We took our eighth graders to Washington, D.C. for a recent field trip. I took an old Canon EOS 650 with me, loaded with a 36-exposure roll of Kodak BW400CN. One of our many stops was the WWII memorial. This is a wall of gold stars, with each star representing 100 people who died. There are 4,000 stars in total. This was and is always a very sombering thing to visit, even if it was lost on our students.
Standing like solemn sentinels, the remains of the gutted engine peered out from the minivan's hood. But this minivan would not be going anywhere. Abandoned by an unknown owner, its engine compartment burned out, and its interior looted, the van waits for its last stop. As all things eventually must, it, too, must go to its grave.
A closed and shuttered window. From the rust around the edges, this window's shutters have been closed for quite some time. I shot the composition with the intention of taking a wide crop and putting it into monochrome. The pattern wasn't very interesting in color anyway. Once I took it to black and white, I performed some dodging and burning to make sure I got the effect I wanted. In the end, I wound up with a wide pattern that widely resembles a fabric pattern. I love the high contrast, diamonds on stripes. Despite the foreground and background being in focus, I also like the color differential, and how it really separates the two of them.
