No Bad Light (2023) (Patreon)

I have driven by this seemingly abandoned motel/restaurant probably 50 times. It's between [place I live] and one of my airport-transit cities, Missoula, MT. Every time I have driven by it I said I had to stop to get a shot someday.

This morning, after dropping my partner off at the airport in Missoula for the [too many]th time, I drove home before the sun rose, and I had my camera in the passenger seat, and I said I'd stop and get my shots. 

I'd never driven by this place so early in the morning, and I was disappointed when I arrived. There was no direct sun, so all the shots I had planned to take would have been flat and boring in this light; that architectural-drafting side-view style I shoot of old building frequently is usually pretty dull without dramatic shadows. 

I stopped anyway and figured maybe I'd find something, and since I had a nice sky, I took this, which I quite like. (This shot was also created partly because I'm trying to actually use a 35mm lens again, after a year of leaning on my extremely-nice 50mm, which is fun, but also beginning to feel uncreative.) It's still clearly my style, but it does look a lot different than what I'd visualized on those infinite drive-bys, and I'm happy about that.

After driving by this place so many times I figured when I finally shot it, I'd be in perfect light with a tripod and have been waiting for 45 minutes for the sun to hit just the right angle to get the exactly-as-visualized photograph, and instead, I got something I didn't expect. I suppose the lesson is that there's no bad light if you're willing to try anyway.