Helpful navigation toolbar

Sunday, February 20, 2011

A Real Fixer-Upper

Today's photo is quite possibly the most interesting shot that I have ever posted. I have no idea what the backstory to the house is (I actually probably do not want to know) but the time that it took from looking like a "regular" house to the state that it is in today took about 10 days. That is a pretty rapid time frame for changes like this to happen, but the changes end up making it into a very interesting subject for a photo. I decided to take this shot partly because I thought it would make an interesting shot, but also partly because I was inspired by the demolition series this week over at Toad Hollow Photography. The very last photo is one of the most unique shots that I have ever seen, and the title of the post kind of reflects the "getting a new start" feeling that I got from viewing the series they posted this week.


This house is on the south side of San Antonio, near Lackland Air Force Base. The windows are smashed, there is graffiti all over the fence, house, and shed, and even a portion of the fence has been knocked down. However, it looks like the occupants (likely future occupants, I don't think the house is lived in any longer) will have the opportunity to inherit a DirecTV dish, which is nice.


As this is my second "urbex" shot, I learned from processing my first shot that it looks much neater to give the photo a vignetted look and make the overall shot slightly darker than it really would be. To make it even more "surreal" I actually applied one of the UV filters (tweaked a bit) to make the grass from the dormant brown color seen all over Texas to a mix of green and brown. I think it compliments the shot very well.



A Real Fixer-Upper



Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this and my other photos that I have posted in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!




4 comments:

  1. Wow, Brian, we are honored and delighted to be part of this fantastic post and image today! That is very kind of you good sir! I love this image, Brian, you really captured the spirit of the scene and your post processing really brought out the key points. Really well done, I LOVE it!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brian, you've managed to seamlessly combine grit and moody in the same image. Very effective use of the blurred vignette. Great post-processing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you Barbara and thank you as well to the fine folks over at Toad Hollow. I am really glad you enjoyed the post and photo!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I drove past this today and a majority of the graffiti was covered up with tan paint. I am really glad I took this shot when I did as a tan painted house and fence would not have made nearly as good of a photo!

    ReplyDelete