Falling Down: Rural America

It rained the entire 1 & 1/2 hour drive that took me to Weston, Ohio to photograph a little autistic girl in a horse show yesterday.  Instead of being able to photograph outside we were stuck inside under florescent lights, a photographers nightmare.

I was there to photograph the horse show last year at this time and I saw an old house that was vacant and crumbling down. The empty house must have been loved at one point. I was enamored with the fish scale tiles that were painted green but now were faded or nearly bare wood. There was signs of people having lived there in the not so distant past. A BBQ grill was placed by the front door with a mound of other things.  I wanted to take pictures of it then but I couldn't find it. So, this time, I made a mental note of the location so that I could photograph it when I headed back home.  But when I left it was pouring so hard that I couldn't safely leave the car without getting soaked. 

So, I parked the car and aimed the lens at the house as best I could without much rain getting inside. Well, I did get a lot of rain inside but you would never guess that it was raining from looking at the pictures. I tried a process on Photoshop called HDR toning. I moved the levels around until I found the look that I wanted.  I added a memories grunge to it that I found on line et voila this is the result.  I rather like it.  A friend of mine said it looks surreal.  I don't know about that, but I really am drawn to old crumbling down buildings.