Friday, October 22, 2010

Abandoned Horseshoe Saloon

Spotted this towards the end of summer, somewhere along Highway 25 between Becker and Brainerd in Minnesota. Yeah, that's a lot of mileage in between, but really all the small towns tend to look the same.

Old Rusted Sign

This sign is really what made me stop. If I wouldn't have seen this sign, I wouldn't have even noticed the abandoned building it was in front of.

Abandoned Roadside Bar

Must have been abandoned for a while, there are a bunch of trees growing right up next to the foundation.

Horseshoe Saloon

Isn't this a great sign? The other side was so faded, you couldn't read the name of the bar. Grain Belt, before it was hipster!

Food

Yup, love this sign. So simple, so sun faded. The other side wasn't as faded and had more red on it, but I liked this side better.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Sam Really Can Shoot...

...I have just been busy. Though my Flickr and photo blog activity dropped off in August, my photo taking did not. Part of the reason for the update freeze was it only takes a millisecond to snap a photograph, it takes hours to sort through 900 milliseconds. Or in this case, closer to 4,000. And though I had plenty of time to snap photos, I had none to sort them.


But I've finally started muddling through because my busy-ness has decreased: As I mentioned in my True to Words blog, I recently got married and had a vacation/mini-honeymoon in Las Vegas! That meant lots of preparation before, and photos galore during. I couldn't download them for a while because I have snapped and downloaded without sorting so often since July, I had filled my hard drive and reduced its memory access capacity. I couldn't even open multiple photos at a time!


I'm finding that I haven't really been that great at sorting since I bought my camera last September. In my quest to free up space, I've been going through each folder to find the ones I haven't sorted through. Some of them were "sorted" already and yet there are still redundant photos. I guess I am a packrat even in the digital world, but because I need the space, I shall be changing my ways!


On the plus side, I am noticing that I take fewer photos to get the right capture than when I first started. In the beginning, I would take ten photos hoping just one would turn out. Now I have a three takes rule! I attribute that change to gains in knowledge and confidence as a photographer. But I think three is as low as I'll go if I can help it. More often than not, all three of the photos will be completely different.


So now I shall away and reconvene my photo sorting. Expect more updates in the near future!
(These random photos are some I hadn't previously uploaded to Flickr, click through to find out more about them if you're curious :))