I had been looking forward to this session for a while now! Band consist of 3 guys. They all love music, and they all know music, as well as the bands that they follow so when it came to posing them, this was a breeze! It’s almost as if they had practiced these poses before. The four of us piled in a two-door car we drove the back streets of Shelbyville, IL. Now you might be thinking there is nothing interesting to write about a small town, and are there really “back streets”? And the answer is; yes there is, and yes there are. 🙂
Growing up in a small town, you know everyone, and everything about the town. But never did I think there would be areas that we should genuinely be afraid of going, and those were exactly the spots we were looking for. The day started off shooting by an old old hotel in Shelbyville. It’s obviously not in service anymore, but this place could NOT be any creepier. The back door open, we could see down the long and very narrow hallway with doors lining both sides. It literally looked like a scene from Shutter Island. And being guys we had to look. What was even creepier was as we stepped in the junk and asbestos infested hallway, it seemed like we were now in living in a post-apocalytic world. Beds, dressers, cabinets, sheets, curtains, everything was still in these rooms. Of course, they were not looking the best, but they were present. Ceiling tiles were caving in, insulation covered the floor, even a teddy bear lie in a corner. Not wanting to find out if anyone was waiting for someone to walk by, we thought seeing inside the first room was enough and got out. So we did our shoot in the back stairway of the building and moved on.
We shot at a couple awesome locations, and then decided to travel about 5 miles into the county to some random small house that was no bigger than a shed. Doors hanging, glass shattered, a toilet lying in the entrance, we figured this is perfect. Right before we could snap our first picture, and man approaches on his four-wheeler. Keep in mind this is small town country we are in, pretty much where everyone has a shotgun on hand, so when a guy pulls up on a four wheeler covered in camo, I start to wonder whats going on. Everything was cool, and we were allowed to continue the shoot. Fast forward a couple more locations, and we find ourselves a couple blocks from civilization under a railroad track overpass. Snapping a couple shots, we hear the roar of a mufflerless (made up word) car fire up, and slowly drive on by. The man had absolutely no expression, he didn’t even look at us, it was almost as if a zombie was driving the car… yes, a zombie! Then we notice that he didn’t have any sticker on his license plate. Freaky! So it only makes since to go where he came from and snap some shots. We can only assume what he was doing up there, but we never found for sure. But we did get some pretty awesome pictures in the process. What an awesome session, a great group of guys! I look forward to seeing them play. You can see them play on October 29 at Legends in Shelbyville! 🙂
