Ghostly Junkyard Photos: Death Knell for the Hobby?

Anyone who works on even slightly older cars has probably noticed that the junkyards are going away fast. Cars that get put out on pick ‘n’ pull lots don’t get to stay there for long anymore before being crushed, and in a lot of cases, junkyard owners are closing up shop and crushing out their entire inventory for scrap. Blame the soaring price of steel, blame the glitchy real estate market, blame China… but the bottom line is that if you want your local yard to stay in business and continue providing you with cheap parts, you have to help make parting out cars more profitable than crushing them. I can’t emphasize this enough: support your local junkyard! The famous Pearsonville Junkyard of eastern California is one of those that has gone the way of the dodo bird—after its elderly proprietor passed away, it wasn’t worth keeping all those preternaturally preserved old rides sitting out in the Mojave Desert. Photographer Troy Pavia managed to get in there to take these eerie photographs one night before most of the cars were disposed of, using colored lights and extended exposures to capture the last of Pearsonville’s beautiful hulks. See the whole series on flickr, and see more of Paiva’s amazing junk-themed photography at Lost America.

Source: Jalopnik.