Along Route 66
A lovely sunset brings life to an interesting diner along Route 66…
So much goodness on the Mother Road! This was a diner in Albuquerque, which I had previously looked up and hoped to catch in interesting light (or blue hour at least). Luckily I had a lovely sunset in the background which accentuated the neon and colors here.
Inside the Embudo Gas Museum
If you are like me, shooting a bunch of old gas pumps and other antique memorabilia is your idea of an afternoon well spent! I did just that in Embudo, New Mexico at the Classical Gas Museum, and it was absolutely awesome. Here's a visual tour of the inside of the museum - 14 photos in all. It should keep your eyes busy for a bit! :-)
If you like old gas station stuff, this is your heaven!
Out West in New Mexico, there's a tiny little town between Taos and Santa Fe known as Embudo. It's not a big town - don't blink or you will miss it, as they say - but thanks to one man's devotion to a project, it's well worth a stop.
That man is Johnnie Meier, and his project is the Classical Gas Museum. Johnnie has built an incredible collection of old gas station and vintage Americana memorabilia - gas pumps, gas signs and more. Incredible is the best word that comes to mind.
Oh, and PHOTOGRAPHY!
Yeah, you need to stop here and spend some time with the camera, inside and out. There is just so much to shoot that even though I have shot here twice in my life, I feel like I could return another dozen times and still not get it all. There is that much.
And Johnnie could not be any nicer. He lets you freely wander here around the grounds and shoot to your hearts content - so I did, thank you very much Johnnie. And he also let me inside where all these wonderful signs and old gas pumps are lit up and working great. I think I spent an hour inside (and the inside is not too large) shooting all the stuff you see here today. And I had it all to myself that entire time!
I probably spent another hour or more outside, getting all the rusted up and busted up old stuff captured, one gas pump at a time. It's almost overwhelming when you see it. You will round the bend in the road, and if you are paying attention, you will see a bunch of old gas pumps in a yard, plus a bunch of other old stuff. It will catch your eye, that's for sure! (and likely your imagination too)
I need to go back. I already can think of plenty of stuff I should have done when I was last there.
You ever get like that? When you are somewhere and shooting, you fire away at every possible thing you can imagine. You look around, you look at the stuff on your camera, and think you got it all. So you depart. You feel good. You feel like you got it done.
Then, about 30 minutes later, you realize there were about 4 million other things you could have shot there, or shot differently, or something like that. I do that all the time, so as I write this and look at these photos, I realize how much I left behind.
Well, that just means I have to go back, right? Right!
Anyways, this is a quick summary of the inside of his Classical Gas Museum. I have plenty of other stuff to share from here, so when I can find the time, I will get those onto the blog as well.
Thanks for the visit today and hope you enjoy the photos!
Parking in Seattle
I take a lot of shots of signs, because I like them for some reason. I saw this parking sign hanging off the side of a building in Seattle, as I was walking back uphill towards my hotel. I snapped a few from a distance, but when I got closer I noticed that the neon was reflected in the window, and thought that it looked cool. So, here it is! I ran this single exposure through HDR Efex Pro, just to grunge it up a little, and liked the way it turned out. These little shots are fun sometimes, especially when you find something that has a gritty, abandoned feel to it! Just a quick snap and a quick post today - thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend!
Hatch Show Print
There are some great signs along Broadway in downtown Nashville, TN. I am a fan of signs, as I said in my post yesterday, and thought I would follow up that post with another one. Why not right? This is the sign that hangs outside of the store by the same name - Hatch Show Print. Hatch Show Print is a Nashville institution and one of the oldest working letterpress print shops in America. They are well known and easily recognized for their concert posters that they have done for years - way back to Johnny Cash and before him. It's a great little shop and so after getting several shots from outside, I went inside for a closer look. The people there are as nice as can be, and let me walk around and take whatever pictures I wanted - which was quite a few! If you are ever in Nashville, be sure and stop by - oh, and bring your camera!
Betty Boots
Nashville is a nice little town, and the main drag down along the river is Broadway, home to many country music establishments and western wear stores. I'm not into either one, but I am a big fan of bright neon signs so I cruised along the drag for a bit and snapped away happily. Although I was not in a western shirt or boots, I was mostly ignored except by the panhandlers, so it was all good! This place caught my eye and after some time in the "lab" I thought I would share it, hope you enjoy it! Thanks for stopping by!
The clock tower
This clock tower is atop The Ferry Building in San Francisco, CA. On my recent trip out there, I found myself photographing it (again) from an adjacent pier. I really do like this building and have many more shots of it to share. I also have several slightly different comps of essentially the same shot - the building with water in front and the wonderfully red neon sign on top all a-glow, which reads “Port of San Francisco”. The only difference between all these other shots is this: zoom in a little, zoom out a little, get more of the skyline in it, get less of the skyline in it, etc. I am not knocking my shots - I rather like them - but even a building as photogenic as this one gets a little stale when you have shot the same view of it several times. So, after I took that same shot once again, I decided to try something a little different and zoomed in on the clock, and luckily found I was able to get the “San Francisco” words from the neon sign in the shot too. I tried it several ways, but thought this version was the best. Hope you like my attempt at a little creativity in the field!
Neon explosion
I spent a little time in Dallas this week, and got out with the camera for a bit too. It rained on me a lot on the way up there, and I thought for sure I would get stuck in my room, watching the rain fall, but the storm broke for a while and I hit the streets. I did get rained on some, but it was on and off and my trusty Nikon stayed mostly dry. This shot is a closeup of some fountains that I found downtown around the JFK Memorial area - sort of near the West End part of town. I was just playing around and took 4 exposures at f/5.6, thinking I might try an HDR. The challenge was that the lights were changing more quickly that I was shooting, and the water was moving up and down very rapidly, so my 4 shots were all different colors - purple, blue, pink and orange - and the water was different heights in each too. I went ahead and merged them into an HDR for the heck of it, and this is what it looks like. Kinda fun, and definitely colorful! I like the abstract look to it. Look for some cool HDRs coming next week from this little trip.
The craziness that is Times Square
Who doesn't like Times Square? I mean really, I know it is all touristy and stuff, but isn't it fun? I think it is. It is crazy, busy, full of tourists and of course lit up with all that neon. I am sure the collective electric bills are massive. They probably exceed the GDP of some small countries. But hey, what the heck? These companies know folks like me are going to come around with a camera, and maybe they will get some free advertising out of it, and I am sure that works. But, just to be clear, though I do use Yahoo sometimes you will never catch me with a Budweiser in hand.