New photography inspiration!

In California, I was really enjoying photographing the high school water polo games, swim meets, and mountain bike races that the students I worked with everyday were competing in. If you look at my Slider Photography Facebook page, you will see the kind of work I was doing. I had a great mentor, access to some great professional level equipment, and I was very happy with my work. Every year I was trying something new in order to better my skills and my photographs.

Ever since I left southern California and moved up to Laramie, I've struggled to find a genre of photography that got my creative juices flowing. I've tried landscape, since we have some gorgeous natural beauty surrounding us, but that genre is a very common pursuit up here. I regularly do event photography at the Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site, but once again it just wasn't a passion for me.

This last weekend had some time to myself so I got to thinking about this part of our country and things that might be overlooked but might be something I'd like to delve more into. I got up Saturday morning and decided to follow up on something that I kept meaning to photograph but never seemed to have my DSLR around: old abandoned cars in fields in rural areas.

Earlier in the week at work, I took a day to visit to a few couple of the "rural" schools in my school district. On my way out to Rock River School in Rock River, Wyoming, I drove through an area called Bosler, Wyoming. I can't really call it a town, as it really is just a group of abandoned buildings, with a few homes, on Highway 287 between Laramie and Rock River. In an empty field there are some old abandoned cars, just sitting there rusting away.

During my drive up to Bosler, I recalled there was a group of abandoned cars about five miles or so east of Bosler. It was another matter of the best of intentions but failing with the follow through. Today was going to be the day!

As I took the photos this day, I got inspired to follow a new project: to photograph and document all of these abandoned cars & trucks (maybe an occasional tractor or trailer) that we come across. I haven't had a chance to go through the photos I took today, but I will share any great photos on my Slider Photography pages. I will almost definitely going back to photograph these cars at sunrise or sunset, to better utilize the beautiful light that comes at those times. The photographs I took this weekend were shot with mid-day sun, so the light is going to be harsh, and the shadows are going to be unflattering. 

Stay tuned to my Slider Photography social media pages for updates! --TS