jamesnelms

Dead Red

I call it 'Dead Red' and this was last night's photo shoot. This truck is located in an abandoned cotton mill outside of Farmersville, Texas, and capturing it w...
Read more

I call it 'Dead Red' and this was last night's photo shoot. This truck is located in an abandoned cotton mill outside of Farmersville, Texas, and capturing it was a terrifying experience.

I discovered this mill last winter and have lots of daylight shots of the truck (as seen here on Viewbug), but what I really wanted to do was a night shot to get every little detail.

A smart person would have shot this in late winter, but I'm not smart. The site was literally covered in poison ivy, deadly vipers, tall mud soaked grass and trillions of biting insects. To make matters worse, some local jug heads decided to shoot off fireworks over the mill, not knowing I was inside. The entire metal structure reverberated like it was under mortar attack!

I set up my gear while there was still sunlight streaming through the skylights as seen here, but it turned pitch black really fast. I took over a hundred 30 sec exposures over a period of two hours, lighting individual areas with LED flashlights and a photo flash.

The completed image seen here is a composite of 45 exposures layered in Photoshop with a few adjustment layers to bring out color and detail.

It's called the Rogers Delinted Cottonseed Mill and it sits on Hwy 380 outside of Farmersville, Texas. It's a wonderful creepy place to shoot day or night, but don't go alone like I did.
Read less