Excuse the size of this post. I wanted the pictures to be large.

The Kern Photography Association got together for their second annual photo walk this morning. Lots of nice people and lots of nice camera equipment descended on the just-after-dawn downtown section of Bakersfield to make images in the coolest time of the day.

I spent the morning focusing on colors and textures and light. I made a few images of scattered things around the city and as I ventured father from our original meeting place I made a strange observation.

Downtown Bakersfield is atrophying.

Corner after corner; block after block the empty store fronts and boarded windows and doors make the pawn shops look like quality shopping opportunities.

I suspect as the residential sprawl jumps away from central Bakersfield every month as new homes are built. Big Box stores are being added to the corners of all of these new communities. Two new Walmarts were built and opened in less than a year, Two new Targets will be finished in about the same amount of time.

Downtown Bakersfield is in some serious need of injection of something aside from theaters, bars and pawn shops.

I took quite a few photos, and I’ll post them all here. For a happier set of photos, feel free to check out my flickr set of Bakersfield Photo Walk photos. I’ll be adding photos there all week as I edit them. I wanted to put these picture up while I was still thinking about this subject — though it is difficult not to think of it all the time as I commute to work.

Please recognize these pictures were taken in an area of about two square miles.

These aren’t all of the shuttered businesses either. I could have taken many other photos in the location I wandered — and even more if I had gone farther. The Oildale section of Bakersfield is under even more dire straits. The county’s unemployment rate surely isn’t helping much.