The Lost America Blog

A Crack In The World

The Crack in the World

The Crack in the World

Two halves of a double-wide bathroom, abandoned outside Mojave, California.  I loved the illusory depth and enhanced perspective the mirrors gave, combined with that sliver of infinity and the jumbled horizontal planes.  There’s a lot of surreal things going on here with perspective and perception.  Even in daylight it was a big fat “what the hell am I actually looking at here?” moment, begging to have that feeling enhanced with light.

The camera was set up on the ground between the trailers, about ankle high, relative to the bathroom floor.  It allowed me to hop back and forth between the trailers (in total darkness) to do the lighting without camera movement.  The turquoise light is bounced inside the showers behind the camera.  I had to be conscious of balancing it to not blow out the mirrors, yet reflect into the room enough to give this overall glow.  The red was added from both below the level of the floor (mimicking the perspective lines), and snooted into the ceiling insulation.  Protomachines flashlight, full moon, 308-seconds.  There were many test exposures and experiments with light to get here.

This is probably one of those images that only I will really love (easily one of my best this year, imo), but my feelings are probably amplified, because only I will ever know just how difficult it was to pull this off.

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