pennsylvania Archives - Page 2 of 6

Philadelphia Freedoms

Melino’s Hoagies, Philadelphia, PA

A co-worker of mine, who grew up in Chattanooga, used to speak of an alternate childhood life he had lived. During periods of time, he would stay with his aunt, who lived in Philadelphia, and he told me many stories of how he was made fun of because of his accent, and how if he went down the wrong street (as he did occasionally) people would attempt to recruit him into a gang, and a host of other stories like that. Invariably, whatever Philadelphia story he told would end with him saying, with a huge grin and without a trace of irony, “I love Philly.”

And he truly did. Somehow, even though he really hadn’t said anything particularly positive about it, he loved Philly.

Tap most anyone who lives in Pennsylvania who has not lived in Philadelphia and environs, and the very mention of the city’s name elicits an overwhelmingly negative response. Part of this I can relate to, since I grew up in New York but not New York City, so whenever I told someone I was from New York, people made assumptions. For this completely unfair reason I came to dislike New York City, and only age and experience have reversed this attitude.

Be that as it may, my attitude toward Philadelphia was not right. I knew there were several Philadelphia signs on my to do list, and despite the fact that it’s relatively easy access for me to cross them off my list, I still wasn’t doing it. A couple weeks back, I had a free day and I made it up to myself to remedy this situation, so I hopped in the car bright and early and headed south.

I decided to avoid the Schuylkill Expressway, since it blocks up at all hours of the day and night, and headed in from PA 309, hoping to hook up with Broad Street on the north end. There was construction, so I ended whirling through back streets until I reached Broad at the Olney Street Bus Station, where approximately half a million people were waiting for the bus. I turned south on Broad, ready to scoop up some of the treasures. Almost immediately, I came upon my first. And second.

One of the more interesting aspects of these kind of shoots is that on occasion you run into one or two that you had no idea existed. I was after the Boot and Saddle and others I had researched and I had no idea Etkin’s Dairy Maid existed, much less back-to-back like this. I had to maneuver through the one-way side streets before I could turn around and get these, but once I got into position, I got parked and fired away.

Some research on Dairy Maid: they were a Confectionary company owned by a family named Glaser. They bought a number of different companies, including many that sell salt-water taffy. The company still exists, but operates out of Gladwyne, PA. Etkin’s appears to still be open.

Still buzzing from the discovery, I headed on down Broad Street to my main quarry: the Divine Lorraine Hotel. Now a graffiti magnet, the Divine Lorraine was truly a high-class place in its day.

I went a little nuts with the Photoshop…

This was a considerably more difficult shot. I had to park across the street and tried to hit it up with my long zoom lens. But, and testament to my new friend the 35mm 2.8 Pentax Limited, I still managed to get the above shot (this is cropped, of course). Still, the 75-300 zoom came in handy when it came to getting just the sign.

And I hadn’t even gotten to City Hall!

So, back to the idea that I started with: the Divine Lorraine, due to it being very, very closed, does not appear on Google Maps, Mapquest, etc. If you type it into your GPS, you will not find it. Granted, it’s on North Broad Street, and you literally can’t miss it, but this is a special case. There are plenty of others out there that you can’t find unless you have a map, and since it has been removed from the map, there’s no way to find it. So, to help out my fellow sign geeks, in cases like this, I’ll try to include a map of it’s exact position.

More to come!

Update: The Divine Lorraine recently got a facelift and a new lease on life, and apartments are (or were) available there. Details are here.

Won’t you take me to (Quakertown)

News Agency, Quakertown, PA 2009

In 2009, I had just started my journey. After years of film, I had moved on to digital, which provided me (at least in my own mind) brand new opportunity to take pictures of any and all things that existed. I’ve said before that the above picture was the first I ever took of an old sign. I didn’t even get out of the car. I was coming back from the Quakertown Farmers’ Market when I saw this, pondered its significance and its age, and most importantly, the chances that it would still be standing in the future. I pulled over. This was the only picture I took that day. Despite the fact that I was pretty sure this sign would be gone in a few months, here it is five years later and it’s still there.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one, too: this sign is on the back side of PA 313 and doesn’t often get direct sunlight, so as a result, even though I love this original shot, I have been trying in vain to get another shot of this with better lighting conditions. Last week, the late afternoon sun was shining, I was within striking distance of Quakertown, and I had some time to kill, so I figured, why not?

