Seeing 2011 (#169)

For your consideration: a somewhat apocalyptic atmosphere which could just as well have been recorded forty years ago as (much) earlier today— given the ambiguous age of the vapor-spewing plant and the vintage of the main subject.

The image here is the latest entry from what have become enjoyable and always unpredictable excursions in what my fellow night crawler Jerry and I term Nocturnal Photography. Our most recent foray, last night, entailed a trio of venues, none of which were destinations set before the moment we started out (at 9:00pm): neon signs on a local downtown street, a prominent religious statue near a major freeway, and (spotted from the latter) a mysterious source of massive plumes rising skyward.

Reaching a spot from which a decent, unobstructed view of the steam-spewing plant was a bit of a treasure hunt; a combination of intuition, deduction and satellite mapping lead us to an obscure route though a largely abandoned business complex parking lot. Just as it was beginning to seem our efforts to discover a good venue for shooting would be thwarted we stumbled into this end-of-times scene.

Sweetening the reward for our persistence: the magnificent prop of this well-preserved vehicle straight from the nostalgia of my very early youth . . . the first new car I can recall my dad buying for our family, when I was perhaps four years old, was a Valiant exactly like the jewel in this canvass. A terrific final subject for a long evening of pixelation.

A final note: this is a HDR composite of three successive images having exposure times of 1/2 sec, 1.5 sec and 4 seconds.

Valiant Steam, #3730/31/32-7D

© 2011 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: November 13, 2011; Canon 7D; f/8 @ 4 secs; + 1/3 EV; ISO 640; Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ 14mm

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