Double-Decker

It took six months for me to see one of the older nicer looker double-decker buses.  There are tons of the new highly decorated annoyingly loud ones, but those are... well...annoying and loud.

Taking a trip down memory lane.  On memory lane.

Going With The Train Theme

In that yesterday's photo was a caboose, I thought I could keep the theme alive and do another train related photo.  So have some oil tankers.  They have been sitting in the woods by some old train tracks near my house...my brother found them fairly recently and showed them to me.  Now I shall show them to you.

Tankers in the Trees

I don't know when these were last used, but I doubt it was very recent, whenever it was.  The weeds and bushes have grown around them, making it seem like it has been years, many years, since they've been touched.

Lies!

My brother told me I should check out a certain location and to bring a camera.  The location turned out to be a place that I had been to before.  In fact, I posted about it here ...a graveyard of sorts, for vehicles.  He told me I would be able to find awesome oil tankers just sitting there.  He lied.  There were no tankers.  There were other things of interest, though...

Home Away From Home
Someone seems to be living here.  They also seem to be ...thirsty

Reading Fire Department
Here is another antique firetruck to add to my collection.  Due to the peeling paint, this one appears to be some camouflaged army vehicle.

  School Is Out
 School is out for the summer.  Though once it starts up again, I don't think this bus will be transporting any children.

House of Martin

About 15 years ago, my father decided to create a Martin bird house.  It wasn't a difficult project, and apparently it was fairly well built, for only now is it starting to die.  But it's dying at a rapid pace...and I'm sure will be taken down and tossed in the fire pit soon.

Martin House

Here is a portion of that bird house.  The colors underneath the peeling paint have a nice antique feel to them.  The fact that it looks like it's going to fall apart also helps add that feeling.

Unlikely Doors

Not really knowing what I was going to photograph today, I biked around until I came to some interesting old buildings that have interested me, but never to the point that I took a photo of them.  With my recent trips to the school that is being demolished, I've had the destruction of buildings on my mind, and these buildings are definitely in the process of falling down.  Not wanting to just take pictures of the broken pieces and jagged edges of the buildings, I looked around for something else of interest.  I came across a theme..doors on both buildings were oddly placed, or at least now are oddly placed due to the crumbling world around them.

Quite The Entranceway

A good two feet off the ground and surrounded by loose bricks, I'd like to see anyone enter this door without tripping.

A Door Above The Rest

And I'd like to see anyone get in this one, period.  A good twenty feet off the ground and no door knob...good luck.

I Had To Return

Afraid that it would be destroyed before I had a decent collection of photographs, I returned to the abandoned school today.  I wanted to make sure I milked the building for all it's worth, because I rarely have such easy access to an awesome dilapidated building.
I was never in this building when it was actually in use.  Sunday was the first time I ever entered it.  What I find strange is that I now feel I know what it looked like when it was being used as a school.  The broken down walls and the exposed pipes and sockets are easily pushed back into place, and the trash can be removed in my mind's eye.  This leaves a fairly clean image of the interior of the school in my mind...the question being just how accurate is my depiction.  Who knows.

 Take a Seat at Your Desk Next to the Cement Blocks

Unlike all the other pictures, this photo was shot with the outside world's natural light coming through the window behind me.  By window I mean massive hole in the wall.  It gives the image a cave-like feel.

 20

This might not look like a door that natural light should be spilling in from, but it is.  The back wall in this room is totally gone, allowing the sun to allow me some awesome lighting.  I know I referenced him recently, but I shall do it again...something about the lines, angles, and lighting in this photo remind me of an M.C. Escher drawing.

Blockade The Entrance!

Apparently the demolition team was being attacked by zombies while destroying this school.  They tried to block the entrance, and succeeded, but forgot about all the walls that they had already torn down prior to the attack.  They're all dead, Dave. 

Let the Sunlight In

 The sun was at the perfect place when I took this photo.  It cast beautiful rays right through the windows that lit up only a small portion of this massive skeleton of a room.

Sooner or Later

Sooner or later I'll find a good subject for some wide angle photography.  Not only will I find an awesome subject, but when I stumble across it, the sky behind it will be bold and beautiful.  That is not what happened today.  Today I found a tolerable subject and an ok sky.  I have been looking into different techniques for "aging" photos in post production, and today, since I wasn't perfectly pleased with the straight outta the camera picture, I applied some of those techniques to the photo.

A Hybrid

Part barn and part garage, this structure helped me with today's photo of the day.  We will say today's photo was more an exercise in post production, not so much in actually taking a picture.  The scratchy look is a "texture" from a free archive and are easily found online.  I have some good ideas for my own, so look for some similarly textured photos in the future.

For Yesterday

Apparently Blogger had some problems yesterday.  Once I got off work and went to log in, bam, nothing.  I tried every so often and had the same results each time.  So, today you will get yesterday's and today's post.  Hurray.  Two for one Fridays!

Where's The Quartet?

Nothing in a deteriorated state can escape my eye.  Here's a barber shop pole.  The reason that they look the way they do is because in medieval times, barbers were also surgeons.  The pole represents the bloody bandages that would have been wrapped around it.  It is mostly an American thing to have blue incorporated into the pole as well as red and white. 

