Vacant Store, BZ Corner, WA, 2011.
All the pixels, a bargain and easily fixed up, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/6110374799
#photography
Captured with a small mirrorless camera and 21mm lens, on a compact travel tripod.
This was a case where I hadn’t really planned to make formal architectural photos and so had only a small camera with me, with no shifting lens. I made do by shooting wide with the camera level and cropping, which works but costs resolution and constrains how you can organize the frame. It worked well enough here, but I always feel like I’m leaving something on the table when I don’t have the right gear with me.
The composition plays with the contrast between the ambitiously-sized sign and the humble, rustic old store. The photo is about shapes and scale.
This is also a bit of a nod to Grant Wood’s famous 1930 painting, American Gothic. (See https://www.artic.edu/artworks/6565/american-gothic). Wood’s painting was inspired by a grandiose, ornate attic window in an otherwise humble rural farmhouse that Wood happened upon during a road trip. The absurdly oversized, incongruously Googie-style arrow sign here reminded me of that.
@[email protected] I’ve visited that house. It’s closer to where I grew up than anywhere else, but still in the middle of fucking nowhere
@[email protected] Great photo! For anyone who’s interested, here is the place on Google maps. I’ve driven that road before but it’s been almost 20 years. You’ve got me thinking how much I need to plan a trip to Mt Adams. https://maps.app.goo.gl/iSqGvzN96yL2fkLw9?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
@[email protected] Fun shot. Out of curiosity, I went and found it on Google Maps. The sign remains, as incongruous as ever and even more dilapidated, but the old store appears to have been renovated in the past 13 years.
