Some new photos from Fort Wayne

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This tree grows on the north side of Airport Expressway, just east of Coverdale Road, in rural southwest Allen County, Indiana. The morning had been foggy, but most of the fog was gone by the time I made this photograph.

An abandoned farmhouse that I photographed many times used to stand next to this tree. The farmhouse was demolished in 2011.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Magic Wand is a locally owned restaurant in the small town of Churubusco, Indiana. The restaurant is known for its ice cream, which customers usually order at the walk-up windows during the summer. A bucket full of sidewalk chalk sits in front of the building so kids can draw on the cement patio.

Magic Wand is also known for the hundreds of clowns that decorate the inside of the restaurant. The owners have a huge collection of art, figurines, collector plates and other clown-related objects. Not the place to go if you have a fear of clowns!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This is one of two pieces of graffiti that I found on the side of an old brick building on the corner of Alliger Street and Anthony Boulevard in an inner-city neighborhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The graffiti is written like a mathematical equation: "Love $>(drawing of a cat)."

In plain English: "Love Money More Than Pussy."

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

These are two of three pieces of graffiti that I found on the side of an old brick building on the corner of Alliger Street and Anthony Boulevard in an inner-city neighborhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The biggest says: "Money Is Make Believe. Get High Off Youth."

Another piece of graffiti to the left says: "Love No THOTs." THOT, which stands for "That Ho Over There," is a slang term for a sexually promiscuous woman.

 

[PKR]

This tree grows on the north side of Airport Expressway, just east of Coverdale Road, in rural southwest Allen County, Indiana. The morning had been foggy, but most of the fog was gone by the time I made this photograph.

An abandoned farmhouse that I photographed many times used to stand next to this tree. The farmhouse was demolished in 2011.

I like your tree portraits.

 

[Huss]

Catching up on this thread Chris. Love the work, and this is a perfect example of showing how great text can be with photographs. It becomes a biography of the region.

I find there is an inherent sadness to this imagery. I feel like it captures a place that has seen better times.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Catching up on this thread Chris. Love the work, and this is a perfect example of showing how great text can be with photographs. It becomes a biography of the region.

I find there is an inherent sadness to this imagery. I feel like it captures a place that has seen better times.

That's what I'm trying to do, biography of the region. This is a place no one cares about. How many photographers have devoted their lives to photographing New York City? Or the West, or even the South? No one looks at the Midwest; we're "Fly-Over Country."

It is a place that's seen better times. Most of the high-paying factory jobs are gone. When I was a high school teacher, I made more money in a day than most of my students' families earned in four days. I was NOT wealthy.

Teaching pays a middle class income. The problem is, its one of the very few middle class jobs left here. Its also about the only good paying job left where hiring is based on merit. State Law requires a certain type of education to be a teacher, plus a spotless criminal record. Because working conditions for teachers are now so awful, no one wants the jobs and the schools have serious teacher shortages here. Because of all that, they'll hire anyone who is qualified and wants the job.

Every other middle class job here is impossible to get unless your family can pull strings to get you in (ie. you have to be from wealth) or you're sleeping with someone to get the job (not an option for men generally), or a member of your family already works for the company.

Despite all that, Fort Wayne is better off than many other midwestern cities. This is not Detroit or Gary; things could be MUCH worse.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This unusual building was originally a branch of the now-defunct People's Trust Bank in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The locally-owned bank built a large number of these little pyramid-shaped branches in the early 1970s.

This one is next to the former Keltch Pharmacy on the corner of Vance Avenue and Anthony Boulevard on Fort Wayne's northeast side. It has been home to Chung King Express, a Chinese restaurant, for about 20 years now. The owner is standing by the door watching me work!

Many of these buildings have been torn down, but there are at least four still standing. One is vacant, one is a rare coin shop, and one is an insurance agency now. I made this photograph last week.

Here's a crop showing the owner:

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

A local “Buy Here Pay Here” used car dealer, Big City Cars, was having a tent sale in the parking lot of the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

They had a giant inflatable bald eagle colored like the American flag by the entrance, red white and blue balloons floating over the cars, and American flags flying from the big tent.

