California Highway 58

Superb captures of lines & curves in black & white,Brad. Very good rendition.

Thank you, Amal, for your kind support to this photo!

Thanks for your visits and comments!

A most beautiful photo

This road can transport you to everywhere... Well done. Congratulations. 7/7

Thank you Bertrand for your support to this photo!

Wonderful composition. Best regards.

Wonderful image, Brad. I like the sinister look of it with the darkness so dramatically used. I could make up a story about this one.

Wonderful B&W shot. The light is great, very dramatic sky. Like it a lot.

Excellent light and composition Brad.Regards.Janusz.

Thank you all for your kind visits and warm words to this photo!

Here's Side Two of the small California story of Highway 58...that part of the road west of Bakersfield and beyond the hustle of '58 over the Tehachapis and on across the Mojave to Barstow. This is the Slow Side of the road that can take you on and on 'till you meet up with its sister road and splash into the sweet Pacific ocean- but first through the prairie lands of Central California cattle ranchers and their roughneck brothers maintaining pump-jacks in places like Mckittrick.

Those rancher's four-strand barbed wire fences nailed to thick-grained railroad ties and green steel stakes so close to this road won't always let us find a place to pull off to give the camera a chance to try to take a little bit of this solitude away for us to revisit in our hands. But even if there is room, take a stand anyway and wait for the few cars to pass and just look right down the middle of a California highway. Absorb this summer coastal moisture in our mind that only teases the dry grasses on the right and left.

Here, the patchwork of moving sunlight dances around playing hide-and-seek with a light meter, but anyway you slice it, the rolling nature of this route promises the virgin traveller of pending dark doom deep in those summer clouds. Only the roadmap can make a one-dimensional guess as to how many more spots we can stop and get a shot like this. I first experienced this scene on Highway 46 many years ago and risked life, limb and car to get that fleeting brass grass and grey asphalt on Kodachrome. Even in this small image on a computer screen, I can see you didn't sacrifice depth of field for exposure; The selection of several hogbacks falling off into somewhere and graphite clouds sweeping on and across the day...makes this a picture I will remember for a long time...thanks for sharing it with us!

Thank you so much for taking your time to leave your kind comment.

 

When I travel to the coastal area of San Luis Obispo County from Interstate 5, I usually drive through either HWY 46 or 166 since they are straighter and faster. But I prefer hwy 58 when I can afford more time. I love little traffic on it, and more hilly landscape, of course. And... more solitude.

 

Thanks again. Warm regards.

Looks good in B&W. The dark tones brings out the white lines beautifully.

For many years it has been a dream to me, to make a picture like this. This is, what makes photografic art so great.

 

Tommy

My belated thanks to Alec for his visit and kind words!

 

And Tommy, thank you so much for your compliments! I am humbled!

Magnificent picture, very powerful. One can hear the silence......or perhaps the sound of the wind.....

Beautiful landscape!  Great composition and tones.  Also.. it reminds me of home!  I grew up in Tehachapi and I know this road well!  Thanks!