adventures with s @south metro atlanta (fujica ax-5)

A month or so after our trip to Augusta S and I had scheduled an expedition to Birmingham, Alabama, to photograph even more rusty crap. The night before our trip, a tornado hit downtown Atlanta and the next morning another line of storms was over Birmingham.

Over breakfast at the Silver Skillet, we decided to cancel the Birmingham trip and head to south metro Atlanta, where, according to our Iphones, there were no storms. Near Fairburn, we found a rather dilapidated abandoned house and stopped to take a few photographs. I took this picture of an abandoned dresser that was sitting on the side porch. I was having a hard time focusing and something about the camera seemed off, but I figured it was just that I had not used my Fujica AX-5 in a while and I needed a bit to adjust from the sharper Nikon D70.

As we were driving along SR 16 (Newnan Road), we came across an abandoned gas station, where I shot this photograph of a decaying Ford truck. As we were getting out of the car to head over to the gas station, a passerby asked if we wer all right or needed help, a marked contrast to my usual haunts in Atlanta where folks ask for change.

Abandoned houses are apparently a common theme in south metro Atlanta. It wasn't long before we came across this nicely air conditioned house complete with an easy chair. It was in a much worse state of disrepair than the one we found in Fairburn and provided plenty of interesting photography opportunities.

After the trip, I dropped my film off at Showcase for development and waited a few days. After bringing the film home, cutting it, and putting it in negative preservers, I took a good look at it and discovered everything was out of focus. So I took my Fujica AX-5 to the Camera Doctor in Decatur. For a quite reasonable price, albeit twice what I paid on Ebay for the camera, he repaired the focusing screen, replaced all the light seals, cleaned, and lubricated the camera.