digital camera out the window, pointing it across the top of the car, and after taking a dozen or so shots bringing the camera back inside to see what I’d “caught”.
Although I got quite a few of nothing sky or the top of the car there were also several “keepers”. That’s the great thing about digital cameras; you can shoot a ton of pics and not worry about wasting film.