To get to the News Agency, you have to pass the building and hook around it in one of those lovely maneuvers that you only have to do in the Northeastern United States (see: New Jersey, turning right to make a left). As I made the u-turn I could see that my trip was not in vain; at last, the sun was shining bright on the side of the sign that faces northwest. I parked in the same spot I had parked in five years ago, fixed my new lens to the K-5, and stepped out.

News Agency, 35mm, Quakertown, PA

While I’m happily taking some new shots, I can see a face in the window of the actual News Agency. Now, bear in mind, I was not especially sure that it was still open after all these years, but it was. A man walked out, and he was one of those sorts of people that you instantly know that you’re going to like. He knew what I was taking pictures of and immediately introduced himself. His name is Phil, he has an impressive mustache, and from what I could gather, is constantly smiling. Much more, as we started talking about this sign, he told me that he was going to be restoring this very sign!

Moyer's Shoes

Above the door to the News Agency is a rapidly-reappearing clue to the building’s past. This was a shoe store in a previous life, and not only that, but Phil tells me that the business is still owned by a family named Moyer. This, of course, is no surprise, because every third person in this part of Pennsylvania seems to have the last name Moyer. (And yes, in case you were wondering, former major league pitcher Jamie Moyer is from nearby Souderton.)

Phil also tells me that the former Dimmig Electric across the street is slated to become a bakery. There were plans for a Brew Pub to move in to the building, but this fell through. The Dimmig Building used to be the Palace Theater, he tells me, and even though I had been by several times, I hadn’t noticed the entryway, which really pointed it to being an old theater. Another thing strikes me: at the word “Dimmig,” it occurs to me that I had spotted another sign here months ago, at the back of the building. I hadn’t taken a picture of it because the sun was against me (once again), so as I left I figured it was a good idea to see if it was still there.

Dimmig Electric, Quakertown, PA Dimmig Electric, with the News Agency visible to the side, 2014

The back door was open and there was a guy working on the reconstruction. The sign was, as you can see, still in place. I asked him if he didn’t mind me getting a few shots and he basically told me to get them while I could, because chances were these letters would come down soon.

I drove back home feeling good. It’s not often that you get to document a small piece of history, or have a good conversation out on the street. And now, I’ll have to go back to see how the News Agency sign looks when it’s finished!

On my way back, I had to stop in at The Inside Scoop, which is a few miles north of Quakertown on PA 309 in the town of Coopersburg. Although not an old sign, it has pretty much everything one could hope for in a new sign. Since I’ve been revisiting old favorites with my new lens, I figured I would squeeze off a few shots!

The INside Scoop, Coopersburg, PA

Turn In, Tune Out

Turn In, Bath, PA, 2010

When I was in college, to get a little extra money, I would loan out my 1984 Dodge Charger to people who needed to borrow it. One of the guys in my dorm was one of my regulars, and although I was reasonably sure that on more than one occasion he spent the time with my car doing donuts in some unfortunate parking lot (I had to have the alignment adjusted three times in college, and always after this guy borrowed it), I continued to let him do so. One day he asked if I could take the Charger to drop him off at the Knoxville airport. He was practically in tears. Not because he had to go the Knoxville airport, which would be bound to affect anybody, nor because of any tragedy in his life that required him getting on a plane, but because he had had a nightmare the previous night. In the nightmare, he had gone to the airport and in the process of doing so, was involved in a car accident and killed. After telling me this, he detailed all the reasons why he should disbelieve everything in the dream, put aside his fears, and get on that plane. It was a matter of faith.

So, in conclusion, he understood if I just wanted to let him borrow my car, or even if I didn’t let him near my car. Now it was my matter of faith.

I did the only logical thing I could think of. I drove him up to Knoxville and picked him up when he came back, and despite the fact that we were white-knuckling it all the way along I-75, we had conquered fear.

