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I have a thing for old antique trucks. I discovered this particular treasure in the spring of 2009 on a trip from South Carolina to Indiana with a good friend. We had stopped at a Quick Mart in North Carolina for a fill-up, a bathroom stop and some travel snacks and I spotted this truck parked in an abandoned parking lot across the road. Because of it’s positioning and proximity to the highway, I had difficulty getting every angle I would have liked, but I shot as many as I could.

After returning home and browsing through my shots from the trip, I wanted to do something nice with one of the several I got of Karen’s favorite overlook on Skyline Drive in her hometown of Seymore, Indiana. Only a couple were even acceptably good, but the best of those were still in the ‘snapshot’ category…nothing really noteworthy.

Contemplating ways I might improve upon the mediocre scenic shots and somehow make at least ONE of them ‘special,’ I started playing around with positioning some cuts of the NC truck (a FABULOUS subject trapped in the horrible background of an abandoned parking lot) and came up with the perfect picture. This turned out to be one of those pics that you can almost see yourself in…smell the grass, feel the summer breeze in your hair, hear the birds, FEEL the history in the presence of the old truck and the past it bears witness to.

I got this shot while on one of my photo expeditions (affectionately called ‘photo hunts’) with my friend, Karen Osborne. We had just left a tour of the Poinsette Bridge and took a wrong turn, but a wrong turn with some fantastic country views. We eventually reluctantly turned back for fear we might end up in the middle of NOwhere without sufficient gas to find SOMEwhere, but not before stopping on the side of the road to get some shots of this country farmstead on the side of the road. It was a great shot without much editing, but I was in a playful mood. I started making adjustments, applying filters…quite honestly I lost track of what I was doing…I was just sort of going with the flow. Ended up with the great picture with loads of atmosphere, and even a bit of an infrared effect. Another one of my famous ‘accidental’ strokes of genius.

I’ve looked for this farm in the same vicinity on several subsequent trips to the bridge but have yet to find it. Maybe it was all in our imagination…

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