http://esc4p.org/motels/

I submitted a photo to a call for entries from the Eastern Sierra Center for Photography the other day, and the photo was accepted! It’s even #1 in the series. The photo is one I took a while back of the Surratt house in Washington DC. The theme of the photos was “Motels”, based on a quote by William Borroughs –

“Motel, motel, motel, broken neon arabesque, loneliness moans across the continent like fog horns over still oily water of oily rivers.”

The motel connection in my image is a little tenuous, but Mrs. Surratt took in boarders to her home to help pay the bills before she was hanged for her alleged role in the Lincoln assassination (she was the first woman ever executed in the United States for a crime she may have only ever been tangentially involved in). I also felt the mood of the scene put into image the words in the Burroughs quote.

There was a requirement that the image be made with a large format camera (one of the primary missions of the Eastern Sierra Center for Photography is the promulgation of large format photography).

The photo was shot on Kodak Portra 160 with a Canham 5×7 wood field camera using a Kodak Commercial Ektar 12″ lens.

Please go visit the Eastern Sierra Center’s website and read about their very worthwhile mission – supporting the continued use of view cameras for contemporary (and future – they have a program to expose kids to view cameras!) photography.