I actually shot this 2 years ago, but came across the tear sheets last week and wanted to post them. It's kinda the perfect metaphor for the US auto industry....dead....I shot it for Allyson Torrisi at Popular Mechanics, I think she knew I would get it and bring home the bacon. The story was a story about what
happens to all the cars when they die, as all cars do die eventually. The short answer is they get recycled. Very cool too the way its done. The cars are first crushed flat like a pancake in a big press, then they are picked up by a crane, dropped onto a conveyer belt. The belt slowly brings them up and
into the shredder. This machine literally takes a whole car, and rips it into quarter sized pieces. No shit, so cool. When the machine was off, they let me look inside its guts, but i couldn't photograph it because it's proprietary. Basically its a bunch of huge hammers that tear the car apart. Very loud and Edward Scissorhands-ish. They also have some pretty ingenious ways to separate all the different materials that make up a car. Think about it, rubber, plastic, glass, steel, aluminum, copper. Pretty much every kind of material you can think of, a real pain to separate for recycling. They do it pretty well though. It goes through a magnet which picks up magnetic metals, then through water where all the rubber and plastic that floats gets pulled off, until everything is sorted and sent to the recycle place. It's actually pretty big biz. I went to an alimunum smelter and got to hang with t
he guys there making aluminum ingots out of old cars, that was pretty cool too. Have a look. When i saw these I wanted to post them because of the dying car biz, and also because I was a bit nostalgic, as I shot 4x5 film for this one and havent shot film in over a year now. I miss it, but when i really thought about it, it wasnt really th
e film shooting that i missed, but just the time and the story that I missed. Whenever I look at a picture I've taken, whether it was Dustin Hoffman in LA in 1999, or this car crushing story 1n 2007, I remember the time perfectly and I just miss the time. I still get to do great stories, do cool things, and take great pictures though, it's just done without film now.....
happens to all the cars when they die, as all cars do die eventually. The short answer is they get recycled. Very cool too the way its done. The cars are first crushed flat like a pancake in a big press, then they are picked up by a crane, dropped onto a conveyer belt. The belt slowly brings them up and
into the shredder. This machine literally takes a whole car, and rips it into quarter sized pieces. No shit, so cool. When the machine was off, they let me look inside its guts, but i couldn't photograph it because it's proprietary. Basically its a bunch of huge hammers that tear the car apart. Very loud and Edward Scissorhands-ish. They also have some pretty ingenious ways to separate all the different materials that make up a car. Think about it, rubber, plastic, glass, steel, aluminum, copper. Pretty much every kind of material you can think of, a real pain to separate for recycling. They do it pretty well though. It goes through a magnet which picks up magnetic metals, then through water where all the rubber and plastic that floats gets pulled off, until everything is sorted and sent to the recycle place. It's actually pretty big biz. I went to an alimunum smelter and got to hang with t
he guys there making aluminum ingots out of old cars, that was pretty cool too. Have a look. When i saw these I wanted to post them because of the dying car biz, and also because I was a bit nostalgic, as I shot 4x5 film for this one and havent shot film in over a year now. I miss it, but when i really thought about it, it wasnt really th
e film shooting that i missed, but just the time and the story that I missed. Whenever I look at a picture I've taken, whether it was Dustin Hoffman in LA in 1999, or this car crushing story 1n 2007, I remember the time perfectly and I just miss the time. I still get to do great stories, do cool things, and take great pictures though, it's just done without film now.....
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