Monthly Archives: June 2013
Building elevations and shadows
Back when I was in architecture school (Yes! I was in architecture school!) my favorite thing to draw was shadow lines on building elevations. I loved to calculate the angle of shadows and the different shapes they’d be. The fact that this was my favorite part of architecture school explains why I went to graduate school and studied something else.
But it will also probably explain why even now – a LOT of years after architecture school – I photograph all these building elevations. And you can thank (or not, depending) Professor Ric Vrooman at Texas A&M University for making us draw shadows accurately, based on actual sun angles at actual building locations, instead of taking the easy way out and using a 30° triangle to strike shadows across our drawings. It was from him that I learned to love a nice building elevation with good shadows.
(He also made us cut our presentation boards down so they maintained the Golden Mean ratio, which was actually sort of a pain in the ass. Good with the bad, I suppose.)
Clovis, New Mexico
photographed 5.25.2013
Air Conditioning
Another town, another alley.
The thing that caught my eye here was that air conditioner and the way it broke up the rhythm of the arched, boarded doors and windows.
Which reminded me of my childhood home. It was cooled by one of these kinds of units, which work by the cooling effects of air blowing across water. We called them evaporative coolers, or evap coolers; in New Mexico they are known as swamp coolers, for reasons that escape me since the state is relatively swamp-free and anyway, these things don’t work if it’s humid outside. (I’ll let Wikipedia explain it in a lot more detail.)
When these coolers first come on, for just a minute the air smells like the first drops of a rain shower. I remember that smell, and the white-noise effect of the fan, and the way my mom always opened the window in the front bedroom just a little bit to draw the cooled air through, and how I could sit on the porch and feel that air blowing through the window screens.
Amherst, Texas
photographed 5.24.2013
THIS door
Really. We mean it. You can block all the other doors you want – even the one on the left. But please, PLEASE, don’t block THIS one.
Busty’s Body Shop
Amherst, Texas
photographed 5.24.2013
We buy
What remains behind when a business closes down interests me. Almost never do I encounter an empty, but clean, building. Variations on this scene are common.
So, this place. I guess they bought grain and feed. Purina was involved. What happened next? I don’t know. But whatever it was, it’s been a while since it happened.
Sudan, Texas
photographed 5.25.2013
Watchful
There I am walking along a long block between grain elevators and the railroad tracks, when I start to have an odd feeling. Like someone’s looking at me. I shake it off, thinking I am just letting the large numbers of pigeons get to me (I don’t like pigeons; there’s something about their cooing that really bothers me). But still, I feel it – someone is watching me.
I have no idea where that was coming from….
Clovis, New Mexico
photographed 5.25.2013
One Day | One Image 