This week’s new photograph wasn’t taken in Aguila for a change. I took it on the way home from my outing there. This is the second version I’ve taken of an abandoned service station at the Arizona Route 71 and US Highway 93 intersection. My first shot of this place—called Station 71—was before sunrise in November 2015. When I stopped this time, the sun was setting and I thought the stately saguaro added to the story of this old building. This version—called Saguaro Station—can be seen on my Website here.
Saguaro Station – An abandoned service station in the late afternoon sun along US 93 near Congress, Arizona.
I actually travel through this intersection often, and when I do, I try to stop and look for new angles. Usually, the light isn’t right or nothing interesting jumps out, but this day the beautiful light on the building’s graffiti-covered end-wall forced me to drag the tripod out of the car. The failing light also shows off the saguaro’s pleats.
The next time I stop, I should try to find what gas station brand this was. The gas signs are gone—no doubt scavenged by collectors—but maybe there’s a clue hidden inside the building among the tarantulas and rattlesnakes. In the next couple of years, this intersection going to be an exit for the new Interstate 11—replacing US 93 for traffic between Phoenix and Las Vegas. City planners expect the new highway to bring growth to this area and there’s talk of a Wal-Mart planned for this intersection. Ironically, that traffic would support a new gas station in this spot.
I hope you enjoy seeing this new photo and let me know what you think in the comments. Which version do you prefer? If you enjoy this post, please click the like button below.
I’ve been helping my local photo club conduct weekly photo sessions for the last couple of months. The classes were well attended and the feedback that we got was positive. We tried our best to keep to the basics so we wouldn’t lose anyone. After all, our attendees weren’t there to learn photo-stitching; they just wanted to take better photos with their phones and I think we did well.
Slide Drawer – Years of 35mm slides in hanging files stored in basic categories.
That wasn’t always the case. Sometimes the students asked questions about advanced concepts. One question we heard was how to organize their photos to make them easier to find. It’s a topic I’ve been dealing with ever since I got my first box of slides back from the lab. Since there isn’t a right way to store photos, I thought that I’d share my system with you. Maybe that will help with your organization, or perhaps you have a better system and you’ll share your ideas with us in the comments.
As I said, there isn’t a perfect system for organizing photographs. The best you can do is to create a system that you can efficiently retrieve the item that you want without having to go through them one-by-one. Since we don’t all think the same way, what works for me may be cumbersome for you, so feel free to make your own tweaks.
The first step in organizing photos is giving them meaningful names. If you’re a cyborg and the camera generated file name triggers your memory, you could just use those names. For me, a file name like “_DSC6658.AWR” doesn’t mean anything, so it doesn’t work. For example, consider this week’s picture. When I look at it I see a local mountain south of Wickenburg. Fortunately, by looking on a map, I found that it has a name; Black Butte. Since this is the first time I shot it, I used that as the title. If I shoot this mountain again, I’ll add a descriptor to the title; like Black Butte 2019 or Snow on Black Butte. Something that reminds me of what I saw that made me take another shot. When I save that file on my hard drive, I could file it in a folder called Photos, but I have several thousand files like it. That would be like putting all of them in a bucket. If I forgot its name, I would have to look through all of them before I found it. That’s not acceptable.
Early on in my photo career, I quickly learned that I could file things by categories. Three of them to be exact: People, Places, and Things. If I knew what I was looking for, I only needed to root around in the correct pile and ignore the others. As my catalog grew, I found that I shot in certain locations often so I’d add sub-categories, like Arizona. In Arizona, I liked to go to the Grand Canyon, so I made another subfolder for it. That’s how my filing system grew; one group at a time. The Things folder has folders for things on wheels, another for buildings, aircraft, food, and so on. If I find that I have more than two dozen photos of a subject, I make a new subcategory.
