Don't Stand So Close... Why Not?

On my 'Flickr Contacts' stream this morning, both of these images displayed next to one another. The images are from different photographers but appear to have been taken from within a few feet of one another. I know many photographers get irritated when someone stands next to them to take a shot, but look how incredibly different the images are! There are significant differences in the composition and processing causing both images to radiate different moods. 

This is why I don't mind it when my tripod kisses another tripod. 

Photo: "Escalante"

Though this west coast nuclear power plant was never completed or fueled, this massive cooling tower was built to completion. 

Photo: "P-3"

The Mare Island Naval Shipyard closed in the 1990's as part of the Base Realignment and Closure Program, but most of the cranes, dry docks and buildings still remain. 

Photo: "Amber Panes"

Sunset light turns the glass windows into amber panes at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. 

Photo: "Return of the Bat"

Former auto bridge, turned pedetstrian bridge, in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. 

Photo: "616"

Room number on a door at the former Waldo Hotel in West Virginia.

Photo: "Theatre Seating"

Mayview State Hospital, in Pennsylvania, was in operation for over 100 years. When it was founded, the patient count was around 300, but during the hospital's peak, the patient numbers reached 4,200.

The asylum was officially closed in 2008, but many of the buildings had been abandoned for years prior. 

In 2010, the campus was purchased and in the spring of 2012, campus demolition was already underway. Abatement had already begun inside the main building and a few structures had already been demolished. Inside this theatre, most of the seats had been removed and stacked against the walls, but this small section was still in tact. 

Photo: "Violet Violet"

Light play inside a first floor room at a former 1930's U.S. Marine Hospital on the Mississippi River in Tennessee. 

Photo: "Mini Forest"

Taken at Zig Zag Falls, during last month's trip to Oregon. 

Photo: "Babcock Blue Hour"

Blue hour inside a dayroom of the Babcock Building at the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum.

This building was constructed in four different phases between 1857 and 1885, by architects George E. Walker and Samuel Sloan and is the second oldest building on the campus. This asylum was constructed to resemble a Kirkbride Building, but it was not actually a true Kirkbride. 

Photo: "Conveyors and Hooks"

Building A-75, which is connected to Building A-76 via a narrow corridor full of hooks on an overhead conveyor belt, has been referred to as the "Paint Building" for years, but sadly very little information can actually be found regarding this building. 

The series of overheard conveyor belts, hooks and driers leads many to believe this building was where blasting and painting of parts were done during the years of operation at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. 

(Dark interior. Lit with LED flashlight from camera left and camera right.)

Finding Beauty in this Crumbling World

It's so hard for me to imagine not being able to look at photos of lonely vehicles, decaying hospitals, crumbling industry, and not see beauty. I feel very fortunate that I see and enjoy the parts of the world that so many people pass by and shrug off as ugly.

I can't help but look at a bus, sitting in a field and see all the beauty in the spiderwebs collecting on the rear view mirrors, the gorgeous textures in the peeling paint, the flat tires that now look like melted asphalt and the lovely yellow tones in the dead weeds. 

In high school, I was picked on, made fun off and rejected time and time again. It took years, but I eventually learned to see the beauty inside myself. At the time, those moments were so painful, but they are very important, because I believe it's those moments that shaped my outlook on the forgotten, decaying and crumbling world...

Photo: "Dinosaur Hearts"

T-Rex at the Cabazon Dinosaurs. 

(Night. Full moon. 40 seconds. Lit by ambient and moonlight.) 

Photo: "341"

Night at a California bus maintenance yard. 

Night. 45 seconds. Lit by ambient light, incandescent (on the tires) and LED flashlight (on side of bus and barrel).

Photo: "Midnight Sunset"

Can I kiss your lips

and watch you light up the sky

with fireworks of infinite colors

like a sunset parading across the night

a dance in slow motion

syncopated in your eyes

the only way to run from the world

escaping the madness in life

and if only for a moment

nothing else matters

you erase the sense of time

I become swallowed by the beauty

in your eyes.