Blog Archives

I can’t add a thing

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Words – I just don’t have any.*

Lubbock, Texas
photographed 10.6.2013

* I know, right? No one saw this coming.

Many horizontals

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When I took photography in college (which was a LONG time ago!), my professor didn’t permit us to crop our shots: everything had to be printed full-frame. I’ve long-since abandoned most of what I learned in that class (Zone System, anyone?) but for some reason the Do Not Crop rule is nearly always in play.

But this shot – I cropped this one. It felt daring, like I was really getting away with something. But mostly it felt like I was improving the shot: I wanted to emphasize all those horizontal lines and the original version, which had the entire building elevation, wasn’t doing that.

Know the rules, so you can break them, right?

Lubbock, Texas
photographed 4.28.2013

#1 Meal

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“#1 Meal Load Out” sounds like it might be some sort of express line at McDonald’s. This shot was taken at Pyco Industries, a cottonseed oil mill, and it turns out that cottonseed meal is a by-product of cottonseed oil processing. It’s used as a nutritional ingredient* in cattle feed, so I guess there IS a connection with McDonald’s, after all.

Oh, and those clouds?  In the past four years or so that I’ve been relatively serious about photography, this part of Texas has been in a drought.  So, in spite of all my practice with taking pictures of all kinds of things, I never have learned how to photograph clouds:  there haven’t been enough of them around to practice on. (Thanks – I feel better having gotten that off my chest.)

Lubbock, Texas
photographed 4.28.2013

* I know – it doesn’t sound that nutritional to me, either. But that’s what Pyco says on their website.

Plywood, weeds, and peeling paint

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Here’s another shot of the endangered train depot in Snyder.

Had this been an old book, rather than an old building, that peeled part would be called foxing*. I don’t know what it’s properly called on a building.

Snyder, Texas
photographed 7.10.2013

*A condition issue affecting old books, prints and ephemera consisting of brown spotting caused by exposure to excessive humidity, extreme temperatures and/or the aging of inks originally used in processing

The depot was boarded up, and the train didn’t stop

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A couple of years ago, Preservation Texas named this train depot as one of the 100 most endangered buildings in the state. There was a flurry of interest which appears to have died down.

As I took this photo, the north-bound train hurried past.

Snyder, Texas
photographed 7.29.2013