This is another shot in a theme that started in 2014 called "Little Shops". Since I extended it beyond shops and to some places that weren't very little, it morphed into a theme called "Local Places". It documents places in the northern Illawarra that may someday change or disappear so that there is at least a record of them.

This is an old fashioned (in the descriptive, not pejorative sense) service station ("gas station" for Americans) that I drove past a couple of weeks ago and thought that it would make a very photogenic subject since they leave the interior lights on at night. I decided that this morning I'd take a break from my usual gym routine and do some photography, then head to the running track after the sun had come up to get some open air exercise.

Memo to self: Before coming up with an ingenious plan like that again, check the sodding weather forecast.

It had yet to start raining when I was doing these shots... which I suppose is a pity since it meant no nice rain reflections. Still, I can't complain about what I got.

While I was here, I noticed that another place that I had photographed in this series two years earlier had bitten the dust only a few days ago. (220723_062906_0012 No Chintz, No Longer (Local Places / Little Shops) (Sat 23 Jul 22)). I've therefore published that shot – better 2 years late than never I suppose – today as well. Of course, occurrences like that are the whole reason I started the theme in the first place.

Hopefully Thirroul Service Station will stay around a bit longer. It has been here since at least 2007, and is pretty much unchanged in appearance you will be unsurprised to learn. The only exception is that the then-Caltex branded pumps have of course been replaced by Ampol. Ampol is itself a name which is a throwback to the 60's, though it persisted in a diminishing form until the 90's. The resurrected Ampol brand then made a reappearance after Caltex's owner exited the Australian market and pulled the rights to the Caltex name. I've yet to hear the old slogan "I'm as 'Strayan as Ampol" return... yet. I just saw an ad from the 90's featuring a nasal song (because ALL 'Strayan jingo songs of the 80s and 90s were sung through the nose) based around that slogan... which included the line "A full tank of gas, and I'm ready to go! I'm as 'Strayan as Ampol!"

Mmm. Yeah. A'strayans don't say "gas", not even nasally. It's "petrol". P-E-T-R-O-L.)

I don't think it makes much from PETROL sales anyway. Most people go to larger places with multiple lanes and pumps. Its fuel isn't the cheapest in the area either, but nor is it the most expensive. I suspect what keeps the light on is mechanical work. You can't see it from this angle but down the side of the building on my right there is a stack of cars which seem to be awaiting work in the multiple service bays which can be found there. And although you may or may not be able to see it in the gallery shot, one of the signs in the window is appealing for new staff. That's a good sign; it suggests that they have more work than they can handle at present.

Long may it remain so. Hopefully this is a place that I might shoot again in 5 or 10 years.

As with the No Chintz shot, this one was challenging in the same way; the dynamic range between the brightness of the lit interior and the darkness of the outer building. This one, I did in a slightly different fashion.

(I did try to create it using Photoshop's HDR Pro tool, but if that's "pro" I really don't want to know what "HDR Rank Amateur" looks like. The resulting image was grainier than a filled wheat silo, and the roadway picked up a weird pale yellow cast from the sodium street lights.)

I was again bracketing the shots when I took them. I took image 0066 which had an EV of -0.7 (and therefore showed the details of the interior clearly) and loaded it as a layer. I then took image 0069 (EV + 0.7) which had enough light to display the building, but which blew out the interior and loaded it as the upper layer. I then masked out everything but the windows and erased those pixels, allowing 0066 to shine through from underneath. Although I normally prefer to keep things in order, I used the name 0069_0066 to indicate that the majority of this shot is 0069.