How does this relate to the picture above? Well, a couple weeks ago I had a dream that I went to take a picture of this sign (yes, you read that right. I actually have dreams about taking pictures of signs), and that I got into an argument with the people who ran the place and they kicked me out. When I woke up, I knew it was time to kick my fears in the rear end once again.

My initial shots of the Turn-In Family Restaurant in Bath, PA were some of the first sign pictures I took, and good ones, too. I really felt like I had no need to go back and try again until I had that dream. One afternoon I was within reasonable driving distance of it when I came across another old favorite on the road to Nazareth. I’ve come across three or four remains of old gas stations in Pennsylvania, but the abandoned Texaco on PA 191 is very photogenic. This time, there was a tractor in front, which only added to its allure. As you can see.

Texaco station on the road to Nazareth, PA

But I had to pick up my wife at 5:00, and after I had gotten a few shots of the Texaco station I didn’t have enough time to go to Bath. So my fears would have to wait to be conquered.

When I got the first batch of shots four years ago, I was very skittish about pulling off and getting pictures of signs. I more or less figured that some grouchy individual would jump out the door and tell me what I could do with my camera. Experience has taught me that, with a few exceptions, people are more than glad to have me take a picture of their sign, and in some cases, have rushed to turn on the neon to show me how cool it looks lit up. But back then, I didn’t know that, and really expected outright hostility. Which made my recent dream all the more strange. It seemed like something I should have dreamed years ago.

The next chance came a few mornings later. The skies were cloudy, but I was going to give it a chance because a) you never know when the skies will clear, and b) some shots just lend themselves to cloudy skies. I headed out to Bath and ducked into the parking lot.

Turn In, Bath, PA

Two things I noticed: first, the parking lot when I took the shots in 2010 was empty, and this parking lot was almost completely full, so they must be doing something right. Second, as you can see from the picture above, the portly little chef was missing from the sign, which is a shame. I wondered later if that part of the sign might have been damaged in a storm.

Do I like the shots from 2014 better than the ones from 2010? No, not at all. The first group were taken with bright sun and produced beautiful colors. But in the end, I’m glad I did it, because our fears, however foolish they may be, are meant to be conquered. My first shots helped conquer the fear of being yelled at for doing something I enjoy, and the second shots finished them off.

Turn In, 2014

I messed with the HDR feature in Photoshop for this one. Not bad, but I still like the 2010 shots…

Broadening Horizons at Shankweiler’s

Balloon in Schnecksville

Last Saturday, we found ourselves in Barnes & Noble, which was not too terrifically unusual. We’re often in there swilling Starbucks and poring over the latest issue of Modern Bungalow, Food and Wine, or, on the off-chance they have it, the British Journal of Photography. However, this time, I was there with a purpose. A friend of mine has been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, and by sharing a few passages of the book with me, he convinced me to get a copy. Which, ironically, proves the book’s point. So while we were in there, Laura wanted to get something on similar lines, and so we both bought a book to read.

Rewind to the previous week. I stopped by Shankweiler’s Drive-In Theater to get some test shots, just before I got my new lens. They have a terrific neon sign out on the road that points passers-by on PA 309 toward the old drive-in. Here’s the shot I posted earlier:

I posted an iPhone version on Instagram, as is my general policy, and continued on as if nothing happened. A few hours later, your friend and mine, Mod Betty from retroroadmap.com, lets me know that her long-awaited series of videos were going to begin taping. And her first location: Shankweiler’s Drive-In. So, last Friday, we gathered ourselves together after work to meet up with her, and, for the first time in a long while, visit a drive-in theater.

That morning, Laura told me something that rather surprised me. She had never been to a drive-in theater. Now, granted, I probably should have guessed that, considering for most of her life we lived in places where drive-ins had become distant memories. So this was going to be her first Drive-In.

I had gone to the Airport Drive-In in Binghamton a few times in my childhood. Somewhere I remember that my cousin and I went to see 101 Dalmatians at a drive-in in Massachusetts that I would assume is now a parking lot. And when I say my cousin and I watched 101 Dalmatians, I mean that we sat in the back of the hatchback and goofed around with his friends as 101 Dalmatians played on the screen.

