Don’t be here, when the sun goes down tonight.
Our neighbors here in the backwoods of Indiana are friendly, but I don’t know about their dog.
Happy Halloween and stay safe,
Ken
Trick or Treat 2024
Tag: Rural
Indiana Fall 2023, Part 4 – Old Country Home
I found this old, abandoned house just a short distance from the cabin in which we were staying in the fall of 2022.
I returned this fall (2023) to photograph it again. The fall leaves had mostly fallen the year before, when I found it. This year the fall color was good and not yet peak.
The house is little changed since 2022, but the weeds around it were taller and thicker, as if the lot is more neglected now.
More Indiana Fall to come,
Ken
Road Trip Photography Between Destinations – Part 5, September 2022 – House of Eight Gables
This is a continuation of September 2022 road trip photography.
This old, abandoned block facade house, sitting in a wide open area along a gravel roadway was visible for some distance from the highway I was traveling on in Kansas. It is impressive enough to justify a detour to check it out.
Until the next adventure,
Ken
Road Trip Photography Between Destinations – September 2022, Part 4 – Rural Abandonment
This is a continuation of road trip photography of September, 2022.
To be continued,
Ken
Road Trip Photography Between Destinations – September 2022, Part 3 – Abandoned Farm Homes
This is a continuation of road trip photography of September 2022.
After shooting and driving away from this abandoned Nebraska home, I realized that I should have used a slow shutter speed to capture the motion of the windmill. The windmill still spins, but the pump is disconnected.
This is apparently a popular pump gear box that is or was used with windmills. In researching this item, I found online listing for parts for this model gear box.
The evergreen tree on the left seems to be distraught about the dilapidated condition of this abandoned farm house. Maybe children once played around that tree. This image was chosen for Flickr’s Explore Page.
Even more road trip images in the next post,
Ken
Road Trip Photography Between Destinations – September 2022, Part 1
When traveling from one destination to another, I always keep an eye out for interesting subjects to photograph. Taking time to stop and photograph in route helps to break up a trip and it is good to take breaks from sitting in a vehicle for hours at a time. So if I can afford the time, I will stop as often as necessary to capture images along my route.
There are many abandoned homes throughout rural areas. Often these can be photographed from a public roadway. These abandoned places are always on private property and nearly always posted with “No Trespassing” signs. Please respect others’ property and obey these postings or get permission for access.
When shooting such scenes during a road trip, one can’t be too choosy about the time of day or the lighting conditions. It is best to get a shot, when the opportunity arrises, as one may never pass this way again. Indeed, on this trip and others, I’ve often used the excuse of being in a hurry or worrying too much about shooting conditions and passed up opportunities. I nearly always regret those decisions.
More road trip shooting next,
Ken
Interior South Dakota
On the south side of Badlands National Park is the tiny town of Interior, South Dakota. I drove through this town a number of times during my September 2022 visit to the Badlands.
I found little of photographic interest in Interior, but there were a couple of small churches that I stopped by to photograph.
These two churches were within visual range of each other with the larger one being the first that I saw and then spotted the smaller one just down a side road from the larger one.
That’s all I have from Interior, SD.
Ken
Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge – Ferguson House
On my way to Mount Scott, I had passed a couple of old homes that I planned to try to shoot as I backtracked from Mount Scott. The first old home sat far back from the roadway and looked like an interesting photographic subject. I would have to walk to it to get shots. As I prepared to walk towards the run down old home, I noted a number of free roaming bison and long horn cattle in the vicinity, making approaching that house too risky. So I drove on to the next place.
Well, this house does not look old, does it? It was built in 1927, but has been reconstructed. Follow the links for more information. The little rounded building behind the house covers a water storage tank. I attempted to get close up photos of the tank and its covering structure, but none of those photos were good enough to share.
The little house in the right background is a mystery. It is just an empty shell, built on a concrete foundation and does not look very old.
There is a covered pavilion on the property with posters giving information about the early history of this area.
I shot the house from numerous view points, but the one in this post is the best image.
This marker is near the front of the home lot.
Other than the historical significance of the early homesteaders in this area, I found little of real photographic interest here.
More scouting of this Wildlife Refuge later,
Ken
Rural Decay and Miscellaneous Photos – March 2022 Travel
Small, rural towns across the U.S have experienced dramatic economic downturns as the agrarian industry evolved from one that required much manpower to one that relied more upon mechanization (machine labor).
I see much evidence of this in my road trips, occasionally taking time to photograph the abandoned businesses and homes, either in small rural towns or those scattered across rural farm and ranch lands.
The title for this photo is taken from the street number that is hanging upside down on the post to the left of the door.
In spite of the obvious economic hardship indicated by numerous abandoned homes and businesses in one small community, this old school seem to be well cared for.
Old farm machinery rusting away in this farm field, may have been some of the initial machines that started the economic downturn in this small community.
This lone tree in a vast, post harvest farm field, beneath the wide open sky caused me to pull over for a photo.
Until the next adventure and/or desperate need to photograph something overcomes me,
Ken
Indiana, Fall 2021, Part 6
A few days into our fall 2021 visit to Indiana, the fall colors had still not progressed very much; but I was restless and needed to get out to explore the area. By doing so, I might find areas to visit later, when the colors were better.
After consulting a map of the local area, I decided to head to Monroe Lake State Park, southeast of Bloomington.
My base was just south of Brown County State Park (the red rectangle in the upper right corner). The quickest route to Monroe Lake would be into Nashville, then west on US 46 towards Bloomington, but I had traveled that route numerous times already and I wanted to check out the backroads, so I meandered through the countryside farmland and forest, approaching Lake Monroe from the south, crossing the causeway into Paynetown.
I can’t recall the exact route that I took and I doubt that I could duplicate it even if I wanted to. Many county backroads were involved. I drove through a number of small communities, some that were little more than a few houses at crossroads.
Along the way, I found a small, abandoned country store and stopped to get a few photos.
This photo shows some fall color, but it is still not fully developed.
I had hoped there would be scenic views from the long causeway over Monroe Lake, but that was a disappointment. There were no places to stop on the causeway, so I could not have gotten any photos from there, anyway.
Arriving at the state park entrance, I paid the entry fee and drove to a large parking lot at a boat launch area. The lot was mostly empty. I walked a path towards a floating boat dock and noted that there were many geese on the shore across the inlet. So I returned to my vehicle and put on my 80-400mm lens with a 1.4 extension.
I returned to the boat dock and shot numerous images of the geese, but I was still too far away to get really good images. A group of geese swam from the shore across the inlet to the boat launch area, where I shot a few more images.
I could not get too close to the geese, as they would move away as I got too close. I thought it interesting how they seemed to follow a leader along the roadway at the boat launch. I cropped the image above from one of my shots.
I drove around the rest of the park afterwards, but did not see anything else I wanted to photograph today. There were only a few people in the park, but I expect this is a popular place in the warmer months. I noted there were a number of hiking trails in the forest and this is probably a good place for a forest hike, if I return later.
I explored a side road into the Hoosier National Forest off of my return route, but cut my exploration short, since I was low on gasoline and there were no filling stations along my backcountry route.
Until next time,
Ken