Junkyard Photography

Junkyards and dumps are some of the most interesting places to stroll around, cause everything you see has evidence of some kind of story in it. On some slow weekends back home in Boston, my buddy Matt and I would go "dump-jumping", which isn't as nasty as you'd imagine. We would go to all the public dumps in the nearby towns and scrounging for old speakers, stereo systems, amplifiers, computer screens, or anything that would catch our fancy. When I got my first car I started exploring junkyards with the same intentions, finding little accessories here and there to trick out my ride a little. Junkyards are interesting to me because of their business model, or rather, lack of one. Most of them are simply set up so anyone can mill around the yard and disassemble whatever they want, at their own risk, with little to no supervision. You bring any parts you salvage to the exit where some hungover guy with a 5-day shadow will check its value on his computer and bargain with you for a steal of a deal. On Saturday I went looking for a tail light bulb and started snapping pictures.

The first thing that caught my eye was this car manual, in surprisingly good condition, which someone had left on the roof of the car. The pages were blowing and turning in the wind, pretty much the only moving thing I saw in this metal graveyard. It seemed almost like it was trying to escape or somehow call for help at the highest point it could reach, screaming how new and useful it still was. 

Junkyards are the definition of barren, it feels like walking through a desert. The ground is all dirt and rocks and mashed up pieces of cars, not the place you'd want to be in flip flops. This little pile caught some sunlight and flashed at me like a bunch of diamonds. Turned out to be a completely smashed up windshield, the little plastic/glass pieces all crumbled into jewelry-sized chunks on top of the plastic film, which at one point must have been completely clear, but was now a dusty grimy haze.

Here's a high resolution of this image: https://goo.gl/photos/ju6jdFhJgS8L9Q9ZA 

This truck was awesome, I was struggling to get a good angle, so I settled with a panorama shot, which I thought was most effective. Looking at it full screen I would totally get lost in the colors in the middle, to the point where you could almost forget you were looking at a truck. It was also fun to wonder why this truck got painted like this.

This was a simple eye catcher, right between some of the rows. The way it was propped up was a perfectly natural composition, but the personas of both of these objects are what caught my eye. The older rustier rim seemed to be pushing the full tire up, trying to lift it out of its grave and roll on out of that miserable place.

Here's a high resolution of this one too: https://goo.gl/photos/tAnxYA19mS85m48F6

It was interesting to look inside each of the cars and play detective, since there were always random little objects people left in there. This back seat's contents were just laughably ironic to me.