Shankweiler's Drive-In Theater, Orefield, PA

It was a beautiful day. We stopped for a burger at Jake’s Wayback Burger up the street, and made our way down to the theater. We walked in and spotted Mod B right away and had a good conversation. Oddly enough, no one (read: me) thought to take a picture of this for any sort of later blogging activity. Forgive me for this, but trust me, it happened.

The first drive-in movie theater was started by a man named Richard Hollingshead in Camden, New Jersey in 1933. Apparently, he came up with the idea because his mother had difficulty sitting in traditional movie theater seating, which at the time time was rigid, hard-backed wooden seats. He spent months and months researching the best way to angle the cars, how to handle the sound, and so on. The sound was originally piped in by three loud speakers, which, as you can imagine, did not endear him to the neighbors. The next drive-in to be built after that was Shankweiler’s, which opened the following spring.

Shankweiler's Screen, Orefield, PA

We settled in to our spot. It was seven o’clock and the movie started at nine. Laura wondered aloud what we were going to do in those remaining two hours, but we soon discovered it wasn’t as hard to pass the time as we thought. People pulled up and emptied out their vehicles with lawn-chairs and coolers and blankets and made themselves comfortable. Children, approximately a million of them, departed from their families and played in the shade of the enormous screen. We talked, we watched, we reveled in the experience.

And then, a balloon came by from the nearby Schnecksville Fair. And then another, and another. Everyone turned away from the focus of the screen and watched them float by.

I was diverted by the sign out front. In all the time I had been in the area, I somehow never got a chance to see it light up, so of course, being the sign-mad idiot that I am, I wandered out and took seven to ten thousand shots with my new lens:

Shankweiler's Neon Sign, Orefield, PA

Hollingshead closed his original Drive-In Theater just two years later, in 1935, making Shankweiler’s the oldest drive-in theater in the country. He later tried (and failed) to uphold his patent on the drive-in theater, which somehow seems strange in the light of our experience. You can’t put a patent on a party, or tailgating. You can’t patent a social gathering. And even though we all paid to get in, that’s just what the experience was, a social gathering.

The movie was “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” and even though we hadn’t seen the first one, that seemed irrelevant. The night breezes were cool and we had gathered a good amount of snacks. Everyone had their radios tuned to 90.7 and it was loud enough that we really didn’t have to turn on ours. Soon after the movie started, fireworks went off at the fair. I think the only way it could have been better was if they were giving away free puppies.

lauras-first-drive-in This is what your first drive-in movie looks like.

It’s very tempting to think that life is behind you, that you’ve seen everything life has to offer. Every once in a while you get reminded that it just isn’t true. Life is always ahead of you, and you can see it on the faces of all those children running around and dancing and doing cartwheels around the movie screen. You only stop growing because you stop it yourself, or lose sight of the future. So the next day we were buying our books. And this week, we grew, we read and learned and now see things from a different perspective.

Shankweiler’s is featured in my new Drive-In Theaters page. Check it out here

A Test at Nick’s Diner

Now that I’ve got my new Pentax Limited lens, I’ve been going around to signs and places nearby that I’ve taken shots of before, just to compare. Part of me is saying to myself, is this really going to make a difference? and the other part is saying, Well, I’m going to have fun trying. The most obvious choice for a test was Nick’s Diner in Allentown, since I’ve taken so many pictures there before. I stopped by there yesterday and snapped off a bunch with the new lens.

Nick's Diner, Allentown, PA

Yep, that’ll do.

Another Roadside Attraction

One of the happier pieces of news I have received in the past few days is the announcement that after a time of disrepair, the sign atop Roadside America in Shartlesville, Pennsylvania has been restored. This was good news for a number of different reasons, not the least of which, because I worked on their website, I would have an official opportunity to take pictures of their sign. But while I’m at it, of course, I might as well share with all of you.

The Original Sign, although in March of this year, it looked like this…click here

And now today…

If you’ve never been to Roadside America (get ready for the plug), it is the masterwork of Laurence Gieringer, who specialized in miniatures and model railroading in the first half of the twentieth century. Essentially, it’s a gym-sized building filled with an electric train set of your dreams: trees, houses, a giant waterfall, several trains running at once and several moving parts.

