The landscape in and around Austin, Texas really isnt all that great. Especially when you have spent years in the Pacific Northwest. So, you have to keep your eyes open for interesting things to shoot. The one thing you do get when you travel between cities in Texas is a bunch of small towns. Some still thrive, some are all but ghost towns. When you pull into these places you can find some real interesting stuff. On this particular trip, I pulled into some dust bowl of a city and was pulling through one of the many flashing red lights and saw this old run down gas station. These things are everywhere and usually they are vacant, covered in street art and basically destroyed. This one on the other hand was in oddly decent shape. In front was a Coke machine from 1934. It still had bottles in the side that were filled with dust and bugs from the years they had been sitting there.
Have a Coke and A Smile
The color of the machine had faded from years of sitting on this porch in the Texas sun. The machine had gone from the nice Coke red to a color of dust, dirt and rust. It had the pitted texture of where the rust was finally eating through the metal as opposed to the surface. While I was checking this thing out, a guy came out and said hi. Turns out that the back of this old place is a landscape service. I asked the owner if I could shoot the Coke machine. He looked at me as if I was half crazy and said “have at her son,” so…. I had at it.
This is my favorite image from the set.
In my earlier posts, I have griped about not being able to shoot mountains and the like. I have finally settled down and gotten back into a grove. There is plenty to shoot here. Sometimes I have to look a little harder, but once I LOOK things do show up.
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