I had some time to kill on a sunny day recently, and I went out roaming as I’m prone to do. I found this old red machine southeast of Bismarck, its boom reaching for the sky, and had to stop. I’d actually marked this particular piece of equipment in my GPS years ago – 2008, to be exact – but hadn’t come across the right conditions for a photo. This, however, was my day. The right sun, the right sky, and the beautiful green field came together to finally grant the photo I had in mind.
I just heard Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” before choosing this elevator photo for today’s post. It’s one of two near Danzig, North Dakota. My wife and I were on a photo trip, and I’d been talking about small towns and elevators and train tracks, what happens when the trains stop coming, and that sort of thing. It’s sad to think of towns that have declined over the years, but if I start to become too wistful about the idea I can cheer up with a nice photo.
Is it surprising that my wife spotted this while we were bolting down a rural road and I didn’t? I actually had to throw it in reverse to get this shot. That’s quite a load of flowers they’ve got there! It’s certainly a photogenic way to repurpose that old 4×4 in the yard!
I wanted to find the old church in the ghost town of Bentley, North Dakota this summer, and I found it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really what I had in mind. In fact, once I got there it was hard to find it even though I knew it was there.
The road to the church was even gone, so if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d marked a GPS waypoint I would have been totally lost. So I took to the skies and located it that way. It had been laid completely flat.
Granted, it’s still pretty photogenic in this state…but it’s sad to see a church permanently gone like this.
There are a lot of other sites I’ve actually photographed which are no longer there, reinforcing the notion that it’s important to get out and capture these things while we still can.
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