Outbuilding
North Texas
16x20 inch
metallic C-print
2007
Nancy and I were on our way from Dallas to Monument Valley in southern
Utah, the terminus of our trip. While Monument Valley was easily the most
impressive place I've ever visited in the United States, one of my favorite
photographs from that trip was of this humble little hut in an empty parking
lot on an unknown stretch of highway in North Texas. I pointed a wide
angle lens at the scene from across the parking lot and went on to other
compositional possibilities nearby. The star or planet trail that crowns
the shot and chronicles the duration of the exposure was something I never
saw in real time and certainly never imagined would appear in that spot
on the processed film. In fact, when I saw the negative with the light
trail so centrally placed over the hut, I thought I couldn't have been
that lucky and that it must have been some sort of lab error. When I looked
at it closely, however, I realized that it was, indeed, a celestial phenomenon
caught on film, with trails of both more distant and dimmer stars above
and below it.
©MJ
Sharp / www.mjsharp.com