I was wandering around in this Chicago neighborhood for a little while, waiting to meet someone, and I happened to notice quite a few empty parking lots (it was Sunday morning) within a couple of blocks, some in sadly dilapidated condition.
Click any image to see them all enlarged (on a laptop or PC).
An interesting challenge in photographic composition. Which image is stronger? In the top image we have the nice diagonal line of the birds, leading us in, as well as the converging lanes drawing our eye to the nearer and more prominent shopping cart. In the bottom image the bird in front draws the eye more, we still have the converging lanes and a diagonal line of birds, dividing the image almost in half, and I think there’s a stronger sense of the emptiness of the parking lot. Your thoughts?
Was it Stephen Shore who first started cataloguing American suburban commercial spaces? Whoever it was, was a genius. Since then it’s become a bit of a cliché as everyone’s piled into this space. Nevertheless, a short walk along route 70 this past weekend offered many such vistas, the empty parking lots and gray November sky capturing some of the feeling of vast emptiness this pandemic has created (to be fair, it was a Sunday).
Even in Florida, where the Governor didn’t seem to be taking Covid-19 too seriously, parking lots were empty in the days before we left.
Click any image to see all of them larger.
The entrance to the Mill Creek Marsh Trail is from the back parking lot of Bob’s Furniture in Secaucus. When Google Maps told me I’d arrived I was skeptical.
Over 50 years ago my parents garaged our family’s Morris Miner at this little parking spot. Amazingly, given NY’s real estate market, it’s still here as a tiny, postage-stamp car park. It was critical to remember to open the windows on this car before closing the doors, lest your ears implode. The model shown here is in much better nick than I remember ours being.
Eden Prairie, Minnesota
View from my hotel room. My daughter played a soccer tournament here 🙁
