Lost America

Details on the side of an early ’30s American-La France fire truck.  These gauges have a patent date of 1906, but A-LF used them for decades.  Paul’s 2nd junkyard. Total darkness, Protomachine flashlight tuned to pink and warm white.  Snooted on the gauge faces.

In the 19th century, Concord was the leading American manufacturer of stagecoaches.  The iconic Welles Fargo coach was a Concord.  After the turn of the century they began manufacturing trucks to stay competitive, but by around 1925 they were gone.  This incredibly rare, nearly 100 year old dump truck is one of dozens of incomplete […]

Pratt and Whitney R-4360 Wasp engine, originally bought for salvage value, only to find all the high value parts had already been removed. Now its a high desert lawn ornament. Shot at Paul’s OTHER junkyard . . . Blue and red-set Protomachine flashlight, full moon and lots ‘o clouds. 2-minute exposure.

463 seconds under the full moon, late at night, deep in the Antelope Valley.  Lancaster glows, off in the distance.  A few seconds of red light, from the Protomachine, inside the house.  The rest of the time was spent standing around freezing my butt off in the wind.

OK, motorheads, here’s something you don’t see every day . . . especially in rural California: a mid-1950s British Armstrong Siddeley Saphire 346 Limousine.  Found under a filthy tarp, in an old hangar, at a privately owned WWII training airport.   Yes, that hood ornament is a winged Sphinx with jet engines: Siddeley was best known as […]

A Bennett 900 gas pump, painted in Chevron blue, circa 1955.  Part of a private collection. Rising full moon lighting the face, red Protomachine from camera left.  Two 15-minute exposures stacked for 30-minute star trails.  The lit version was a separate 4-minute exposure and the whole thing was blended into one image using Photoshop.

You just never know what you’ll find lurking in a dark warehouse. Looks like this Jaguar XK 100 (settle down, it’s a plastic kit car!) hasn’t moved in years. Protomachine flashlight set to warm white. 37 second exposure in total darkness.

Probably my personal favorite of the creepy doll series I did last fall at Paul’s. 2AM, at the end of 4 long nights of shooting, I think she might have been winking at me at this point. Lit with Protomachine flashlight, red, white and green . . . full moon too. 178 second exposure.

I’ve added a bunch of new images to the Paul’s Junkyard gallery.  Many have been featured on this blog over the last year or 2, but there’s several never shown before images in there, like the one above.  Check it out! That’s a pile of interesting bits salvaged from a fire truck.  The rest of […]

Looking into the tail of a Vought F8 Crusader II with its engine removed.  The F8 was a 1950s carrier-based jet fighter, used extensively during the Viet Nam war.  This fuselage is in storage at Paul’s Junkyard. Shot in total darkness, this was lit with the Protomachine flashlight.  The green was done from beside the […]