Mark EspositoFine Art Photography Blog

I’ve been hanging around North Carolina, near Asheville. A friend of mine once asked me why photographers take photos of old broken down shacks. He wondered what the appeal was. I guess for someone that grew up in the farm land, old shacks are just part of the landscape, and not so obviously photo worthy. I get that. Things that get too common become less interesting. This idea is always on my mind when I decide what to photograph, and what to add to my portfolio. Art must be interesting in some way. I can’t pretend to know all of the possible reasons that someone finds any piece of art interesting or pleasing. That’s a personal choice, and very complex. I’ll explore that in another article.

For me, old shacks or barns carry a sense of history, or a story, and that’s what makes them interesting. Old things seem to inspire the mind more than new things do. I find a broken down wooden shack far more interesting than a new one. Instead of getting ugly they actually get personality. It can go too far of course, and they can go back to ugly. I’ve seen plenty of those as well.

North Carolina, with its greenery, is uniquely different from the Southwest. I may like the Southwest color palette a bit more, but this one in Chimney Rock definitely has some personality, and shows the look of the Great Smokey Mountains.

(Phase One/P65+)