What is it about grain elevators? I can’t pass by one without taking a picture or wanting to take a picture. They’re always surrounded by the most wonderful conglomeration of random industrial stuff and railroad cars. Maybe it was all those drives across the country when I was a kid…Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, North Dakota…Saskatchewan. And that nice one in Alton, Illinois near where I went to college. Grain elevators. The skyscrapers of the plains.

I snapped this photo of a bridge over the Mississippi River in August 2006, going east on I-70. I like the way the shapes all work together although, at the time, I did not consciously think about it. It was just an intuitive thing. To me it is the perfect road trip photo. Spontaneous, a little blurry from the motion of the car and just a slice of what was going by at the moment. The original was a color, digital photo, but I felt black and white really captured the feeling better.