Roadside America, Shartlesville, PA
It has not changed since Gieringer‘s death in 1963, so for instance, the town at the front right-hand corner has an old one-screen movie theater and an Esso station. During the presentation that happens every hour, Kate Smith signs “God Bless America,” which forty or fifty ago would be considered rather typical and quite possibly corny, but in this day and age seems strangely wonderful, nostalgic and charming.

If you’re on your way out of New York City or New Jersey going to points west along 78, this is definitely one of those places you won’t want to miss. This was my third time through and every time I see details and little things I’ve missed before.

Since I often get to hear some of the comments of the people who visit, one of the things that fascinate me is the people who went when they were kids who are now taking their children or grandchildren. Whether its spoken or not, they see the trains and the buildings and the people through different eyes now, almost fascinated with how much the world outside those four walls has changed. It’s as if their childhood, or a part of it, has been bottled up in there, still active, still in constant motion around the miles of track.

And now the plug: visit Roadside America on the internet at roadsideamericainc.com

So, to finish off the camera geekery I expressed in a previous post, I decided on the Pentax 35mm 2.8 Macro Limited. Essentially, it seemed to me to be the perfect Swiss Army knife for my kit. It just arrived today!

Testing…Testing…

Allow me to get technical for a moment.

It’s been an odd year for us this year. It started out with two months worth of interviews for a job that would have uprooted us to live in frozen climes, only to see it end ingloriously with a job offer that fell below the radar, followed by a trip to San Antonio, followed by taking turns with the flu. In the midst of all this, I finally decided it was high time to upgrade my lens from a kit and a few old manual primes to something better.

Mine is a Pentax K5, which has been a treat. The Pentax “limited” lens group is well recognized for its build quality and sharpness, but unfortunately, funds are just as limited and I can only afford to get one at a time. Which brings up the messy business of figuring out which lens, in fact, works best for my purposes. In that spirit, I decided to go out to some of my favorite local spots to see what focal lengths I normally use.

My first thought was that I would need something more like a portrait lens, perhaps the 70mm from Pentax, or if I felt like laying down some good money, the 77mm that everyone raves about. I came to a different conclusion on my first stop, The Movies in Hellertown. I put my 70-300 zoom on the K5 and stood across the road, knowing the results of the shots I’ve taken before. Only problem is, I couldn’t get much of anything in shot, so I went back to the kit and shot this one at a focal length of 24mm.

My 50mm prime was just as inadequate from this distance with this shot, so I pulled out my old 28mm and got this. Bear in mind I don’t have any room behind me to stand any further back, unless I wanted to be bold and walk up on someone’s front porch:

Strike one for anything above 24mm, but then again, compared to most of my sign pictures, this is an unusually large structure ( I also remind myself that Pentax makes a 21mm pancake lens, which would be ideal for this shot). A bit disappointed, I moved on to something smaller, but also one with challenges. I scooted across the border into Phillipsburg, NJ to Eddie’s Drive-In. This old ice cream stand has closed and sits in the parking lot of The Sand Bar, right near the Free Bridge across the Delaware. I put the kit lens on to start, and this time, I used a focal length of 31mm:

Exactly what I wanted, and as it happens, the jewel in Pentax’s crown as far as lenses is concerned, is their 31mm lens. However, if you take a gander at the price tag for this jewel, you’ll understand that this causes another dilemma. I went back to the car and put the 75-300 back on. Not enough room for me to get this even from the porch of The Sand Bar at 75, so I stood at an angle and got this shot:

Decent, but not exactly what I was looking for (but, by the way, Laura liked this shot better that the other). Strike two, as far as I was concerned. Anything above 40mm would not be able to get the straight-on shot I was looking for. But again, this sign is a tough one, and you really need to get the full building in shot to get the best out of it.

Then I went to Shankweiler’s Drive-In in Orefield, PA. This is a smaller sign, free-standing, and has a lot of room to stand back. In this case, the 75mm worked very well:

But which ones of these was the rarity? The large object with very little room to stand back, or the smaller neon sign with lots of room for me to roam? I kind of knew the answer to this, but when I went back home, I figured I’d go back and look at all the shots I’d already taken, and see what focal lengths I use the most often.

