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Ferocious peddling… heart pounding… blood surging… Lenny is not an MEM (Mindless Eating Machine).
I was out helping a friend of mine build his house and afterwards i decided to head out to the small desert town of Lund, UT. I really needed to get out there and since his house was pretty much half way there I decided to drive the rest.
When you get through the small foot hills west of Three Peaks Recreation Area, there is a turn in the dirt road and an excellent view for a nice vanishing point. Lund is located on the other side of the valley and has a population of about two. Train tracks cut through near the abandoned houses and homesteads. Back in the day Lund was a pivotal point in the railroads progress where they switched out cars and kept the rails rolling.
The valley leading up to Lund is somewhat open range and the cows dot the landscape. I have hiked out to some abandoned buildings that are now used as shade structures for the cows and it is interesting to find their paths carved into the desert sagebrush and soils. Each path goes out as a spoke from the shade and has been trodden so well that they are dug into the soil by about 4-6 inches. There are scattered cow pies and any grass has been nibbled to a stubble.
I initially traveled out this way to get a shot of the vanishing point road but it didn’t show up well with the focal lengths I brought and with being so close to the ground. It was cold and my hands were frozen with beating wind. I decided to head down a off-shoot dirt road that was not used very often. This road led me to a small shooting range that was filled with various bullet shells and random broken things. I went exploring for a small scene and found an exploded red paint can. The red paint was splattered all over the rocks and if the can had not been there, I wouldve thought that I had stumbled upon some gristly murder scene. I am glad the paint can was still easily recognizable.
This paint can was the perfect place to setup a bike ride for Lenny. The red offset his green appearance and matched his iconic red bike. I set him up with his tail catching the edge of the metal so it could help prop him up. The wind was still there and frigid – but with this find I barely noticed. The background was a bit rocky and distracting so I used a technique to blur it in a motion sense. It is rather easy to create the effect by placing my fingers in front of the lens when the aperture is wide open. It creates a motion effect in the bokeh by applying the lines of light that come through the cracks in my fingers.
I thought the image turned out quite well although I still think its a bit to busy.