With life beginning to return to some sort of normalcy in this post apocalyptic COVID-19 world, last week was my first travel experience for work since the pandemic descended upon us some 14 months ago.
We were traveling to the world renown Greensboro, North Carolina for a meeting with a vendor to discuss the work they had been doing for us over the previous year and change. Stepping rather trepidatiously, it was decided to drive vice fly, to progress as they say “One step at a time” into this brave new-ish world. It’s about a 4 1/2 hour drive either down I-95/I-85/I-40 or VA-29. The Virginia highway was chosen, as the traffic on the Interstates can be hellish and it’s ‘de rigueur to encounter delays en route.
As in past visits to the area, the hotel of choice was a Hampton Inn’s and Suites in McLeansville, as it is centrally located amongst the various offices planned for visits over the four days of our visit. It’s a run of the mill Hampton Inn, that frankly, is still struggling with the effects of the pandemic, but we won’t dwell on that as it’s not the matter at hand.
After a nice trip down VA-29, with lot’s of local scenery, a quick detour to Zaxby’s was made to get some take out fried chicken as it was a little past dinner time. Unfortunately, there aren’t many positive things to be said about that experience. Getting into the hotel room, the thermostat was set to a reasonable setting and the take out was consumed. Once done with dinner, the luggage was unpacked and the curtains drawn to see the world outside. The room was specifically selected at the back of the hotel as the rooms in the front get a goodly amount of noise from the road.
The scene which emerged when opening the drapes was one to behold. There stood this derelict old building some 50 yards behind the hotel that had seemingly not been occupied for many years. The sun was setting and I was weary from the drive, but a mental note was made to explore the area later with the x100f. A little looking around on the innerwebs indicates that the last time there was an active business at the location it was called “Jed’s Old Millhouse”, hence the name of the post. There was very little other information about Jed’s so chances are that the building has been shuttered for a long time.
As discussed last week, the x100f is the newest horse in the camera stable and just the right size for throwing in a suitcase in the event of an opportunity for grabbing some shots. That evening, the camera was set with Kevin Mullins’ Fujifilm JPEG settings as the SOOC (Straight out of Camera) JPEG’s produced with his settings are very nice. The goal is to do less processing of RAW files in Capture One by getting the JPEG’s to be very close to the final vision. Kevin’s site is very explicit about the settings and how to apply them, thanks Kev, so that won’t be discussed here. In setting the custom settings, it appears that the x100f doesn’t have the ability to apply names to custom settings. This is the major difference between this camera and the other two in the stable (X-Pro2 and X-T2) and honestly is a bit of a surprise. Doing some spelunking around the innerwebs, there are only two Fujifilm cameras from this generation without this feature, the x100f being one of them. Fuji, will you please rectify this oversight with a firmware update????
Anyway, the next day after a dinner out with the group from work, golden hour was in full progress upon arrival at the hotel. Doing a quick change of clothes, slipping my feet into a pair of Croc’s (more about that later) and heading outside, this is what I found behind the hotel:
After walking around a bit until the sun began to set, it was becoming apparent that a goodly number of cockleburs had collected in my Croc’s and they were wedged between the socks and the shoe and getting quite painful. Teach me to wear Croc’s in the field! In any event, the images collected were well worth the pain and look forward to doing it again in the future.
That’s all for today. Stay tuned for the next adventure!
