Some new photos from Fort Wayne

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I made this one just a few minutes after the one in my last post. The light changes VERY quickly as the sun drops to the horizon at sunset!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

The only things in the living room of this abandoned farmhouse were an old television set, two office chairs, and a bunch of pornographic magazines and the boxes of XXX movies littering the floor.​

The house is falling apart; the chunks of plaster covering the floor are from the room's ceiling. I have photographed this place several times over the last decade, but it was always closed up. The front door was open the day I made this photograph.​

This old farmhouse is on Lower Huntington Road, just northeast of the intersection of Lower Huntington and Airport Expressway in southeast Allen County, Indiana. Several silos stand behind the house. There used to be a bunch of old derelict cars and trucks in the yard, but they've been removed.​

 

[farlymac]

Did you buy the F3?

Interesting about taxes being the reason to keep the houses.

Yes. It used to belong to a professional photographer (the owner of the flea market booth), and was in good shape. I'd wanted one for a long time, and the owner had died the day earlier, so the kids were coming the next day to clear out the booth. It was all going to the auction house, where they wouldn't get anywhere near what it's worth. But even at the price I paid, it was still less than most other places.

Also got a nice Voigtlander Perkeo II for $15. Now that was a good bargain.

Those racoon shots are something else. When I was in scouts, one of the kids had a pet one he'd take with us on our hikes and camp outs.

PF

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

A lot of farmers in northeast Indiana use quonset huts as barns. Thousands of these prefabricated buildings were used by the U.S. military during World War II because they were easy and inexpensive to mass produce, and could be assembled quickly by soldiers who were not trained as construction workers.

After the war, most were sold off by the government and many ended up as barns and garages. This one is on the south side of County Road 1200N on the northern edge of Wells County, Indiana. CR1200N forms the border between Wells County and Allen County, and is known in Allen County as South County Line Road.​

I photographed this quonset hut barn a few minutes before sunset last Monday. I also photographed this place on a foggy morning eight years earlier, in 2008.​

 

[JoeV]

Great image, Chris. I'm reminded that there are still a number of these quonset huts in Albuquerque, though their numbers are dwindling. Hmm, perhaps you've inspired me with a potential project.

~Joe

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Great image, Chris. I'm reminded that there are still a number of these quonset huts in Albuquerque, though their numbers are dwindling. Hmm, perhaps you've inspired me with a potential project.

~Joe

Joe,

you should, it would be interesting to see what they're used for now. A lot of them here are barns, but in the city of Fort Wayne, there are several I know if used for businesses. There's one i need to photograph that sells tires and wheels. The round ends of the building are painted like a car wheel.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This utility trailer was parked next to a building on the corner of Main Street (US-33) and Mill Street in the small town of Churubusco, Indiana. The building has a fireworks store in the front part of it, facing Main Street.

The trailer has an American flag painted on the back door, above a proclamation that "God, Guns, & Guts Made This World. Let's Keep It."​

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Yes. It used to belong to a professional photographer (the owner of the flea market booth), and was in good shape. I'd wanted one for a long time, and the owner had died the day earlier, so the kids were coming the next day to clear out the booth. It was all going to the auction house, where they wouldn't get anywhere near what it's worth. But even at the price I paid, it was still less than most other places.

Also got a nice Voigtlander Perkeo II for $15. Now that was a good bargain.

Those racoon shots are something else. When I was in scouts, one of the kids had a pet one he'd take with us on our hikes and camp outs.

PF

Awesome deal on the cameras!

The raccoons are almost tame, some of them will take food from my mom's hand. What's funny is she has a HUGE tiger cat who is actually BIGGER than the momma raccoon. This cat likes to hiss and growl at the raccoons through the windows when they come close to the house. I don't know if she'd attack them if she were allowed out, my mom's cats are indoors-only.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This is the front window of a fireworks store at the corner of Main Street (US-33) and Mill Street in the small town of Churubusco, Indiana.​

It is one of hundreds of temporary fireworks stores that open in vacant storefronts all over northeast Indiana in the weeks leading up to the Fourth of July.​

Right before I photographed the store window, I photographed the "God, Guns, & Guts" trailer parked next to the building.​

 

[ASA 32]

Quonset huts were named after Quonset Point, Rhode Island, not far from where I live. Nearby Camp Endicott was a base for the Navy Seabees, where the huts were constructed. Quonset Point was formerly a Naval Air Station, now decommissioned, and now used by the Rhode Island Air National Guard.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Saturday evening, I photographed the sunset twice, a few minutes and a few miles apart.

This is the first one, shot in Wells County, Indiana.

This is the second, shot a few miles north in Allen County.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

My grandpa, Charles Crawford, wearing his hardhat. Grandpa worked as a pipe-fitter for NIPSCO, the natural gas utility company, for 38 years. This was made long after he retired, but he still had his old hardhat and NIPSCO jacket.

When he started with the company, they still dug ditches by hand to bury gas lines. He was always proud of his work, so much so that he wore a gold shovel tie tack when he dressed up. My father tried to get it for me after grandpa died, but someone had stolen it.

I made this photo when I was in college in the late 1990s. Grandpa died in 2008.
​

 

[Canyongazer]

Chris, my uncle Rear Admiral Fred Hewes was in charge of the construction of Moffett Field
https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/santaclara/usn.htm
near San Fransisco just before WWII.
These enormous Quonsets were built to park dirigibles which were then being used for coastal patrol.

An Indiana farmer could put all his equipment, a couple of football fields and a marching band in one and still have room left over. ;-)

 

[Muggins]

There's several of the UK equivalent of the Quonsett, the Nissen hut, visible in this view - https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place...4cb20015ad02545!8m2!3d51.6520961!4d-1.2702734

I pass these every morning on the way to work, this little corner still looks like an airfield.

I beleive that the main visual difference between the two was that the corrugations in the tin sheets ran around the radius in one, and alongf the length in the other, but I'm blowed if I can remember which.

Adrian

 

[froyd]

A little belated, but I like your website redesign, Chris. Is the photo school website next?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

A little belated, but I like your website redesign, Chris. Is the photo school website next?

Thanks, Froyd. I'm leaving the photo school site alone for now. Its a relatively new design, and I like how it looks and works.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This old industrial building is on Jacobs Avenue, between Wells Street and Clinton Street, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.​

There are several signs on the building, including the one above the door, offering a $500 reward for information about the vandals who keep tagging the building with spray-painted graffiti.​

You can see spots where tags have been cleaned from the brick building. I photographed another part of the building that had a tag that simply said: "Sorry."

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

A full moon on the Summer Solstice is a rare event that only occurs about once every 70 years. I made this photograph of the moon above a hayfield at last light on the evening before the solstice.

I was looking southwest from Pleasant Center Road, about halfway between State Road 1 (Bluffton Road) and Thiele Road, in the southern part of Allen County, Indiana.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I made this photograph right after I photographed the full moon Sunday evening. It is on the north side of Pleasant Center Road (I was looking southeast to photograph the moon) in rural Allen County, Indiana.

The yellow spots and streaks in the dark cornfield are from lightning bugs in flight during the long exposure!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This is the second of the two sunset photos I made after photographing the moon Sunday night.