It didn’t stop there because even then, I was searching through too many files, so in those cases, I sub-divided them again by year. For example, we visited New Zealand five times and so in the New Zealand directory, I have a folder for each year that we went. I’ve followed this logic—unintentionally—in laying out my Website. On the Project Index page, you’ll see that I have a link to Arizona Landscapes, but there are also projects for the Grand Canyon and the Sonoran Desert. Perhaps I should organize those like my file system and move them inside the Arizona project to keep everything uniform.
That’s how my system works and it allows me to quickly retrieve a photo that I’m looking for. I hope that I’ve given you an idea of something that you can do with your photos. I’ve found that if you don’t have a management system, those files grow out of control like bacteria. Let me hear how you manage your files.
The Vulture Mountains are a twenty-nine-mile long collection of volcanic hills south of Wickenburg. The Hassayampa River runs along the range’s eastern boundary and the mountains taper off to the west. From our Congress home, two peaks rise out of the low mounds on our southern horizon: Vulture Peak’s rounded knob is to the left and the sloping top of Black Butte is on the right. Reminding me of a doorstop or a fallen cake, Black Butte is the subject of this week’s photo.
Black Butte – With its distinctive sloping top, Black Butte marks the western boundary of the Vulture Mountain Range.
The slanting top of Black Butte first caught my attention while I was still working. I drove the forty mile trip from Wintersburg to Congress on the Vulture Mine Road and the butte marked the place where the road turns north. I thought that its shape was the kind of thing you’d see in old western movie backgrounds. I knew that I would use it as a subject some time. A couple of weeks ago while I was shooting in Aguila, there it was waiting for me bathed in late afternoon light.
You can see the larger version on my Website by clicking Here. I hope you enjoy viewing it and I’d love to hear your comments below.
We’re still hanging in Aguila for the new Photo of the Week. Although I drove twenty-five miles to the little town because I had wanted to shoot a specific sign, I then poked around town to see what else I could photograph, and I found the number one reason—if there is such a thing—to visit Aguila. Here’s my shot of the natural window in the hills south of town formed by eagle-head-shaped rocks. Aguila is the Spanish word for eagle; hence, you have the town’s name source.
Eagle Eye Window – Rocks form this window in the shape of an eagle’s head and is in the hills south of Aguila, Arizona.
I’m sure there’s a way to climb up to the window because I’ve seen people there. I didn’t take the time to find a way on this trip, but I saw on Google Maps that there was a trail from the cemetery south of town. As I said last week, there is a good view from the window along US Highway 60 by the working fields of Centennial Ranches. Even a moderate telephoto lens will bring the Eagle Eye closer.
I followed dirt roads between the fields to get closer for this shot. They had street signs, so I assumed the roads were public. It was late in the afternoon when I snapped this, and the beautiful streaky clouds were beginning to get color. I should have waited for sunset, but I wanted to get to another scene that I saw along the trip (which was a bust). You can see the larger version on my Website – Here. I hope you enjoy viewing it. Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.
Motel Aguila – A faded sign marks the location of a motel on US 60 in Aguila Arizona.
This week’s new picture I call Motel Aguila, and it’s another faded motel sign for my collection. Located as you would expect, in Aguila—a farming town some twenty miles west of Wickenburg. It’s also across the street from last week’s shot, which is how I spotted it. The paint on this sign is so faded that I don’t see a business name, and there’s only a whisper of letters left to show it as a motel.
As the sign suggests, there is no longer a functioning motel here. The buildings seem to be converted to apartments sheltering migrant farm workers. With less than a thousand permanent residents, there aren’t enough people to work the melon and lettuce fields surrounding the hamlet. The workers have to sleep somewhere and I suppose an old motel is better than the improvised lean-to sheds I’ve seen elsewhere.
Aguila isn’t a destination. There’s a café, gas station, a Dollar General store, and that’s about all. In 1973, Interstate 10 diverted traffic twenty-five miles south, so there isn’t a motel to stay at even if you wanted to. Besides, the only thing to see here is the eagle-eye window in the hills south of town and that’s a fifteen-minute investment along the side of the road (I’ll talk more about the eagle-eye next week).
You can see the larger version on here on my website. I hope you enjoy viewing it and tell me what you think.
