Seeing things differently
“Dad, how would you like to drive my car to Nashville so I can have it for the semester?”
I think most dads would dread this question and be torn between not wanting to disappoint their daughter and having to spend 14 hours behind the wheel of a very small Nissan Juke. Instead, I saw opportunity. Having recently retired from Wall Street, I could take my time getting there and make a photo journey out of it. There is a lot of space between New York and Nashville and there are countless routes to take and, not wanting to waste the opportunity, I began to plan out the trip. I found it a bit overwhelming and rather than meticulously plan the route and all of the photo locations, I decided to simply come up with a theme, some general driving directions, and just hit the road. I did not even make any hotel reservations assuming (correctly) that I could do that on the fly.
Instead of photographing overtly beautiful subjects like waterfalls, glorious sunrises, and sleek modern buildings that my eye is normally attracted to, I decided to get out my comfort zone and find beauty and interest in less obvious subjects. My goal was to create images that spoke to desolation and loneliness. I wanted to point my camera at gritty, industrial scenes that might highlight objects that had seen better days. Still, I wanted to include some pops of color if I could that might offer a hint of optimism.
I found this project to be challenging and I had to shoot subjects that I barely would have noticed previously much less attempted to photograph. I ended up taking a significant number of bad pictures but, as the trip progressed, I did a better job of training my eye on subjects that worked better.
I decided to go through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky before arriving in Tennessee and driving down to Nashville. There are dozens of small and medium-sized towns to stop in and I probably stopped in about 20 of them. In addition, I drove through a lot of farm land that offered interesting subjects to shoot. In many towns, I just shot from my car instead of stopping ever block allowing me to explore more areas. Also, the scenes I was focused on were typically not in the best parts of town and since I did not know these areas well, I figured it was smart to stay in my car in some of these areas.
There was a couple of adjustments I had to make to my normal shooting style. First, I normally try to avoid distracting elements in my frame, preferably by composing an image to not include such elements, or by cloning them out in Photoshop. Given my subjects for the trip, avoiding distractions was tough and, instead, I deciding to embrace the “messiness” and allow it to help define the image. I did not clone out any electrical wires, garbage, or other items that normally bug the crap out of me. Shooting at night did allow for a better isolation of subjects but even then, it was tough find scenes without distracting elements.
Secondly, when shooting landscapes or cityscapes, I usually try to keep details in the sky, something that is made easier by shooting around sunset or sunrise or through the use of graduated neutral density filters. For many of these images, I did not worry about that and allowed the sky to be blown out creating a nice clean white background which allows the viewer to focus on the subject.
After spending three days driving about 1,000 miles, I came up with a number of observations:
During my drive through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky, I saw many Trump signs and stickers, a rarity in the area where I live. The number of Biden signs I saw: 0. I should also note, most people were very friendly.
Nearly every small town had either a Dollar Store of a Dollar General Store or both.
Every “No Trespassing” sign I saw was posted on a place that I would have no desire to trespass in.
I began to listen to country music stations during the drive. I estimate that 89% of the songs I heard had a reference to transportation (e.g. a car or truck) or alcohol. 31% referred to both.
Check out my YouTube channel for the “Behind the Shot” video of the trip!
