Time for another throwback for this weeks blog post. I know I promised some new material for this week but I wont be able to release the images until next week so I should have it up for next Sunday.
A few weeks ago I shared my most recent shoot from my Beauty and Decay series and today I wanted to share one of my earlier shoots. Amira and I met a few years ago at the NC State Fair and we instantly became friends. I knew that I wanted to shoot her for my series and I had the perfect location to shoot.
Right across the highway from South of the Border was an abandoned hotel. If you are unfamiliar with South of the Border it is a highway rest stop on the NC and SC line off of interstate 95. It is well known for all of the billboards that advertise it for hundreds of miles in each direction. When I was a kid and we would take our family trips to Florida I remember bugging my dad to stop there.
Ok let's get back on track. Amira and I drove down there early in the morning and spent a few minutes walking around looking for spots to shoot and then we got to shooting.
One of the neat things that I loved about this location was that the front wall of the hotel was gone and all the rooms were exposed and it gave so much more of a decayed look.
There was some interesting graffiti in some of the rooms.
We then moved on to what was left of the playground. There used to be a huge spaceship playground on the property but I think most of it was stolen over the years but there was still a spinning carousel setup there and I asked Amira to ride on it and get a few pictures
Of course she wanted to spin on it too and have some fun.
Amira has an amazing tattoo that covers her entire back and I wanted to get a shot to feature it. I had her sit in the grass and I got the image below. This was a my favorite image from the entire shoot.
Next it was time for an outfit change and we moved over to the pool area although there was some very nasty water in the pool Amira was a trooper and went in and stayed in the dry area and we got some shots.
It was just about time to wrap up the shoot and we decided to get one last look. We pulled out a table and char from one of the rooms and took a few shots.
We had so much fun shooting at this location and I would love to go back there again but I found out through an urban explorer friend of mine that there was a fire and it destroyed what was left of the buildings. At least I was able to capture some amazing shots from this place.
Well that's it for this week. I really hope that you are enjoying the blog posts every week and I promise to post some new material for next week as I should finally be able to share my images from the Portrait Pallozza event.