Very fascinating image

Great shot I can't tell you anything about it, but not much activity going on..

When I drive from Johannesburg to Rustenburg to visit my brother, I pass Pelindaba - a uranium enrichment facility. The towers here reminds me of that. I have never been really close to the facility as it is a no-go zone, but the towers are visible from miles away! I love this image Hun - indeed everyone will have a story!

Looks like the head of a mine of some sort. Intriguing image.

Your title reminds me - guy has a taste for vodka so he goes into a bar. There is a Chinese bartender on duty. He walks up and says. "Give me a Stoli." The bartender says, "Once upon a time..." I also thought this was some sort of mining operation. Perhaps a processing facility? Looks deserted.

The lighting is so fantastic that it reminds me of the miniature landscape on a model train I got for Christmas....let's see it would have be 1st grade. It was a 6 foot figure 8 track and there were hills and tunnels and buildings, trees, and trucks. The lighting is so directional...it's just like the dining room light hanging from the ceiling!! It takes me back to simple make-believe times.

LOL at Mark! This looks really creepy..abandoned work sites often make me feel impending doom.

I might be put away for telling you, then again you will be there too for taking this shot. This is the worlds only processing plant for the mineral called Unobtainium, mined from shafts drilled into these same mountains. The location of the plant close to the source is critical due to the rate at which the ore evaporates. The air is condensed in the tower on the left before being crystallised at extreme temperature in a boiler under the tower on the right. From here it gets melded with desirable new commercial products in the horizontal rotating shaft and cooled before rolling out on the right into a catchment area. Products such as cellphones, laptops, medicine, cameras and even some vehicle assemblies have been suspected of having been coated in this way. Half-life of the Unobtainium coating is around 6 months to a year before the price of the launched products become more reasonable and affordable. This plant is run down as the process it now carried out somewhere in Asia. Apparently. I am surprised that you were not aware of these facts. Then again, that is the beauty of the community at RR! Clive PS: I will be in cell C13...

Great picture!!

Love the dominant olive green tone. No story from my part, too late here to think...lol.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful landscape untouched by all around.. The air was clear.. The wildlife flourished.. Then.. man arrived and thought, lets mess (insert suitable swear word here!), it up! And built this! Now the wildlife is nearly gone, the air smells of something like rancid eggs.. Enough story... And the sad thing is, its more than likely true... A very fine picture none the less Tara! Rob

It is such a beautiful capture and I love what you did to it. Wonderful colors Tara :)

The colours me excited, the picture gives an aura of mystery.

debbielove seems to be close - it looks like an old sulfer mining industry. When active, the smell would be noticeable for quite a distance (down wind). Interesting geography with the slanted rock, contrsted with the vertical and horizontal elements in the photo. The light and different hues of yellows and greens really add interest. Good job here, Tara. Keep up the good work! :-)

nice one

poor abused landscape, but your picture show us so much in this! great and sad...

I've seen places like this on cross-country trips, usually out in the middle of nowhere in Nevada or Arizona or Utah...mines of some sort, I think? Excellent conundrum!

Marvelous...I only got a glimpse of this old place as we whizzed by... SO, Had to track this old abandoned (maybe haunted) place and here is the lead-in to the best posting I found: "There are many, many ways to get dead here. The most obvious are gravity-assisted: sudden pits, false floors, collapsing beams. But there are also many serrated edges, rusty pointed pipes that reek of lockjaw and gangrene; ragged glass and naked edges of sheet metal. It is no wonder Baker County has stenciled DANGER PELIGRO on most surfaces visible from the road: the abandoned cement plant at Lime, Oregon, is a death trap. Don’t go there, don’t bring you children there. Don’t even bring your dog there. Unless you’re like us, and will drive 340 miles in one day just to take photos of it. It happens to be irresistible to us weirdos." Want to read and see more? Click Here

Well, I was going to tell you that this is the world's only plant for manufacturing radioactive underpants, but I'm far too tired at the moment. This is a great and nicely mysterious shot of something strange and somewhat sinister amid a stunningly beautiful bit of scenery. I LOVE this shot! And as always in situations like this I suspect Mulder and Scully are nearby scoping things out.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! Unbelieveable. Of course, I'm one of those nuts that would sneak up there if I could, and risk collapsing concrete stacks just to load a CF card with about a gazillion different images of this place. If for no other reason than to create a universe of wonderful backdrops for Poser renders! But I'm sure the possibilities of wonderful structural decay photos is also virtually endless. Serriously, I could spend hours in a place like that. I'm crazy that way... Fantastic photo and postwork, Tara! The color scheme reminds me of those wonderful old postcards from the 50's.

