Leatherface's Summer home and Golden Hour.

I had a conversation on Facebook today with a friend of mine and the conversation inspired me to pick up my cameras, jump on my motorcycle, and find some cool places to do some photography. I drove around aimlessly hoping that the gods of photography...mainly Anzel Adams, would lead me to a cool place.The photography gods must have guided me because I found a place that time and urbanism seemed for have forgot.

I as I drove I came across a sign that read "road closed." I do not know about you but from past experiences if there is a road closed sign there is usually a cement barricade or construction barrels blocking the path. There were none on this road. I thought to myself, "If they really wanted to keep people out of here they would block the road. As my motorcycle and I sat there idling, I looked down the empty street. There was no sign of life whatsoever. You know what they say about the cat and curiosity right? Well, I'm no cat but curiosity finally got the better part of me. I opened the throttle and rode past the "road closed" sign and man I am glad I did.

After parking the bike I walked down the sidewalk to this abandoned home, garage and shed. The only sign of life other than myself was a Utah County deputy asking me what I was doing. He let me be after I told him I was taking pictures.

The feeling of being truly and utter alone finally hit about 45 minutes later. It was dead quiet, there were no birds or grasshoppers chirping. As I got closer to the red house this dark disturbing feeling kept getting stronger and stronger but I kept snapping photos. Finally when I could not longer bear it I packed up my cameras, jumped on the motorcycle and speed away.

My next stop was Allan's Camera Shop in Orem where I was going to develop the black & white roll that I shot only to be told that I had a color roll instead. I was upset but kept my cool. When I got home I noticed the last rays of sunlight right before the monsoon like storm hit Orem and Provo and took a few pictures of some trees right by my house. I will be returning to this spot once the weather is clear and is not acting like Mount Doom at the end of Return of the King.

Enough of my adventure...here are the digital photos I took.

Ants, Clouds, Moon and 10 second exposures

I love my Nikon D5000, it is one of the best investments I have made. Last week a friend and I decided to do something about the ant problem in my front yard so we grabbed the waterhose, turned it on full blast and gave the ants a taste of what they might consider extreme hurricane conditions, think Katrina, but with ants. Their response and first responder team was by far a lot faster than FEMA's was as they had relocated about 10 feet north and had rebuild an even bigger and better hill than their previous one. Also, there was another really cool moonrise here in Austin so I got home as fast as I could, grabbed my camera and a stepladder that I used as a tripod, and snapped a few photos.

A few weeks a go I was conversing with my best friend Andrew who is also into photography and recommended that I try shooting some photos using the manual exposure mode. So I set the camera to manual mode and set the shutter for a 10 second exposure. The following are the results of those events. Also the photos seemed to lose A LOT of quality after I uploaded them on to here just click on the picture and you will get the higher quality image.