The Artful Engineer

In addition to the “prettier” pictures of Decatur that I shared last week, I found plenty of more worn and weathered tidbits, too. I love the colors in the image above: the blue-green oxidized copper goes really well with the blue-gray asphalt roof tiles. There’s a lot of nice textures, too, including a fine wire mesh over the triangular vent the isn’t obvious at web-page size.

Nothing in the image below looks like it has ever been repainted, but that is probably not true. The two vestigial arches at one time were over a different door and now-eradicated window. Whoever did the brickwork to close these openings did a thorough job, chiseling out the half-bricks that were undoubtedly there and slipping new full bricks into those gaps. There are a few clues from the color of the mortar, but certainly in its currently weathered condition, the entire wall looks as if it were built at the same time. A few weeks later there would be green leaves on the tree, which would make it more prominent in the composition. I’m not sure whether this contrast would make the image stronger or weaker; as it is, the tree looks as bleak as the building behind it.

The colors around the foundation of this next house were really nice. I think the brick was originally only painted with a single darker green and the lower part of the brickwork transitions to light green and yellow from some combination of bleaching from the sun and sprinkler overspray. Regardless, it is a great combination of colors and textures:

There were some disused fountains in front of the Old State Bank building, which is currently being renovated. I did find a photograph online of the fountains being operational (although frozen!) in 2008, so I don’t know whether these fountains are currently operating seasonally or not at all. They didn’t look as if they had been run recently, though, during my visit. I really like the colors and textures of this next image. I think the composition works well, too, with the pile of orangish-brown leaves tucked into the corner.

The central fountain itself was badly corroded, and although this next image has a nice combination of textures and colors, it is unrecognizable to the point of being an abstract:

This next image requires some explanation. A rail line passes through Decatur after crossing the adjacent Tennessee River on a bridge. At some point, a pedestrian bridge was built to allow passage over the sunken tracks and this haphazard weldment forms part of the railing at the base of the ramp up to the pedestrian bridge itself. It is embarrassingly poorly done, but does make an interesting photograph. I used a very small aperture (f/13) to try to keep all of the steel in focus. I don’t typically walk around cities with my tripod, so focus stacking was not an option.

We also passed through a very small cemetery in Decatur, where the headstones were uniformly hard to read. I don’t know who was originally buried in this tomb, but it seems like they successfully escaped:

I hope you enjoyed these images of Decatur. Like most—if not all—small cities, there are plenty of things to photograph if you invest the time in wandering around.