Pictures of Junk

When you think of some of the best places to take photographs you think of places with majestic mountains, or ocean sunsets, colorful flowers or fall foliage. It wasn't until I discovered the pineland photographer Richard Lewis that I consider trying to take pictures of junk. Richard Lewis is a landscape photographer who specializes in taking photos of the pinelands. He offers a couple of different photography workshops in the pinelands which I considered taking. 

I enjoy photography and want to work on improving my skills. I understand the technical aspects of photography but want to work on my composition skills and finding ways to make photos that are more impactful and artistic. To stretch my artistic skills, I'm studying different photographers who I like and try to understand how they practice their art. I found Richard Lewis because I was looking for the best landscape photographers in NJ. He takes some amazing pictures of the pinelands, but he also takes photos of abandoned buildings and junkyards which is something unique. 

This is why I signed up for his workshop in a junkyard in south jersey. This junkyard is unique in that is more than a regular junkyard it's actually also a graveyard for old vintage cars and aircraft and their various parts. This junkyard looks like an apocalyptic hellscape which is why is has been used as a backdrop in a number of different movies and TV series. 

If you have seen the Amazon series Fallout you will recognize the picture above as the entrance to the town of Philly. This place just has jet engines, pieces of planes and helicopters, buses and old cars just randomly piled together.

It's an interesting place to walk around and is a challenging place to photograph which is why it was a good place to work on my composition skills. The challenge was how to take a bunch of decaying junk and make it look like art.

The one thing that helped is that this junk has a lot of character and color as it has aged.

Just look at the different colors and patina on this car.

Or the dashboard of this car. I used some of the photos in Richard Lewis's gallery on the junkyard as my composition guide and then expanded from that.

I spent a lot of time in the car graveyard trying different type of pictures of outside of cars as well as the insides.

I even did a few close ups. 

There is something strangely beautiful about the different colors, layers and levels of decay.  

I spent about 4 hours walking around and taking pictures. I even spent some time talking to the owners of the junkyard. I asked them why they had so many old airplane and one of the owners said that when he was 20, he went over to Lakehurst and bid $20 dollars on a couple of F4 phantoms because he thought they were cool and then kept buying more and selling the parts and metal from them. I also asked how they got people from Hollywood to film at the junkyard and he said that some people scouting locations for Eddy and the Cruzers in central NJ got lost and ended up at the junk asking for directions. Once they saw the junkyard, they thought it would be a good place to film some of the outdoor scenes. Then they became known by a few Hollywood people who kept coming back either for the location or to borrow some junk for a set. Now the junkyard makes a good amount of revenue from the move business although their main business is still dismantling and selling scrape. 

There were about 18 of us in the photography workshop. It was good talking to some of them to see how they were shooting the junk. I was hoping to get some time with Richard himself to get his take on the best way to shoot some of the junk, but he just gave us a tour of the place and a couple of quick tips. I was hoping the workshop would have included more instruction. 

I did learn a lot about composition, color and light from all the pictures I took. After I got home and reviewed all the photos I even worked on improving my photo editing skills so I could bring out all the colors and textures that I saw.

This is probably the best picture I took and with a little creative editing I got it to look almost like a painting. I still have a lot of room for improvement but taking the workshop and stretching the type of photographs I try to take is definitely helping me improve my skills. 

The Last Ride of the Summer

Okay I know it is the middle of October, and it has been fall for a few weeks but even during the fall we get some 80 degree days that feel like summer. That's why last Wednesday with the forecast of a sunny 80 degree day I did a ride with a couple of other people from Manasquan to Belmar and back. After a couple of cold rides the week before it was nice to not need tights and long sleeves to do a ride. 

We quickly made our way to the beach and road along the boardwalk in Manasquan 

Where we almost got run over by a bulldozer which was removing the extra sand from the nor easter we had a couple of weeks ago

We did eventually make it to our normal spot in Belmar

Last time we were here in April the bathroom was a lone porta potty.

Now there is this

This is much better than the large toilet trailer that used to be there. This is a large building that not only looks good on the outside but has plenty of new facilities inside so that we should never have to wait in line for a toilet again. 

After the break we worked out way along the Shark River as we made our way back to Manasquan reservoir. It has started getting a little cloudy when we were by the beach and the clouds had thickened on our way back. About 5 miles from the end, we got a few minor drops of rain. I actually cut the ride a couple of miles short just to make sure we won't get caught in a storm. The rain waited until I was driving home before it really started raining. 

The long-range forecast doesn't show any summer like weather in the near future so I expect there won't be any more summer riding until next spring. 

The Right Tool for the Job

In the 35+ years that I have been biking I have only once had to call for a ride home because of a problem with my bike. In that case my tire totally split and there was no way to patch it enough to get home. I have had other problems on the road like a broken chain, derailleur failure, broken spoke(s), lost pully wheel and other assorted problems and have always been able to put the bike back to a working condition that would get me home. I'm not as good a mechanic as Jim or Ricky but know enough to fix most problems. 

So, when Martin's chain broke on our Wednesday ride, I pulled out my multi-tool which has a chain breaker to see if we could fix the chain. I had a little problem getting the tool aligned to the pin in the chain, but Bob gave it a try and was able to pop the broken link out. He just recently started working at the bike exchange so had more experience and practice than I had. He managed to take out the broken link and put the shorten chain back together on the bike. Martin was then able to get back on the bike and keep going .....

... for about a quarter mile before the chain broke again. Not sure what caused it to break again but it looked like the plate on one of the links bent away from the pin so maybe there was something wrong with the link that was preventing the pin from keeping it together. In any case it was one of the few cases where we had to leave someone behind. It was too bad we couldn't do the fix, but Bob went back and picked him up later so everyone eventually got back. That is one of the advantages with riding in a group if you have a problem the group (usually) has the collective knowledge to get you back on the road and if not, they can at least tell the authorities where the body is.  

The multi-tool I have is a Vibrelli V19 and I got this tool because it has a chain breaker. Many years ago my chain broke on a solo ride and because I had a chain break tool, I was able to take the broken link out and put the chain back together and get home. The chain break tool on a multi-tool is only meant for a few uses before the pin or threads wear out. I think it's time to replace my multi-tool with as my current one is about 10 years old and there are probably better ones out there. I may even get a small dedicated chain breaker tool to carry with me because although the chain breaker tool on my multi-tool worked okay it was a little hard to use. The other thing I plan to add to my bike bag is a couple of quick links as that may have made the chain repair a little easier and might have been better than pushing the pin through the existing links. 

Although broken chains are a rare occurrence, I like to be prepared for as many possible repairs on the road as I can. That way I have a better chance of finishing the ride no matter what problems I have.