"Rusted in Jerome," Arizona, March 2010

Not much left but the wheel

The wheel on the truck hasn't gone 'round in quite a long time.

"Sepia times, Nevada City," Montana, May 2006

Sepia-toned history

Nevada City, Montana is a collection of buildings, old equipment and other various gold-rush ephemera laid out on a slightly sloping field in the southwestern part of the state. My college roommate and I walked among its old buildings and rusting farm equipment on a drizzly spring day nearly four years ago.

"Katrina damage," New Orleans, January 2007

Smushed

In order to depict something damaged, my mind kept going back to New Orleans. The images from that city after Hurricane Katrina aren't just of abandoned ruins crumbling because of neglect, they were thriving, inhabited neighborhoods filled with life and everyday activity one morning, then a desolate, deserted aftermath of a storm path and an ill-equipped government.

Day 164 of 365

What's left after the fire

The bowling alley where I spent a few high school nights burned down last week. It was obliterated, but the owner says he'll rebuild.

"Ninth Ward, post-K," New Orleans, January 2007

A split-level in ruin?

For this week's theme of disorder, I kept singing the chorus of Warren Zevon's "Disorder in the House," which got me thinking of homes. And that led to New Orleans. The thing about this photo is that it's not just one ruined home; it's two. The second roof on the right side of the house is not part of the original building; it's from a home around the corner that was planted on top of the lower house as the flood waters finally receded. Talk about disorder.

This is the fourth photo of a post-Katrina New Orleans I've used to represent a photo challenge (and more remain). It remains a somber sight and a reminder of the incompetence of leadership during the months that turned into years after the storm.

I post this while watching this year's Sugar Bowl, which was the reason I was in New Orleans in January 2007, when I watched Brady Quinn and Jeff Samardzija in their final game for Notre Dame. It was a good few days nonetheless.

"Call the bishop, New Orleans, after Katrina," January 2007

Call the bishop

At first I didn't want to post this one, because it's not in sharp focus. But then I realized that religion itself is a bit blurry. It's open to interpretation, subject to debate and viewed differently by nearly everyone despite drawing from many of the same texts for their beliefs.

It was taken from a moving car driven by a friend and local reporter as she took us on a tour of Lakeview, Gentilly, the Lower Ninth Ward -- the hardest-hit neighborhoods. New Orleans is still in shambles, struggling to get back on her feet after Mother Nature beat her down and her government abandoned her.

Maybe someone needs to call the bishop.

"In the country," Montana, May 2006

Sepia-toned history

For Photo Friday.

"Turnstiles, Hinchcliffe Stadium," Paterson

Overgrowth at Hinchcliffe

At one time, fans passed through these lanes on their way into Hinchcliffe Stadium. The entrances are now gated, the walls covered in graffiti, the concrete steps on which the bleachers rest cracked with holes and gullies through which trees have been growing for years. It's another crumbling relic of Paterson, hard by the Great Falls, just like the abandoned factories and mills that line the Passaic River of this once-pivotal industrial city.

"Inside the kitchen," Wyoming, May 2006

Inside the kitchen, originally uploaded by DC Products.

The destruction inside an abandoned cafe and rest stop on a rural Wyoming highway.

"Circle and the square," Montana, May 2006

Nevada City scene, originally uploaded by DC Products.

Even without a wheel, the mind's eye still draws a circle around the ends of the spokes.

"Library at Alcatraz," September 2005

Library at Alcatraz, September 2005

The windows must have been a tantalizing tease. Out beyond them was the blue San Francisco Bay. When the fog rolled in, it might have been a blessing. Outside those windows was nothing but a depthless gray, no blue water, no hills of Frisco to remind those inside what they were missing. The fog could turn the sparkling world beyond the bars into black and white.

Ruins of Alcatraz, September 2005

The Rock is old. From a military outpost to a prison to a tourist attraction, it now sits in a dichotomous state of preserved decay. While the cell block remains intact and safe for visitors, much of the rest of the island slowly crumbles, vegetation overtaking the concrete, wind rounding off the rough edges, the outpost in San Francisco Bay as dangerous today as it was to its prisoners in the past, only in a different way.

The Rock is trying to regain its past.

"Former ALCOA Factory," Edgewater, New Jersey, March 2005

There are three overriding categories of photographs that people seem to consider ghostly: blurry people in motion, long exposures in which a subject (or the photographer) moves into the shot and pauses before moving away, and cemeteries. There were also at least three images of jellyfish in the first 400 listed that I looked through as I endured a slow day at work yesterday.

While I was flipping through them, one-by-one, using the link viewer, iTunes shuffling in my ears, this page came up just as "Clocks" by Coldplay began and I felt the song — particularly the intro — fit the image perfectly.

So when I got home -- at 2 a.m. -- I set up the tripod on the balcony and shot a few 4-second exposures of the abandoned ALCOA factory adjacent to the cemetery next door. It's the factory moreso than the tombstones that I wanted to capture.