About the Image(s)

Taken late afternoon in Amboy, CA with a Fujifilm XT5 on Feb 7, 2025. F-stop 22, 1/1000 sec, ISO 500 (aperture priority). I had gone inside an abandoned motel room and forgot to adjust the speed, which resulted in the high ISO. I wanted deep depth of field. I was intrigued by the view of the abandoned church with the train behind it and the overall desolation. Amboy is on the old Court 66 and this was once a functioning motel for those going form Chicago to Santa Monica before the interstates were built. But I also liked having the window and its wooden mullions as a framing device to add interest.
I ran the raw file through DXO Pure Raw to eliminate noise and artifacts. I then used Lightroom to edit. I used transform to straighten the window pane frames and adjusted the vertical to improve the angle. I cropped down to the current framing and then played with the global sliders to adjust the tonality, highlights, clarity, and haze level and luminance. I used the AI remove tool to take out the three cars across highway. I think I also added a very slight vignette.