Thomas W.P. Slatin

Can you recall the last time you saw gas for $1.28 a gallon?  I remember back in 2004 when gas was $1.99 a gallon.  Apparently, this gas station hasn’t been open for several years now.  Only time will tell when it reopens as another business, or slowly decays and falls to the ground after years of neglect.

When I took this photo, I realized two important lessons in photography.  First, how often do everyday people see something like this?  Aside from the gas price, how often do we, on a daily basis, see things that are seemingly frozen in time?  And second, how often do we come across things that time has forgotten.  Sadly, we tend to overlook scenes of our daily life, and once we realize what we should have taken time out of our busy schedules to look at, it’s often too late.  Time has a stranglehold on everything, both living and inanimate.

When we take a picture, we freeze time to the point at which it stands still.  Our collection of pictures are really, in essence, pieces of frozen time.  Sadly, time has a way of destroying photos themselves, too, which is one of the main reasons I switched completely to digital.  As a picture fades, the details are slowly lost forever, but with a digital image, the photo can always be rendered over and over again, unless the file is deleted.

A lot of people on Flickr ask me where I find these so-called relics of the past.  I’m not trying to be a smart ass when I say that they can be found just about everywhere.  I take a lot of photos of things that are either on their way towards nonexistence, or during one of their many pivotal moments.  A pivotal moment is one that is of the utmost importance, and it is critical that these moments are documented through photography or by any other available means.  Unfortunately, most are not recorded or documented, as as crazy as it seems, time has a way of causing our memories to fade as well.

Some examples of pivotal moments might include situations where things are about to change permanently and forever, such as a wedding or political event.  Other examples might include times where a road, building, bridge, etc. is about to be built or destroyed, but you (the photographer) got a heads-up of the upcoming events and took pictures both before and after, and you present them side-by-side as an evidence of our ever-changing world.

If you want to take pictures like these, you have to get involved with the community in which you live.  Writers don’t just sit by themselves all day at a typewriter.  They have to experience the life around them, slowly gathering inspiration and information to put into their work.  The same goes for photographers, only it’s kinda in reverse.  A photographer must keep up with the latest happenings, such as news and social events, and then get out in the field and capture the moments as they pass.

Where do I find these pictures?  The truth is, it’s simple, it just takes some pre-planning, a lot of patience, and sometimes even a little luck.  If you are interested in taking pictures such as the ones featured in this article, your best bet is to travel out to a rural area to places where there isn’t a lot of human activity.  These same places can also be found in urban locations where, for whatever reason, there has been an economic decline, and there are groups of abandoned buildings and/or businesses.

Sadly, these locations are generally in places that were along side a main road that was replaced either recently, or a long time ago by highways.  When there is a decrease in human or vehicle traffic, there will eventually be a decrease in economic development.  That’s where I look for pictures such as these; on roads that used to be main thoroughfares, but now hardly anybody travels anymore.

Highways are built as a means to satisfy our deadlines and our lack of patience.  The routes of yesteryear are for those who seek amazing photo opportunities, and sometimes, reminders of our past.

Posted under Photography, Writing