What I found was that I very infrequently shoot at the wide end of my capabilities, which is 18mm. This shot from Olga’s last fall was one of few that I shot at that range.

Occasionally, the best shot I took was from 75mm with my long zoom lens, but almost always I used anything higher than that to shoot details of the sign. This was one of the few I took at above 75, from Harrington Music in Cortland, NY this past spring. This one was a rarity because I rarely get a clear shot from that distance:

Overall, I shot mostly in the 28mm-40mm range, and fortunately, there are many good choices in the Pentax limited line that fit the bill. Of course, if anyone has a spare 77mm 1.8 on their hands they can let me borrow, I certainly won’t turn it down. Wish me luck!

Where Credit Is Due

Clams Casino, Helmrich's Seafood, Williamsport, PA Hand lettered sign, Helmrich’s Seafood, Williamsport, PA

One of the coolest things to happen to me in a while happened to me last week: it seems that the type designer Tobias Frere-Jones was writing an article for his blog on the subject of regional type. The main body of the article is a list he composed with others of photostreams, blogs, personal sites and such, showing off “type in the wild” in a variety of countries. As it so happens, Jean-Francois Porchez, the French type designer, is a follower of mine on Instagram (which is impossibly cool all in itself), and he suggested my feed to Tobias Frere-Jones. The article is here.

Quality Seafood, Helmrich's, Williamsport, PA

These shots, showing off some of the best hand-lettering I’ve seen, are the decorations on the side of Helmrich’s Seafood in Williamsport, PA. I took these in May of 2012 and they remain some of my favorites.

Following Frere-Jones’ lead, it occurred to me that I have a lot of people I’d like to acknowledge. Whereas I am a great believer in happenstance, I have discovered that this crazy thing I do is so much easier when I get some inspiration. Here are a few sites and streams that I always go back to when the well runs dry:

Retro Roadmap: Another impossibly cool thing that as happened since I started this site up a year ago…Beth Lennon (Mod Betty, to us mere mortals) of Retro Roadmap was one of my early supporters and shared an article or two on her Facebook page. Even before I started sharing all this stuff in this form, I was reading her blog and visiting some of the places she had visited. Thanks, Mod Betty, for always inspiring me.

AgilityNut/Roadside Architecture: Debra Jane Seltzer’s site has always been a magnificent source on a variety of cool subjects. Signs, roadside architecture in general, movie theaters…you name it, she’s taken a picture of it. She’s also a dog lover, so she gets my vote right away.

Seth Gaines’ Flickr Stream: It helps to know someone local. Although I’ve never met Seth, it seems our paths cross all the time. I’m not exactly sure where he lives, but I’m amazed at the alarming frequency of pictures we have of the same stuff.

Marc Shur: LA art director and sign enthusiast who has created more sign shots that I wish I had taken than anybody else I know.

Sunsetmeridian on Instagram: Also mentioned in Tobias Frere-Jones article, Sunset and I share an affinity for Old Florida. A terrific follow on Instagram.

Iveseenthesigns on Instagram: A fellow Pennsylvania sign geek, our paths cross all the time on the internet if not in real life.

Dewey Thomas: Awesome, awesome photographer who occasionally takes pictures of signs that seem to be meant specifically to inspire me.

Cinema Treasures: THE source of information on movie theaters, living or dead.

At First You Don’t Succeed

Tuesday ended up being a very interesting day. I had planned to take Laura in to work on my way, but she remembered she had a hair appointment north of town and it made more sense to take both cars. Then, on Tuesday morning, when we saw all the accidents that were going on in Allentown that morning due to the snow and ice on US 22, it suddenly became more sensible for us to revert to our original plan. So I drove her in, avoided all manner of accidents. But it left me waiting in the salon for an hour and a half that night.

Armed with the copy of Killing Floor by Lee Child, I was prepared to wait things out if it took all winter. I sunk into a zebra-stripe chair and dove in to my book. People came and went. The sun set. No snow was falling, but it was on its way that night. My mind wandered: could I go anywhere? Normally I’d find a sign to photograph, but I had pretty much tapped out the north end of the Lehigh Valley. Except…

Those of you who follow this blog will know that there is one sign I have been dying to get all lit up: the Roxy in Northampton. I’ve chronicled my woes surrounding this location before. I’m always there at the wrong time. Just a few weeks earlier, I spun by there again, only to be at least an hour and a half early. I determined that they must turn on all the lights just before showtime. I checked my phone. They were showing Frozen at 7. I looked at the clock. Quarter after six.

