Bodie has been dead for a long time, and so has this old car, now little more than a shell of itself, immobile in a field of desert grass. To stress the car vs. grass aspect, I abstracted the car and shot down on the grille and grass, designing the image around the shapes and colors of both. I have seen many images of this car before, including a number of very expressive ones right here on pbase, but none of them use the car to offer us a sense of place. They usually relate the car it to the exciting desert sky, or to the buildings that just happen to be around it. Yet I felt compelled to make an image of this particular car that went beyond just describing the appearance of the car itself, and instead use the car to indicate a sense of place. I had to find a way to make an abstract symbol of immobility out of it. And that is why I made this image as I did.