Some new photos from Fort Wayne

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This giant inflatable black widow spider hangs on the front of a house in my neighborhood for Halloween. The house is on Woodheath Avenue in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The sign below the spider says: "Beware of the Black Widow."

This is one of only a few houses in the neighborhood that are decorated for Halloween this year. The number of people in Fort Wayne who decorate their houses for holidays like Christmas and Halloween has dropped off sharply in the last few years.

I photographed it yesterday evening.
 
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This sunflower is one of two that sprouted up by my driveway earlier this summer. The flowers finally opened up at the end of September, and quickly became popular with the local insects.

There is a fat bumblebee hiding under the petal above the one the moth is sitting on. Right after I made this photograph, the moth walked onto the center of the sunflower and shoved the bumblebee out of his way!

I posted a photo of the flower with both insects on it a couple weeks ago. I actually shot this one first, but for some reason edited and posted the second one first.
 
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This truck has the F-bomb painted on the tailgate! "The F-Bomb" is a euphemism for the word "F--k." Saying "F--k" is "Dropping the F-Bomb."

I found it yesterday afternoon in the parking lot behind a building on the corner of Spy Run Avenue and Anderson Avenue in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
 
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A couple days ago, I came upon this scene in downtown Fort Wayne.

This inflatable tube man, or air dancer, looks like a monster or ghost. It was standing in the parking lot behind Stoner's Funstore, advertising the Halloween costumes sold by the store. When I made this photograph, the wind had blown it over for a few seconds, making it appear to be attacking the SUV parked next to it!

Stoner's was founded in 1949 by local magician Dick Stoner in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana. They sell a huge variety of costumes as well as equipment for magicians.
 
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Here's a snapshot I did recently of Ariana Thompson, the young woman I have been helping to learn photography. I've known her since she was born; her father is one of my oldest friends. She's the same age as my son, 20.

This portrait was done at night with just the light from a nearby street light and the porch light on her house. I had to shoot it at ISO-6400!

You can see some of her work and read her story on the RFF thread that I started about her last month:

Ariana's Photos: Mentoring a Young Photographer
 
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The graffiti of three dogs covering the side of this railcar caught my eye as I was driving down Taylor Street, between Broadway and Fairfield Avenue, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

I am always amazed to see railroad cars that have such enormous pieces of graffiti art painted on them. To cover the entire side of one of these autorack cars must take a lot of time, as well as ladders, supplies, etc. How the Heck does someone pull this off without getting caught??

I used this photo for one of my Lightroom tutorial videos, showing how I processed it in Lightroom from beginning to end. You can watch it here:

https://youtu.be/ApC-5VzW-FM
 
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This is the original entrance to Elmhurst High School on Ardmore Avenue in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I photographed it on rainy morning back in September.

When the school opened in 1929, it was a much smaller building than it is today. It was expanded several times over the years into a modern large high school. You can see the different architectural styles of the different parts, since no effort was made to make the new additions match the look of the older parts.

This is the original part of the school. Fort Wayne originally had several schools built to this same design. All have been closed, and only one other one (Hillcrest School on Tillman Road) has escaped demolition.

In 2010, Fort Wayne Community Schools closed Elmhurst High School. In August of 2012, FWCS auctioned off the furniture and equipment in the building.

In August, 2017, FWCS announced that the school property had been sold to Hanson Aggregates, the limestone quarry located behind the school. Hanson intends to demolish the school. Soon after I made this photograph, a chain-link fence was built around the school to keep people away from the building.

I graduated from Elmhurst in 1994. My parents both graduated from Elmhurst in the late 1960s. It was Elmhurst's longtime art teacher, Don Goss (also an Elmhurst grad), who encouraged me to become a professional artist.
 
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The Man Cave Barber Shop is on Jackson Street in the small town of Monroe, Indiana. Monroe is in Adams County, a few miles south of Decatur. I photographed it a couple weeks ago.

Like the "Main Streets" in many small Indiana towns, Jackson Street in Monroe is still lined with beautiful old commercial buildings like this one.
 
Congratulations for your job. Your photographs make sense if you show them all together because they tell the story of a land.
 
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This tiny brick building was once a bank. It is on the south side of County Road 142, just west of County Road 13, in Foraker, Indiana. I photographed it on a winter evening shortly before sunset.

Foraker isn't really a town; it is just a crossroads in rural Elkhart County with a few houses and a couple of agricultural businesses.

I don't know how old the bank building is, what the bank was called, or when it closed. It is hard to believe that the town could have ever supported a bank.

I have seen and photographed small former bank buildings in several other very small Indiana towns; in the past they must have been much larger and more prosperous places than they are today.

I made this photograph back in January.
 
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Saturday evening was rainy and foggy in he part of Indiana where I live. I made this photograph near the entrance to Fox Island County Park, a nature preserve in rural southwest Allen County, Indiana.
 
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This chair with a frowny face painted on it sits in front of the Fort Wayne Fire Department's Station #10 at the corner of Anthony Boulevard and Crescent Avenue.

It has had an interesting history. I photographed it the first time back in 2010, when it had a happy face painted on it. One of the firemen who worked there at the time told me that one of the men had painted the face on the yellow chair.

In 2011, the chair was painted over with a dull flat brown paint, with no face. It stayed that way until fall of 2017, when it went back to yellow. This time with a frowning face wearing glasses!

I made this photograph yesterday afternoon.
 
It's not only the quality of your photography which always surprises me, but also your ability to pick up small and interesting stories around you. Great!
robert
 
robert blu said:
It's not only the quality of your photography which always surprises me, but also your ability to pick up small and interesting stories around you. Great!
robert
Click to expand...


Thanks, Robert.

It comes from knowing my community and being observant. So many people don't notice this stuff because they go through life without actually looking at and thinking about what is happening around them.

I've shown my photos to people many times over the years where I'll have the person ask: "Where is that at?" I tell them and they say: "I have driven down that road for 20 years and never noticed that place!"
 
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This is the northeast corner of the old Elmhurst High School building in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This is part of one of the later additions to the school that was built in a utilitarian modernist style, unlike the neoclassical style of the older part of the building.

These round false windows are the only decorative elements on this part of the building.

I graduated from Elmhurst High in 1994. The school, which opened in 1929, was closed in 2010. It is going to be demolished very soon.
 
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This house in on Antwerp Drive (State Route 49) in the small town of Hicksville, Ohio. Hicksville is in northwest Ohio, just a couple miles east of the Indiana-Ohio state line.

The three windows on the front of the house and three more on the side of the house all have American flags serving as curtains. The old woman who lives there told me that she bought the flags at Dollar Tree, a retail chain that sells most of its products for one Dollar each.
 
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