Abandoned building – LLOYD'S LENS PHOTOGRAPHY LLC

Where Past Meets Future

The cold November wind cuts through the open field like a wolf chasing after it’s prey. I stand in the middle of the old highway looking at the old derelict barn and continue to allow my imagination to have it’s way with the scene in front of me. I listen to the echoes of time as they speak about what might have been and what may be again one day. Last night I wrote about a possible past surrounding the old barn on Muddelty Creek. As my mind wonders into the future I can envision a young couple who exits a vehicle and joins hands as they step up to the footprint of where the old barn used to stand. They are just starting a life together. Her vision for the property is so vivid that as she stands in the spot where the living room will be that she knows the exact color of the walls. She describes in detail all her plans. His hands are skilled and experienced. He will bring her vision to life. The old barn that she fell in love with as a child will rise again as a rustic home in the country. There they will raise a family and fill the special place with and art.

Antique Service Desk Bell — Ring this bell for Facebook

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Welcome To Lloyds Lens Photography — Visit My Website

Tonight’s Feature Image is titled “Forgotten Harvest 2” and is available for purchase by using the Contact Form on my website.(Note, I do not share or sale contact information. EVER)

4X6 is $5.00

5X7 is $10.00

8X10 is $15.00

Some cropping may be necessary for certain sizes.

Antique Service Desk Bell in Black and White — Ring this bell to order prints or schedule portraits

I’m also available for portraits by appointment. Use the Contact Form or message me on Facebook for details.

The Old Barn On Muddlety Creek, November 2018

Color Photography

I had a few minutes to spare on my last trip to town a few days ago and decided to pay a visit to one of my favorite subjects. Namely, the old barn on Muddelty Creek. The past few years has not been kind to this majestic old barn. More of the roof has been stripped away by the wind. The framework is sagging more than the last time I was there as well. I have learned a little more about the history of the barn and how it came to be left derelict and neglected. It was and still is tied up in legal issues. As I stand on the quiet country road doing my work with the lens the damp air grows more chilled and a light snow starts to fall. I can’t help but to imagine the old barn in happier times. Children would have been playing games in and around the barn as livestock grazes in the background. A young boy and his sister poke their heads out from the loft door and look for shapes in the clouds. A young mother watches with safety concerns from a kitchen window as her husband reassures her that the kids will be just fine. He pauses for moment and suggests that perhaps he should go and look for the farriers rasp that he lost in the barn last week. She knows that she saw that rasp hanging next to the horse’s stall. Right where it’s always been since the day they were married. Soon after he enters the barn the children exit and go off to play a different game.

I’m roused from my daydreaming by a large snowflake that lands right in my ear. I’ll take a few more shots from a couple of different angles and wish the old barn well as I climb in the big blue truck and run my errands. What the future holds for the old barn is unclear but for as long as it offers it’s beauty and inspiration I’ll continue to come to this spot for a daydream and photos.

Tonight’s Feature Image is titled “Forgotten Harvest” and is available for purchase by using the Contact Form on my website. (Note, I do not share or sale contact information. EVER)

4X6 is $5.00

5X7 is $10.00

8X10 is $15.00

Some cropping may be necessary for certain sizes.

I’m also available for portraits by appointment. Use the Contact Form or message me on Facebook for details.

I Dare You ( part 4 )

Uncategorized

Tonight’s post is the final part of I Dare You. You can avoid any spoilers by starting with I Dare You part 1. If already have part 1 in your Trick-or-treat bag but missed the middle here is Part 2 and Part 3.

We stand there staring at the old mansion in the foggy moonlight. We’re sitting ducks out here in the open I whisper. You look at a run down abandoned building with its sagging beams, broken windows and holes in the roofing. I can tell by the look on your face that you’re not happy about trying to hide in a place that looks like it’s straight out of a horror movie. You don’t want to get stomped into a little puddle of goo by a tree monster do you? I continue as I nudge you forward. Reluctantly, we move up onto the porch and try to peak inside. There are broken floorboards, fallen plaster and debris everywhere inside. Cautiously we jiggle the doorknob. The old lock fails due to the extreme rust and the door freaks open. When I try to step inside the floor just inside the threshold gives away and you jerk me back just in time to prevent me from falling through. What’s plan B you whisper as we gaze down at the fresh hole. As we look around we spot a detached root cellar with the door ajar. Simultaneously we look at each other and say “Plan B!” We head for the cellar door. As we get close we can smell the musty air coming out of the darkness. There’s a sound coming from the inside. Someone or something inside begins to groan loudly. The door bursts open so hard that it knocks us both down and we look up at the tall moss covered figure towering over us. We began crawling backwards to get away as the creeper groans and stomps the ground. We think that we’re gonners for sure. Then the thing starts laughing hysterically. But it’s a human laugh. The creeper reaches up with its gnarly hand and pulls back the hood of a ghillie suit. It’s Derrick. The captain of the football team. Happy Halloween he yells as he continues to cackle. Derrick is a jerk but we both had to admit that he got us pretty good. That was you the whole time! You exclaim. Derrick confesses that he overhead the dare and since he lives close by he ran and put on the ghillie suit. It was his cat that met us on the trail. After a few more laughs and some reconciliation the three of us decide to have one more peek inside the old mansion. As we stroll comfortably back across the lawn there’s a terrible commotion out on the edge of the foggy forest. We can’t believe our eyes as one of trees pulls it’s roots from the ground and begins walking towards us. As we turn to run we see that Derrick is far ahead of us with no plans of looking back. You and I run for lives vowing never to set foot on an abandoned property again.

