big marty's. (2011)

I'm thrilled with this image on several levels. It is a building I have been observing for several years, through a series of going out of business sales cycles and eventual vacancy. I have studied it and attempted to photograph it on a couple occasions, but never even snapped the shutter before today.It just never looked right in the viewfinder. But the building and signage always draws me in every time I pass it. There is another location in Penndel, Pa. that has a cartoon caricature of Big Marty himself that stands at least thirty feet high on the building facade, and I have stalked that one for as long as I have this location in Hatboro, Pa. Today's sky combined with the complete snow cover on the parking lot eliminated all peripheral distraction to the landscape that I think was keeping me from making a picture. I was suddenly aware of more than the signage. I could see the faux mountain-scape that appears in so many of my images. When these buildings are wiped clean of the people and automobiles they were intended to attract and serve,they sometimes become symbolic of the untouched landscape they were built upon.