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Shortly after my father passed away, I felt a sense of longing to visit the part of the country where my dad was raised, Hollis Oklahoma and surrounding area. We used to visit there when I was little, but since most of the family had moved or passed on we hadn’t visited there in many years. I visited the old farm where he was raised and the town he grew up. I was dismayed at how everything had been allowed to fall into disrepair and decay. What use to be the main drag downtown was all but abandoned. The farms lay fallow and the houses falling down. After a couple of days of driving around, going through memories, I headed home.
Just after crossing back into Texas, I decided to stop and stretch my legs. A few moments later I heard a train coming down the track, going the same direction I was, from OK to TX. Standing well back, I took a few shots as it flew by. It felt like my spirit was traveling with that train, heading from what used to be to what will be. I call this picture “Heading Home”.
It was taken with a Nikon D3200 using a Sigma 18-250 f/3.5-6.3 lens at 38mm, f/10, 1/400s, ISO 200.
I imported the shot into Corel Painter, applied a textured paper, painted with water colors and added some pen strokes for outline/effect.