Wednesday, August 22, 2012

McDonald's Sunset

Socorro, New Mexico

9:02 PM on June 6. The view from the balcony at the Best Western. It had been a long day but I was trying to stay up and alert for a 10:00 scheduled phone interview about the drive-in theater project with WGN in Chicago. As I've found in the past, it can be a real advantage to do photography travel at the point in the year when the days are longest. The downside of it is that if you want to work a subject in both late and early light, it can mean shooting at almost nine at night and then again at just after five in the morning. Not a problem this time. The next theater on my list was all the way over in Globe, Arizona, so I was able to sleep in the next morning, no need to rush since I wanted to slow down at this point and do some off-topic work with the wonderful New Mexico and Arizona landscape.

2 comments:

Scott Kirkpatrick said...

Another question at this point. Were you able to do your trip in the number of days and at the very aggressive cost that you budgeted in your original Kickstarter plan? Any surprises on that front?

Carl Weese said...

The time/distance for the main loop was close, two days and 668 miles over the estimate. But the number of theaters, 90, was way over expectation, and the days were all 12-16 hour marathons instead of "normal".

Lodging was the big slip in the estimate. Compared to my big road trips in 2000-2005, small independent motels with low rates appear to have disappeared. Compared to my trip to the Midwest last September, that must have been the land of the nice cheap Motel 6. Motels were at least 50% more expensive than I'd planned, which is significant because that's by far the biggest single expense of the expedition.

Still, since sponsorship went so far over, even after I fulfill all the Rewards the second, smaller, loop through the Southeast and Florida in October will be covered.