Rusted and Busted

Natalia and I are approaching six years at 34 Turner Street. In all of those six years, the backyard of the property next door has been cleaned once (perhaps cleaned is too strong a term--reorganized, more like it). It is littered with junk. Old pipes, cement blocks, husks of retired machinery, rusted signs, paint cans, you name it. But perhaps its most interesting denizen is an ancient, inoperable Ford F-series truck. Obsolescence interests me, so almost every day for six years I have thought to myself, "wow, I should shoot that truck."

I'm a serial procrastinator, so despite being interested in the truck for a long time, my camera stayed inside. I finally did get around to photographing it one day last March when I was home on leave. I didn't do much with the photos at the time; I took a bunch of shots that I thought might be interesting, downloaded them, and then let them sit for months on end.

Last week I photographed the car again, this time with a different lens and under different lighting conditions. I compared the results of the two shoots and realized that I actually liked a couple of the photos from my original session a whole year ago (it's worth noting that in the time between shoots, the car has not been moved at all, cleaned at all, or anything--it sits in the back corner of our neighbor's lot, staring blankly into our parking lot).

This guy's best days are behind him.

I used my old (now broken) Canon 30D and my Lensbaby lens for this shot, which I think is the keeper of the lot. I find it interesting because it has a bit of a motion feel to it; perhaps it's even menacing, giving the sense that the car is bearing down on you (even though the car has not moved of its own volition in ages). In other images I concentrated more on the rust and the individual broken down details of the car. Those are visually interesting, but they don't hold my attention the way this one does.

Back when I started this blog I intended to use it as a way of pushing myself to take, and share, more photos--and not just family photos (which I do, as you well know), but also images that I found interesting, whether or not they included cute faces.

I haven't done much of that over the past year. Part of the reason for this is time; I don't have much free time to go out and shoot things that I want to shoot. (I keep a looong mental list.) But a lot of it is also my fault--sometimes I am too afraid to photograph things because I'm not sure I'll like the results, or I make excuses not to shoot, or I dismiss my own work as uninteresting without giving it much of a chance. That's no way to grow as a photographer. So, part of my plan for this blog in the next year (and yes, it HAS been one year since I started it!) is to shoot and share more photos that I like, hopefully with some description about why I like them, or why I photographed an object the way I did.

Anyway, the car shows no signs of moving and my neighbor shows no signs of cleaning up, so it looks like the old Ford will be hanging around. I need to find some of his old friends, and I'm praying that they are in similar shape.