I went back to where they were wrestling Laura’s hair into submission and asked how long it was going to take. 45 minutes. Just enough time to see if I’m right. I jumped in the car and made my way over to Northampton.

Normally I’m a firm believer in neon magic hour, but I’ve been thwarted by this sign so often I was just willing to give it a shot. I bounced along the somewhat-plowed streets of Ironton, PA and eventually made it to my target at 6:30. Dark.

I yanked my book out of the back seat. This time, I was going to stay. I had just enough to read about Reacher fooling two assassins on his trail and shooting them in the back, when suddenly, a light appeared in my rear view mirror.

Roxy Theater in Northampton, PA I nearly cried.

Roxy Theater, Northampton, PA

I bounced around for about ten minutes, hitting it from all angles, until I realized that I had to go back and pick Laura up. She texted me when they were at the blow-dry portion of the program and I headed back into the car to go back and pick her up. So, cross this one off the list. At last.

Hotel Parking, Orefield, PA

A bit of sad news to report, although not unexpected. On our way to Laura’s hair appointment, we noticed the above sign had gone missing in the previous few months. The hotel was long since gone, so this was hardly shocking, but it will be missed.

What Gets You Through the Winter

It was cold today, which officially makes the winter redundant. The Northeast has been brutal this year, with wind chills in to the negative degrees. I haven’t been as active as I would have liked in the last two months, due to one thing or another, but somehow when I do manage to find a good sign to shoot, I manage to choose the absolute coldest of cold days. Earlier on in January, I got shots of the Kwik Shoppe in Shoemakersville. Beautiful sunshine, wind chills below freezing. The needle didn’t hit double digits (that’s Farenheit, metric system fans) until I got back home. It was so cold during this shoot, I was trying, with varying success, to hit the shutter button on my K-5 with my heavy winter gloves.

Oh, was this a cold, cold day…

But I couldn’t argue with the results. There’s something about the winter sun that is noticeable in photographs. A harshness, hyper-contrast. Yesterday was such a day. Not a cloud in the sky, brutal sun, and the freezing point of the extremity of a female occultist’s mammary gland.

Check the picture below. I was just starting to take shots of signs in the summer of 2010 when I came across Schmoyer’s Dry Cleaners in the Mountainville area of Allentown. The building, I could tell, was closed, and in my mind I had to get a shot of it before the sign came down for good.

Nearly four years later and the sign still stands, despite the fact that the Dry Cleaners is all boarded up. I passed by a few days ago and noticed the tree that is in the above picture was no longer there. I figured it would be a good opportunity to get the other side of the sign, which is just as rusty and full of lovely neon bullet holes. And I also wanted to see what difference the winter sun made.

Of course, no one wants to go out into the cold, but I love taking shots that you don’t normally get. Different weather conditions, lighting scenarios, you name it. And I wanted to see if I could get the other side of Schmoyer’s, with the sun on it.

I headed down the hill on PA 145 and from a distance I could see it was going to be a challenge. There was still part of a tree obscuring that side, and the early afternoon sun was projecting shadows of that tree on to the sign. I parked and took a few shots, but I could tell this wasn’t going to be the result I wanted.

So, not wanting to admit defeat, I stepped through the snow to the other side. The winter sun was blasting away in vain against the cold, right behind the tree, imposing itself into my shot. I made the best of it and worked with it and not against it. I popped the flash on to augment the light on the face of the sign, and the results here were much better:

And for good measure, I tried it out in black and white, getting the bloom of the sun:

There’s a part of me that wants to hole up in the winter, but I see these things and I think, why? There’s so much that can be done out there, even though it’s difficult, even though the winds blow, even though the roads are still unplowed (you feeling me, Allentown?). And although the nasty bite of winter does its worst, it can’t stop the summer from coming. In the midst of all this, we press on. The longer we press on, the greater the chance that we capture something beautiful.