Photo Safari: 4,360
Miles in Five Days by Troy Paiva
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Troy
Paiva
is a commercial artist
living in the San Francisco Bay Area. For his
entire adult life he has been an abandonment
explorer and back-roads wanderer, especially
at night. Sneaking around in junkyards and dead
roadside towns in the middle of the night, he
was doing urban exploration years before the
term even existed. Troy is the author of the
critically-acclaimed Lost
America which features over 145 color
and black-and-white photographs. On April 27th,
2007, Troy launched a new version of his Lost
America Web site with hundreds of evocative
photos from around the west.
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Day Four
- Texas Hot
The next morning is bright and
hot. I arise late, missing out on the free "continental
breakfast" of stale convenience-store donuts and coffee.
The last tenant to leave the motel, I head south once more,
back toward Texas.
Zig-zagging through the endless
oilfields, I eventually find my way to Odessa and Midland,
Siamese-twin cities ringed with bypass expressways. Their
sprawl goes on, mile after mile. It seems I haven't seen
anything taller than a 50-foot hill for several days. It's
105º and cloudy and I begin to understand the expression
"Texas hot." Thousands of oil derricks sprout
from the ground, stretching to the horizon in every direction.
Their steel grasshopper heads bob slowly, hypnotic in the
shimmering heat-haze. Exploring the road towns along Interstate
20, I find classic abandoned scenes to shoot. The high clouds
burn off as the giant red sun sets into the sullen clouds
over socked-in New Mexico to the west.
The night's photography in Penwell
and Monahans goes smoothly. Abandoned buildings and machines
saturate with my flash and the moonlight, predictably absorbing
the light. A few clouds move through, smearing across the
frame. Trying some different lighting looks and exposures,
I get lost in the flow of my work, forgetting how far away
from home I am.
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Abandoned
building in Penwell, Texas |
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I sleep a few hours in the car
on the outskirts of Penwell. Since it is still over 70 degrees
well after midnight, I sleep with the rear hatch wide open,
my bare feet sticking out into the dry air. Thinking they
were abandoned, I parked close to the train tracks on the
edge of town. A few incredibly loud freight trains, containers
stacked on flatcars, thunder by in the middle of the night
making my car shudder. At 3 A.M., a van slowly rolls by
and makes a U-turn right behind me, shining his lights right
into the Subie's open rear door, surprising the hell out
of me. But it's just some road-weary clown looking for a
place to park it for the night before he sticks his Astro
in a ditch. He ends up a mile down the road. I make sure
to roll by him at the crack of dawn, whacking him with a
100-decibel heavy-metal wake-up call.
Day
Five - A Third Wind>
