As it all fades away
1. On days like this one, the wind is strong, picking up dirt and flinging it skyward. The horizons blur with airborne particulates, the light takes on the same tint as the dirt, tumbleweeds stream across roadways only to be caught up in fencing. In the worst of these dust storms, cars on the highway have to use headlights and traffic slows down because it’s impossible to see very far ahead. The wind’s howl covers all other sounds save the sounds of a piece of sheet metal being ripped from its moorings or the crack of a tree limb.
2. Certain things are disappearing from the Plains. Like people. Like where they lived. Like water. Like dreams. But the wind always remains.
NW Lubbock County, Texas
photographed 4.26.2013
Posted on December 6, 2013, in Photography and tagged 365 photo project, abandoned buildings, architecture, black and white photography, dust storm, lubbock, lubbock texas, melinda green harvey, monochrome, one day one image, photo a day, photography, texas. Bookmark the permalink. 18 Comments.
One Day | One Image 
This is a fantastic photo, Mel. Attach the keyword you use for your finest photos and link it to this one. You’ll need it later when you have another contest to enter. Seriously.
LikeLike
Thanks – I will put it on the contest-entry list right now!
LikeLike
What oneowner said. This image tells such a story.
LikeLike
Thanks, Donna.
LikeLike
Super beautiful. A work of art. Almost haunting. Worthy of any contest if the judges have any sense.
LikeLike
Thank you, Vera. I appreciate your confidence in me – and in this photo!
LikeLike
I’m with the others – this is fantastic! I love the toning and the faded high-key look and vignette like a certain kind of old photo. It is somehow timeless, though when enlarged there are clues to a more modern structure.
And, there is a chair. How could there not be?
LikeLike
Thank you, Ehpem. The terrible dust storm that day was very helpful in achieving this look; I think this is the first time I’ve been happy to have been out in the dust!
Yes, a chair! And a mattress.
LikeLike
Looks like it is worth getting out in the dust storms from time to time, though maybe a bit hard on your camera – no changing lenses, that is for sure.
LikeLike
OH, yes – learned THAT lesson the hard way!
LikeLike
Oh, no! You shoot Nikon don’t you? No Canons were harmed were they (read with anxious voice)?
LikeLike
Sorry. I should have made that clear from the beginning. But I will go on record now stating that NO CANONS WERE HARMED making this photograph.
LikeLike
As others have already said: this is a great image. The high key/vintage feel to it evokes dust, and all the associated factors. And yes, as Ken has said, heywrd this one for the next contest. So glad to hear you are a Nikon girl – sadly that doesn’t mean we are immune to dusty sensors!
LikeLike
Thank you, Andy.
Someone has to use Nikon – may as well be us, I guess!!
LikeLike
I’ve been using Nikons since 1979 – funnily enough earlier today I was tidying the filing cabinet and disposing of ‘stuff’ going back over 30years. And amongst all the paper were the two invoices dated 1979 for a pair of two Nikkormat FT3 camera bodies. Cameras that shot so many of my old B&W images.
LikeLike
My first “real” camera was a Canon (if you can believe it) FTb that I bought in 1977. I used to be a calligrapher and used money I made from hand-lettering a textbook on synthesized music. (The author was amused to think of the juxtaposition of hand lettering and electronic music.) Much later, when I eventually made a jump to a DSLR, I got my first Nikon.
LikeLike
Poetic in many ways, Melinda. It’s a changing world.
On another note I recently read that tumbleweed is from Russia and not native to America, I had no idea!
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/tumbleweeds/cook-jenshel-photography
LikeLike
Thank you, Karen.
I was a skeptical child, and when we were taught in grade school that tumbleweeds came from Russia, I sort of thought that was just another Cold War-era made-up fact.
The photos in the link were very good, and some of them reminded me of things I’ve seen around this part of Texas.
LikeLike