Addendum..

Old Man Redburn chuckles as he watches the young teenagers run away. As he walks to the pickup truck parked at edge of driveway he thinks about how every year kids come looking for the creeper. He sits on the tailgate of his truck and removes the stilts and the coveralls that he glued tree bark and Spanish moss on all those years ago when he started the rumors of something in the woods.

Hello Friends! Thank you for your support of my page and I hope you enjoyed my four part Halloween story. If you have enjoyed the photos or the writings please let me know by commenting and sharing my work on your social media. Please also consider following Lloyds Lens Photography on Facebook. If you don’t want to miss a post then you can sign up for email alerts on my website at the bottom of the Welcome Page.

Tonight’s Feature Image is titled “Echoes In The Mists 2” and is available for purchase by contacting me on Facebook or by using the Contact Form on my website.

I’m also available for portraits by appointment. Just use Facebook messenger or the contact form for details.

I Dare You ( part 3 )

black and white photography, Fiction Story

If you’re joining us in the middle of the story please read I Dare You part 1 and I Dare You part 2.

The shadow disappeared into a thicket of hemlock trees. Did you see that? I whisper. It’s way too big to be the cat. Not taking our eyes away from the spot where we saw the shadow we move slowly away this part of the trail until we reach a point where we turn to run. Just as we make a break for it we can hear something large crashing through the forest. The sound of twigs snapping and branches breaking is accompanied by heavy footfalls on the bare earth on the trail behind us. I scream “He’s gaining on us!” You glance back up the trail to see a large humanoid shape. His long stride gives him a great advantage in the chase but our adrenaline is making up the difference. With the pounding of our hearts beating in time with our pace we run to a point where the trail goes downhill. My toe catches a exposed tree root. As I try to regain balance I crash into you and we both go down. We land just off the trail and come to a stop in the high weeds. The light goes out from the impact but in the moonlight we see the shape of our pursuer rush past us. He’s still on the chase. He didn’t see us fall. You observe. We continue the hide in the weeds until we can no longer hear the footfalls. “You and your dares” you mutter as we pick ourselves up from where we landed. The light is broken but we can see that trail ends just ahead. In the distance we can see the old derelict mansion in the moonlight.

You can now jump to part 4 to see how the story ends 🎃

Hello Friends and thank you for your support of my page. If you have enjoyed the photos or the writings please let me know by commenting and sharing my work on your social media. I also want to invite you to Follow Lloyds Lens Photography on Facebook. If you don’t want to miss a post then you can sign up for email alerts on my website at the bottom of the Welcome Page.

Tonight’s Feature Image is titled “Echoes In The Mists” and is available for purchase by contacting me on Facebook or by using the Contact Form on my website.

4X6 – $5.00

5X7- $10.00

8X10- $15.00

I am also available for portraits by appointment. Rates will vary depending on the type of session.

Forging Yesterday

black and white photography, Thoughts and Musing, West Virginia

It’s said that photographers work with two main elements. Light and Time. I suppose that’s why so many of my writings emphasizes the observation of time. Tonight I’m looking at another version of my favorite old barn and I began to think about how quickly all of our tomorrows become yesterdays. It seems that I was just blogging about how much I was looking forward to Springtime and this morning I saw the leaves falling on my lawn. When I was a kid summer seemed to last a lifetime and today I blink my eyes and it’s almost gone. Sure we’ve had some unseasonably warm weather but the light is fading fast. A few years ago I was in a gym and one of the other men in the locker room made the same observation about how fast the summer went by. His friend answered that when they were only six years old summer was 1/6 of their lives. Now they’re sixty years old and summer was only 1/60 of their lives. The passage of time was relative to the age of the observer.

We live in the moment but moments pass so quickly and we are left with a collection of yesterdays. We can plan what we want tomorrow to become but we only have now to bend time and forge the now into a yesterday worth collecting. Mistakes will be made. It’s inevitable. Many of us are trying so hard to go back and fix the errors that we are losing the now and the opportunity for a new and better yesterday. You see, the old cliche about building a better tomorrow is just that. A cliche. All we can really do is use our now in the best way possible and hope that when we are finished with it that it matures into a better yesterday. A yesterday that is captured by the lens of memory and added to a fine collection which can be shared with those we love.