Encounter #1

On the road, one of our favourite activities is to photograph historical and, ideally, remote places. Many of these places are called ghost towns because they are now just a ghost of the once bustling frontier town. Most of them are visually appealing and photographing them shouldn’t pose a challenge. Remote locations, interesting wooden structures, rusty old machinery and cobwebby interiors provide plenty of material for a photographer. We’ve done our share of this kind of photography.

There is another, much less visible dimension to these places. How do you capture the mood of the place, especially one that doesn’t breathe anymore? How do you point your camera to a silent scene so that you capture stories of love, compassion and bravery but also extreme violence and death?

Those fleeting moments and visual encounters may be just in my head but I like to use light, line and my imagination to express my emotions and witness an encounter with the past. Can I hear voices on the wind?

Molson, Washington. Captured with the X-Pro2 paired with the XF 50-140mm F2.8 and the XF 14mm F2.8. Acros (A) and Classic Chrome (CC) film simulations.