Poppy in the Sun: Abandoned

The past few weeks I've had several opportunities to shoot at some great abandoned places. I absolutely love it. I think it's the voyeur part of my personality that enjoys it so much. Walking through these spaces feels sort of like rifling through someone's drawers or something without the guilt or consequences. Anyway, here are a few of the places I've seen lately.

First up is a cool old house in Mounds. The energy of this place was incredible. I had to hike through waist high weeds to get to it, but it was so worth it. Surrounded by trees, it's a little hidden treasure on the side of the road.

I had a little time left after looking through the house and decided to take a look around at the property surrounding the place. A few of my butterfly minions showed up and actually allowed me to shoot them this time. I really love the entire property and honestly would consider buying it if it went up for sale. The little creek in the back with the trail was so cool too. I can't wait to go back and explore more of it. I even saw an A just for me.

Over the weekend I made a trip to Kansas City and just happened to go through Picher, OK on the way. Picher has such a sad history and you can feel it when you step foot on the ground there. I only stayed for a few minutes because I was run off by some seriously scary locals. Think "you sure do have a pretty mouth..."

yeah.... I high tailed it back to my car and left.

I think the trees are the saddest part really. I laid my hands on a few and they give off an almost neurotic energy. They seem to be yelling for help and I can see it in the image below.

Of course all of the issues in Picher were caused by the quarries.

When will we learn to draw the resources from this beautiful planet

we live on, without destroying her in the process?

And last up I want to share some images from a downtown photo shoot.

I love wandering around and finding little bits and pieces of things that draw my eye. I have been doing it on my own on my lunch break around downtown and decided it would be fun to meet up with some other photographers (not to mention it's safer to do this in a group). So I created a group on meetup and today we had our first get together.

It was so much fun and the company was great. I'm looking forward to meeting

even more people and finding new cool places to explore.