For Eugene

I've been listening to a lot of Gogol Bordello as of late.  They are a fantastic gypsy punk band, and I would recommend them to anyone.  Even those that are fans of neither gypsy nor punk music.  They create such a unique sound that I feel it is impossible to categorize them and thus, really feel that they deserve a listening to by everyone and anyone before judgments are made.
I figured that with listening to so much of them lately, I should do a picture in honor of them.  I have an old accordion laying around and, well, there are few better things to photograph while listening to the wheezing sounds of an actual one.  The beautiful wheezing sounds, mind you.

Accordion Isolation

I've done detail shots of this accordion before, but felt that this time, the whole thing needed to be in the image.  I love the way the slightly open and curved chambers blend and disappear into the black background.

Royal Reversed: A Typewriter Through The Viewfinder

I have some "housekeeping" notes.  First, I realized that some of my photos were coming out dark on other computers.  I only recently realized this when I saw my site from my work computer.  In the next few days, I will upload better versions.  Feel free to let me know which seem to be especially bad.  Second, I will be camping immediately after I get home from work tomorrow until Sunday sometime.  If I have time on Sunday, I might upload Friday, Saturday, and Sunday's.  More likely though, I'll get to it on Monday.  If you are very upset about this...ha...feel free to check out this on any of those days in order to get your 'me' fix.  If you find today's picture at all enjoyable to stare at, look specifically for the typewriter photos on the site.  There are eight total, but seven of those belong to my "Typing on Jetsam" series, probably my favorite series that I have done.  Check it out.

Royal Reversed: A Typewriter Through The Viewfinder

This is a beautiful, old typewriter.  My wife is pretty sure that it is very similar to, if not the same model as the one that Radar uses in the television show M*A*S*H.  My wife also said that all the typewriter buffs out there will be frustrated by the fact that the word ROYAL is backwards.  I responded with the fact that all Through the Viewfinder buffs would call me out on faking TTV if it wasn't backwards.  I did not fake it.  I used my Kodak Duaflex IV to take the photo.  

Ruins

Iron Furnaces, a Prisoner of War Camp that then became a Civilian Conservation Corps Camp, and Hessian Barns.  For the large amount of Appalachian Trail that I have hiked, I have never come across so many historical remains concentrated in one place.  To avoid my giving you a (possibly incomplete or inaccurate) history lesson, I'd recommend researching any of the following mentioned locations: Pine Grove Iron Furnace, Camp Michaux, CCC Camp, POW camp, etc.

Pine Grove Furnace State Park's Iron Furnace

We started our hike from within this state park.  This is a 19th century iron furnace.

Hessian Barn

We then had to search all over in order to find this 18th century (possibly) Hessian Barn.  Our directions were not very good at all.

CCC Camp

We then, following our instincts, took a random path off the AT and stumbled across this 1930s CCC Camp. This was a drinking water dam.  During World War II, the US military began to use this location as an interrogation camp for German and Japanese Prisoners of War. 

CCC Fountain

This beautiful fountain was hidden deep in the woods, far from the main path.  We turned a corner and suddenly it was in front of us.

Slag

The central section of the fountain had a ring of slag, which is the byproduct of producing iron.  It works wonders as a decorative rock.     

My Backyard

Cellar door is a phrase considered by many to be the most phonaesthetic.  This means it is beautiful solely based on the way it sounds, and not due to any connotations or mental images that may surface when heard.
Donnie Darko, a fantastic movie, brought this concept to the general public even though the idea has actually been around for awhile and has been written about by many great minds, including J.R.R. Tolkien.
Oddly enough, it seems that there are very few cellar doors left.  I am one of the lucky few that still has one connected to their house, and so, once I was ready to go in search of today's picture, I started in my backyard, near the cellar.  

 

The Most Beautiful

Spring's slow but steady approach has me photographing more flowers and plants than I ever have before.  But which is more beautiful? A tangible thing like a flower or a phrase or idea, like "Cellar Door"?

For both of these pictures, I used a technique called TTV or Through the Viewfinder.  You can read more about it at the end of this post, but basically I shoot with my regular camera, through the viewfinder of another camera...in my case an old Kodak Duaflex IV.  You can see my other TTV photos at my Etsy Store, look for "through the viewfinder" in the title.  next2hector Etsy

A Fence Through The Viewfinder

"Fence" may not be so phonaesthetic, but if shot from a decent angle with a unique technique, it might end up looking pretty decent.  This fence is also in my backyard.  As of late, some beautiful cardinals have been using it as a tight rope.

These images were taken using a Kodak Duaflex IV, manufactured from the 1940s-1960s. The Duaflex was not the only camera used to create this photo. 'Through the Viewfinder' means a picture is taken, usually with a digital camera, of the viewfinder on another camera, usually an old camera (in this case the Duaflex), in order for the final image to have a vintage feel. The vintage feel comes from the dust specks that are on the old camera’s viewfinder as well as the vignette that images will tend to get due to the convex surface of the viewfinder.