Trip rewind: Day one

I realize I am several days late on posting this. I had every intention of posting these day by day (it turns out the hotel DID have wi-fi, so I wasn't as off the grid as part of me had hoped I'd be), but I ran myself so ragged that all I wanted to do was drink and edit my photos at the end of every day. I didn't want to sit and write recaps, I wanted to go to sleep.

So. Recaps can be done now! While I listen to Whitney Houston's I'm Your Baby Tonight. On repeat. No fucking shame.

Ok, so!

Monday morning at 1am, the journey started. The first stop was Texas to take sunrise photos, because why not? I didn't go to sleep on the drive there, I instead slammed an energy drink and remained a chatty Cathy for seven hours. The place we meant to go take photos of was impossible to find, and since we didn't want to miss the sunrise, we settled for an empty field with abandoned equipment on it. I dressed for car comfort and not weather, and Texas was surprisingly cold. That forty minute photo adventure was a very chilly one for my extremities. I think it paid off, though:

I took about sixty different photos of this area, with different angles and zooms and not zooms, but this was my favorite. It felt quiet and lonely and a bit defeated. And a lot of the photos I've been taking lately feel that way to me, and that's why I'm taking them. More self portraits, just minus my silly face.

The rest of the day was a lot of pulling over at things that looked interesting to take photos. First random stop? An abandoned gas station:

The window picture was my favorite from the day. I don't know why, really. Maybe because it looks so broken and unloved and forgotten. The gas station that time forgot.

Then there was the abandoned gymnasium that I don't think anybody had visited since 1963, and I only throw out that year because 1., it sounds funny, and B., the oven in there was fucking OLD. I don't know why there needed to be an oven in a gym, but there you have it.

I'm not terribly fond of this picture, but I do love the light. I was 2/3 stop under, so everything is darker than it should be. I wanted to go all HDR on it (because this camera does that!), but I was SO FUCKING COLD (the windows were broken, it was windy, and standing in front of them was like being in an arctic windtunnel, and I fucking hated every second of it), and I didn't want to go run back to the car to get the tripod and set everything up. So I settled on this. This building apparently had a creepy basement that I didn't notice, but I wish I had. I would have gone down there, if for nothing else to get out of the god damn wind.

When we hit New Mexico, there was this lonely windmill next to a dead tree, and I screamed at the top of my lungs to turn around so I could run and take a photo of it. I only took one and hoped for the best. At this point, I was deliriously tired.

Thankfully, it turned out decently enough.

The rest of the pictures I took didn't really turn out, because the entire vehicle was too exhausted to stop anywhere, and we still had a six hour drive in front of us. So the pictures I took were taken from the car.

It was a busy, busy, tiring day. Once we got to the hotel, I fell asleep pretty immediately after check in and dinner. I don't think it helped that I ate artisan chicken and waffles (which were a revelation, I don't mind saying so. We ate here every. fucking. night because the food was SO tasty.

That was pretty much the extent of the first day. I very anxiously looked at my photos at the hotel, edited them, and crashed the hell out.

Stay tuned, because there are several more days, and more adventures, coming. For now, however, I have to get ready to go to breakfast with my buddy. I'm pretty excited to go to Over Easy and have a spectacular mimosa. Drinking before noon because I have no sense of propriety!

Day two is next!