One of the questions every photographer has to grapple with is an elementary one: is there beauty in decay? My answer is equally elementary. Yes, there is beauty in many unusual aspects of life. There is a certain joy in shooting portraits of people with weathered, lined faces. Likewise, there is an attraction in taking shots of desolate landscapes or faded glory.
This pickup truck, riddled with rust across its entire chassis, caught my eye a couple of months ago. As I shot it from three or four angles, I couldn’t help wondering about the person who once drove it in pristine condition, with shiny paintwork and perfect chrome, straight out of the showroom.
Rust is simply a generic term for iron oxides formed by the reaction of iron with oxygen in the presence of water or air moisture. Some years ago, I read an interesting newspaper article about the baffling appearance of rust on trains that ran along a series of beachside suburbs. The rust appeared only on one side of the carriages, while the metal on the other side was unaffected.
The riddle was quickly answered. Because the trains did not use a turntable at each terminus, they always ran back and forth with one side facing the beach and the other side facing the city. Hence the corrosion only occurred on one side. I never thought I’d say this, but that’s got to be my favourite rust story.
Maybe I’m getting a bit rusty myself, hey?
Visit TNChick, creator of Photo Hunt. Today's theme: "Ruin".