Haymes Images

© 2009 Tom Haymes

Yet another image from my recent foray into West Texas. This photograph was taken in the Terlingua Ghost Town west of Big Bend National Park. This town was abandoned in the 1940s and the adobe houses are slowly crumbling into dust. However, it’s now a tourist attraction and the yearly chili cook-off is world famous so the living once again outnumber the dead.

I was initially struck by how the shape of the remaining walls of this house retained a certain symmetry. When I went to process the image in PhotoShop and applied Fred Miranda’s Black-and-White plug-in using its digital infrared filter, the image really came alive. I generally like to have darker skies and the light stone really keys off of the sky. The digital infrared enhanced this effect by lightening up the stone to the point where it almost seems to glow with a ghostly aura. Perfect for a ghost town!