Car dealers almost always have huge American flags or other patriotic displays. Lots of businesses exploit the flag for advertising purposes, but car dealers seem to do it far more than anyone else.

A Chrysler dealer in Fort Wayne has an 80 foot wide American flag flying from a 200 foot flagpole; they claim that it is the second largest American flag in the country!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

The house I live in used to be my grandparents' house. My mother grew up here. My grandpa, John Westerfield, died in 1999; and my grandma, Stella Westerfield, is in a nursing home suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Grandma loved to paint and draw, though she never aspired to be a professional artist. She liked to paint flowers and pretty landscape scenes. This room is one of the upstairs bedrooms in my house. It was grandma's art room.

My son and I have lived here for a few years now, but we have left this room as it was when grandma still lived here. The paintings on the shelves are some of her work.

The frame on the wall on the right side of the photograph is a display that grandma put together of fishing flies that I made when I was in middle school and high school. Grandpa and I spent a lot of time fishing, and he taught me how to tie flies.

Grandma was very supportive of me when I went to art school, and as I struggled to make a living as a professional artist after earning my degree. I was the only professional artist in the family, and that made her proud.

I made this photograph two days ago.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This sunflower is one of two that spouted 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.

When I was getting ready to photograph the sunflower, the bumblebee was by herself in the flower, near the right side of the sunflower's center. The moth was outside the flower on one of the petals. The moth entered the flower by walking between two petals near the place where the bumblebee was working.

The moth walked up and SHOVED the bumblebee out of his way! The bee moved over and let the moth through. I don't think I'd mess with someone who has a stinger! The moth was very brave, or stupid. In any case, the bumblebee let him get away with it.

 

[Moto-Uno]

But since a bee only gets one use of it's stinger and then death , it probably wasn't worth the effort ( heck there's plenty of sunflower for everyone ). Peter

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

But since a bee only gets one use of it's stinger and then death , it probably wasn't worth the effort ( heck there's plenty of sunflower for everyone ). Peter

Bumblebees don't lose their stinger when they sting. Only honeybees do.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Just finished framing this 16x20 print, which will ship out to a collector in California on Monday. Its the first large print that I've sold from the new large format printer that I bought a couple weeks ago. Previously, I had to go to a photo lab for prints larger than 11x14.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

When someone dies in a traffic accident, people often put a wooden cross on the side of the road to mark the spot where the accident occurred. Here, an entire tree was turned into a roadside memorial by covering it with small crosses and silk flowers!

This tree is growing in a ditch next to US-6, between Solomon Creek and County Road 37, in rural Elkhart County, Indiana. Many of these roadside memorials have the name of the person or people who died painted on them, but this one doesn't.

This is just a few miles east of the one I showed in a post last month.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I found this praying mantis when I stopped late at night to put air in one of my tires at the Lassus gas station in the small town of Churubusco, Indiana.

When I first noticed him, the mantis was hanging on the side of the air pump-car vacuum machine. I got out my camera to photograph him, and he walked up to the domed top of the vacuum tank. I made several photographs before the mantis got tired of posing and flew across the street.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This is the entrance to K&K Video, a store at the corner of Main Street (US-33) and Washington Street in the small town of Churubusco, Indiana. The sign over the door says: "Busco is Stellar."

The town of Churubusco applied for a Stellar Indiana community improvement grant, and was awaiting the final decision when I made this photograph. Several other locally-owned businesses in Churubusco had the same slogan on display.

I photographed it a couple days ago.

 

[Rob-F]

I like this shot!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I photographed this Monarch Butterfly during the Monarch Festival at Eagle Marsh, a restored wetland and nature preserve just outside Fort Wayne in Allen County, Indiana.

Butterflies were being tagged for tracking, then released at the festival. Much of the land at Eagle Marsh was covered in these tall wild sunflower plants, which attracted a lot of the butterflies, as well as many bees.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I like this shot!

Thanks, Rob-F. That restaurant is one of my favorite places to eat and to photograph.