·         Following the Ghost Town Trail—Tiny to Biggar, Eastend to Westbend.

·         Capturing vignettes of abstract beauty, hidden away in stuff left behind.

·         Revealing a context of depression, foregone inhabitants just walked away, vanished, disappeared.

·         Wondering if there was intention to return?

·         Exposing the edgy side—welcome to The Bone House…

Galvanized sheeting, once painted blue, looking like coastal sand bars and linear lagoons on some red planet far away. Actually found in the abandoned coal mine town of Denniston, West Coast, New Zealand, blue planet Earth.

I’d never seen paint cracking in this sort of pattern before. All of the doors and jams in this abandoned house near Drumheller, Alberta, were crackling the same way. I liked the cubism in this framing, which seemed to mimic the crackling pattern. The image recalled for me the diagrams of naturally fractured petroleum reservoirs from Drilling class.

Flaking, fractured, falling apart at the seams. On a gridlocked road (Range Road 3246 to be exact). No, this is not a political comment—it’s an abandoned ranch house in the middle of the Great Sand Hills, Saskatchewan.

Smuts, Saskatchewan—the abandoned building looked like a hotel and tavern—but with baby blue and pink flooring? It definitely wasn’t a nursery, except maybe for the racoons…

Beautiful colours, textures, and patterns on the door frame of an elegant old abandoned farm house near Arelee, on Saskatchewan Highway #376. Fir floors, hardwood door and window trim, solid construction—things we apparently place little value in these days.

A section of pipe at the abandoned Greenwood Mine Historical Site across the street from Blairmore, Alberta. Not covered in paint ball splotches…

By guess and by golly shot—the bathroom was so ridiculously small and narrow that I had to hold the camera against the wall, and couldn’t look through the viewfinder. Must have been Munchkins farming there. Somewhere down around Seven Persons in southeast Alberta.

In the middle of Saskatchewan’s Great Sand Hills we were off-roading in our Jeep, taking time out, not really expecting to find anything derelict to shoot… Suddenly, on the horizon, was a little red farm house with Meacock Sirup Piapot on the gate latch—presumably three ranching surnames. Piapot is also the name of a local town. One bedroom was painted deep blue.

Cleaning brushes, slap them against the wall in the barn… Curious, multihued, hinged apparatus, swings up to the ceiling, and then what? Near Wrentham, Alberta, on the Red Coat Trail.

Mud-cracks in the desert—albeit rather colourful mud… The deserted kitchen counter of an abandoned farm house with a fantastic, unobstructed view of the South Saskatchewan river valley on dusty gravel Highway 562.

Something about how the light raked across this corrugated iron popped crystal patterns out of the rusting metal. Fading red paint balances out the blue-sky light. Behind the barber’s house at the abandoned gold mine town of Waiuta, West Coast, New Zealand.

 

Lichen growing on the water pipe serving the abandoned Golden Fleece Gold Battery, Black’s Point, Rahu Saddle, West Coast, South Island, New Zealand.

The Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site near Drumheller, Alberta, offered up a plethora of haunted dereliction. Established circa 1913 during the heyday of black gold, the sun set on Atlas #4 in 1979. With a blood moon rising, the mine was abandoned virtually intact—they just closed the doors and walked away—a bit of monkey grease could start it up again today! This is a close-up photo of the wood side board on a one ton Chevy dump truck, once painted Atlas red. Sign on the door reads ”Century Coals Limited, Atlas Mine, East Coulee, Alta”.

Chinook winds don’t usually precipitate rainbows… This multi-coloured bedroom wall was found in an abandoned house in the ghost town of Chinook, on Alberta Highway #9. The filthy glass window (surprisingly still intact) provided a beautiful raking but soft light.

Hamton, a ghost town in eastern Saskatchewan, is completely abandoned, as is the CNR (Canadian National Rail). The public hall was most recently used as an indoor skateboard park. This window graffiti in the front door reflects the green grass beyond—eliminating the blazing sun glare was the tricky part!

