By: Jess Baker
Published: August 19,2013
A tornado-damaged silo in rural Alabama has found a second life as a muse for architectural photographer Tim Hursley.
Hursley has traveled the globe during his 20-year career. He's been commissioned for projects at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, New York's Museum of Modern Art, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
(PHOTOS: Tornado-Proof Home Retreats Underground)
But the broken, twisted, rusting silo in Hale County, Ala. is the site he keeps returning to.
He first spotted the broken silo several years ago during a drive between his home base in Little Rock, Ark. and a project with the Rural Studio at Auburn University in Alabama.
“It was early spring so there was a lot of transparency in the
landscape," Hursley remembers. "I saw this crumpled thing off in the
distance.”
Locals told him a twister damaged the silo about 20 years ago.
"I was immediately taken by it," Hursely said.
He found the property owner and asked permission to snap a few shots. After he got a few photos, he gave the owner a Polaroid as a keepsake, then got back in his car and continued his drive.
(PHOTOS: Homes that Hide in the Earth)
During the next few years, his work with Auburn often took him along that same route between Arkansas and Alabama. He'd stop at the silo and shoot more photos every once in a while. Eventually, he bought the structure from the property owner.
He was curious about life around the silo, so he installed a surveillance camera in the fall of 2011. The camera captured an image every 30 seconds and saved it to a hard drive. Hursley would return every few months to swap out the hard drive. That's when he would shuttle through the images to see what nature was up to while he was gone.
"It was capturing all sorts of great weather conditions," he said. "Beautiful fog. Storms." He added more powerful LED lights to better illuminate the area at night, and changed the settings to take a photo every 12 seconds. That's when the night photos really came alive.
"The rain is illuminated by the LED lights so you get all this streaking going on."
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Birds and other wildlife are also frequent characters the camera captures.
"There was one capture of a mockingbird coming in to land on the camera. You have this profile of the mockingbird spread out," he said.
He said the camera goes down every once in a while, but he has about 1.5 million frames he and his three assistants, Benny Scroggin, Thomas Hudson, and Nathan Kirkman, haven't even seen yet. And he's already started on a similar project, this time with a camera focused on a pair of grain silos closer to him home in Arkansas.
Hursley shared some of his favorite photos with weather.com. You can see them in the slideshow below.
Hursley has traveled the globe during his 20-year career. He's been commissioned for projects at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, New York's Museum of Modern Art, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
(PHOTOS: Tornado-Proof Home Retreats Underground)
But the broken, twisted, rusting silo in Hale County, Ala. is the site he keeps returning to.
He first spotted the broken silo several years ago during a drive between his home base in Little Rock, Ark. and a project with the Rural Studio at Auburn University in Alabama.
Tim Hursley
A thunderstorm pounds Tim Hursley's broken silo in Hale County, Ala.
Locals told him a twister damaged the silo about 20 years ago.
"I was immediately taken by it," Hursely said.
He found the property owner and asked permission to snap a few shots. After he got a few photos, he gave the owner a Polaroid as a keepsake, then got back in his car and continued his drive.
(PHOTOS: Homes that Hide in the Earth)
During the next few years, his work with Auburn often took him along that same route between Arkansas and Alabama. He'd stop at the silo and shoot more photos every once in a while. Eventually, he bought the structure from the property owner.
He was curious about life around the silo, so he installed a surveillance camera in the fall of 2011. The camera captured an image every 30 seconds and saved it to a hard drive. Hursley would return every few months to swap out the hard drive. That's when he would shuttle through the images to see what nature was up to while he was gone.
"It was capturing all sorts of great weather conditions," he said. "Beautiful fog. Storms." He added more powerful LED lights to better illuminate the area at night, and changed the settings to take a photo every 12 seconds. That's when the night photos really came alive.
"The rain is illuminated by the LED lights so you get all this streaking going on."
(MORE: Is THIS the School of the Future?)
Birds and other wildlife are also frequent characters the camera captures.
"There was one capture of a mockingbird coming in to land on the camera. You have this profile of the mockingbird spread out," he said.
He said the camera goes down every once in a while, but he has about 1.5 million frames he and his three assistants, Benny Scroggin, Thomas Hudson, and Nathan Kirkman, haven't even seen yet. And he's already started on a similar project, this time with a camera focused on a pair of grain silos closer to him home in Arkansas.
Hursley shared some of his favorite photos with weather.com. You can see them in the slideshow below.
SLIDESHOW: Tim Hursley's Photos of a Broken Silo
Image: Tim Hursley
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