Year: 2005

One of our routes to Augusta has an old abandoned industrial looking building on it. I always thought it would be a nice backdrop for a Miata photograph, but it is always locked up. But a few times recently the gate has been open, so it is must be used for something. Unfortunately those times we have been on a mission and haven’t had the time to stop.

Last Saturday, Miata photographs were my mission and the gate was unlocked. I drove in and parked near a loading dock. There was a sign that said, “Please check in at office.”, but with its patinaed look I had no idea whether it was current or a holdover from when this place was actually in use. As I turned the corner I noticed a trailer with a door open so I called inside, “Hello.” A fellow in coveralls appeared and said hello right back. I asked him what was this place and he told me it is used as a training facility for heavy equipment operators. (This explains the half dozen old bulldozers, ranging in size from big to real big, parked there (not visible from the road.) It is open on every other Friday and Saturday, but today there was classroom training at a different location because they were installing new classrooms at this site. The rusty buildings aren’t used anymore, but they were a part of a Huber Clay Co. kaolin mine processing plant. I asked if he minded if I parked my car around the other side of the building and took a few pictures. He said no, so off I went.

Spent the morning out cruising looking for Miata photo backgrounds. Time to start gathering images for my 2006 wall calendar. Here are the images I used for the 2005 calendar. I snagged about 4 images that should work today and I must have pretty close to the other eight stored on the hard drive already. For this photo the sun was on the wrong side of the car and seeing as I couldn’t really correct the contrast to my satisfaction I added some grain and pumped up the saturation. I kind of like the effect and this one will probably be for October 2006.