New Zealand Scrap, actually! Near Wanaka is the little Otago crossroads of Luggate, where Church Road deaks off to the famous, often photographed, Red Bridge. I was more interested in a line up of junked old trucks. Battered, bent, and broken accident victims, banished to the empty lot, forlorn and forgotten, of no more use, nowhere else to go. This is a front fender.

Oil slick on the front window of Marvin’s Grocery store, abandoned in Orkney, on paved but equally derelict Highway #18, southwest Saskatchewan. Gravel roads are way better out there.

On the road again, travelling with our 14 year-old granddaughter, out to experience Dinosaur Provincial Park Badlands and “glamping” in the scorching hot sun. Grandpa’s looking for abandoned buildings and just has to stop at this intriguing old store in Hussar, which had at one time been painted yellow, then barn red. I liked the hardware and deep shadows.

On the road again, travelling with our 14 year-old granddaughter, out to experience Dinosaur Provincial Park Badlands and “glamping” in the scorching hot sun. Grandpa’s looking for abandoned buildings and just has to stop at this intriguing old store in Hussar, which had at one time been painted yellow, then barn red. I liked the hardware and deep shadows.

On the road again, travelling with our 14 year-old granddaughter, out to experience Dinosaur Provincial Park Badlands and “glamping” in the scorching hot sun. Grandpa’s looking for abandoned buildings and just has to stop at this intriguing old store in Hussar, which had at one time been painted yellow, then barn red. I liked the hardware and deep shadows.

“Then I awake and look around me, at the four grey walls that surround me, and I realize, yes, I was only dreaming…” Not a reflection of the duck pond, but a smelly, moldy derelict wall in an abandoned farm house in Orkney, on Saskatchewan’s Highway #18.

Sand dunes, grasses waving in the breeze, trembling aspen groves… Except for the broken piece of glass re-connecting us with reality. Good quality linoleum flooring is not so durable when abandoned to the wind, rain, and pigeons. Somewhere in Saskatchewan’s Great Sand Hills.

There aren’t really any hills in Hamton, being in a flatter part of eastern Saskatchewan. Nor are there any inhabitants, nor a railroad. Abandoned buildings, cars, trucks, buses, and junk are all that’s left in the ghost town. This was shot through a broken window with a 200 mm lens, with a reflector bouncing the sun in through another window.

A long time ago, on a prairie far, far away… There was a pretty new home where the kitchen had been wallpapered in the latest rural fashion: lovely Ming Dynasty style floral vases. Years later the kitchen was modernized, and linoleum was glued over the wallpaper. Tragically the cute little house was abandoned, with a suitcase half-packed, still on the dresser. Now the linoleum has peeled off the wall, leaving behind droplets of coalesced brownish glue covering the yellowing old wallpaper.

Fleurs Place is an offbeat restaurant in Moeraki, coastal Otago, New Zealand. The rich and famous come from all around the world to dine on fresh fish caught that morning. Starting with the abandoned whaling station Fleur reconstructed an eclectic, funky building with bits and pieces from all over Aotearoa Te Waipounamu.

Looks like eloquent Japanese calligraphy to me. But in reality it’s an abandoned Chevy pickup truck rusting away in the ghost town of Loverna, Antelope Park No. 322, Saskatchewan. Not really close to any particular highway or railroad anymore.

An old soda pop sign nailed above the café and pool room door as a rain gutter in Ruthilda, Saskatchewan. Built by Cluff in 1913, in 1942 it became the Wright Spot, in 2014 it was an abandoned and derelict building—just the Right Spot for us…

Back on Arthur’s Pass Highway 73, just before Otira, West Coast, New Zealand, watching for that abandoned house we’d seen before. Howling wind as usual, so the reflector was buffeting, bouncing light all over the place, making it difficult to nail the best angle. Tried silver, and gold too, another reason why I shot so many frames. Loading the take into survey mode I was immediately blown away by the pattern of the whole. The Photoshop file is 535 Mb, the 100% JPG file is 97 Mb!