Previous | Next :: Jims Auto Salvage : Sturgis : South Dakota | May 4, 2013, 1:05 pm

So I have been rolling........... So much amazing landscape.......... and small snippets of adventure,........ and fantastically interesting people along the way..............

Most days as a professional photographer I have very specific missions to execute ........... but right now this is traveling with a view to shooting something .......... but that something........... is only determined by how the mood takes me and what I think of ......... or what I see along the way ............

Like Jim's Auto Salvage kind of amazing kind of terrible in equal measure .......... when I first turn up out of the blue Jim says he is fed up with folks taking pictures of his old cars and putting them in calendars .......... so he says he doesn't want photographers ............ but then we have a little more conversation ........ he is somebody literally making a living dealing with what others regard as junk ...... it looks like a difficult life ........... he is proud and self reliant ....... but he suffers from all the issues that drag on people trying to make their own business .... he is particularly bothered by taxes and regulations ..............

We have a nice conversation and I show him some photographs. Then he changes his mind and says I am OK to take a wonder round his giant site with literally thousands and thousands of rotting vehicles over acres of land.

Its like I said originally kind of amazing .......... Kind of terrible.......... Old vehicles some damaged by crashes others just rotting having expired some other way ............. All with a feeling of sadness draped around them ......... Their only hope that a crazed enthusiast will want to resurrect them ........ But more likely they will gradually deteriorate and over the years be slowly cannibalized for parts ..............

Of course this place is something of a horror in this beautiful landscape ........... and yet I find there is honor in trying to recycle and create value in the stuff people are just throwing away....... and this place is almost honoring the history of these once mighty Beasts ............

Cheers Jez XXXXXXXX

www.jezblog.com