A story: The robots came first, and stole air from vast sheets of ice now shrunken to mere polar scabs. In some places, they broke water into its constituent parts, harvesting hydrogen for themselves and releasing oxygen into the planet's gravitational embrace. The oxygen, given its properties, clung to the face of the world and established the basis for breath. It was not enough, and so the robots drilled beneath the mountainous landmasses. They found ilmenite: a rock of common enough pedigree. It was enough, but barely so. Later, much much later, when the robots were no longer necessary, wo/men claimed the unclaimed world for themselves. They continued what the robots started and drilled ilmenite from the rocks. They cooked it in zero-g ovens beneath the skin of the world, and allowed the vapors (pure, breathable oxygen) to filter upward and up, through vast chimneys. Oxygen levels stabilized and reached a density friendly to human lungs. Now, long, long after the first robots and the first wo/men, our world bears a name. Clytemnestra, we call it, for reasons I cannot fathom. History has never been my strength, and I'm too old to learn it. I know, for sure, however, that once...as a kid, a wisp of a lad, I worked the last of the ilmenite ovens and moody gravitational nullifiers. I made air from rock in a place marked by its chimneys. Now, the last of the air factories stands dead and abandoned, home to the pterodax and the crow. I am old. Retired. I keep company with tomatoes and eggplants: moody, silent life not yet comfortable with the soils of Clytemnestra. There is comfort in this. For me, at least, because like the last of the air factories, I will stand in my grave, rusting and rotting, while new life and different life sprouts green and wild around me. *** We'll that's the best I could come up with on such short notice; a part of me is still back on Thetis, all wet and muddy with alien woodlice burrowing into people's necks...but there you have it...a story. Sort of. Now, as for this picture, I love it. There's such a sense of haunting pathos to it. Industry centers this image, but there is wild and untamed life around it: at least in terms of mere visual appearance. I don't know what this place is, but I think it's a mine of some sort. I like the idea that it's an old and unnecessary air factory, left in place by robots no longer required, but hey...a story is a story and that's what I came up with. This is a gorgeous shot and I'm quite sure that it might inspire another story as well. Stay tuned.

Yes I wonder what story it can tell too. I like how they have nestled it under the hill so as to blend it with the countryside. A lovely clear capture.

After Bill's and Chip's stories, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy a beautiful capture. :>) Dana

this is a wonderful looking place as people forgot about it and now is here to stay

What a gorgeous shot Tara! It looks so unusual - after reading everyone's posts I have to say I'm speechless. I thought it was some kind of mock up for a movie or something. It looks so Area 51 or something. Some hidden government experiment or processing facility placed in a remote area. Really great work on the post work - I am assuming that is where is overall greenish hue is from? Really nice work :)

A beautiful scene! Lovely capture and work,,happy holiday dear friend !! thanks for the visit,hugs

It looks like a spy story. Well done.

I am so intrigued by the seeming contrasts here: very old-seeming and much more recent all jumbled together, and all mouldering in abandonment. It's the kind of place where someone can find an odd kind of peace, even as it reminds us that all human endeavors are temporary, and what we leave behind won't be the physical relics of our activities, but the lives of others we've touched, helped, and loved. True immortality, as the ancient Greeks used to say, is what others will say about us after we're gone.

Thought it might be a Coking plant at first, but decided it more likely a cement plant. None the less, sensational lighting in this Industrial/Landscape image!

For a second, I thought of Boot Legging. We're done that in the past but I guess not here? Just kidding. Kewl capture with a silent story.... Aloha