Opelika's Neon Houses and Old Cars

I try to take my camera with me no matter where I’m going. When you’re driving around town running errands in a place you’ve seen thousands of times before, it might not seem like a worthwhile exercise, but you never know. On this particular day, I intentionally drove around some back roads I rarely take and was rewarded with some shots I really enjoyed.

Video Version

Below is the corresponding video that goes with this photo set. Because the videos have different limitations than blog posts, it contains more images, but in a shorter time period. So the video is a bit of a bonus to this post.

Cars and Houses

There are tons of old cars around town; those are always really cool to see and photograph. I found a few of those on this road and then came across this old house surrounded by green grass and trees, covered with neon turquoise paint. This house wasn’t currently lived in, but it was well taken care of, and it sits surrounded by Alabama Power substations and car repair shops.

It only took the owner about five minutes to notice my presence in the street, and he came out for a long chat with me. It turns out his father had built the house himself in the 1940s, and he (the current property owner) had lived there for a long time before moving to a different house at the end of the street. His family owns the property along the entire street and, apparently, people come out to take snapshots of the house and property all the time with the intention of trying to buy it from him.

He clearly has no desire to sell anything to anyone, and I had no agenda other than to take a photograph of a cool-looking house. We had a great chat about life in Opelika from the time of the war to the present day, and then I moved on.

All of the images in this post were taken on the same street, except for the train crossing, which was only about a block away, and the warehouse-factory building shots. Both were very close by but not on the same street. The rail runs all the way through town from east to west, and most of these old factories have been torn down and have new warehouse buildings rebuilt on the property.

This train just happened to be going by when I got up to the intersection and was moving at a pretty good clip through this little road. I love the graffiti on the side of the cars, it's always so unique and colorful.

These images were all taken in the middle of the day in full sun. It's not my favorite time of day for photos, but I really like capturing normal, everyday scenes. Images of the mundane and the boring always seem to be really interesting to me photographically. The weather has changed to be of the unbearable type, with a heat index of 100°, and it will probably be this way until late fall. So, photos in high-contrast full sun are going to be the norm for a while.

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