two for today

Henryton Center

I spent this past Sunday, with a buddy, snapping frames in the buildings that make up the Henryton Center. It was COLD. When I left in the morning it was a whopping 9°F. Working at that temperature is a pain in the ass: I was constantly fogging over my viewfinder while adjusting my tripod and focusing. I managed to get a couple of captures that I'm happy with; nothing to really write home about.

Check out the images here.

Thinking of warmer days,

Mike

Quoting

I received a lot of really fantastic books on photography this xmas. Amongst them was Harry Skrdla's book; Ghostly Ruins - America's Forgotten Architecture. Just thought I'd share a great introduction from a chapter of this book:

Once upon a time, America made things.

We harnessed the energy of coal and the power of mighty rivers to run factories. Steam engines spun and generators hummed and we used the electricity to smelt iron and aluminum, to light homes and shops, and to power chemical plants and mills. Cities sprang up. Cities with names like Cleveland and Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Newark. In these cities the iron was made into I-beams and thumbtacks and Buicks, and the chemical plants turned out dyes and plastics and penicillin. The wheels of industry turned. Cities grew. America prospered. We made everything from a pocket watch to a battleship, and we were proud of it.

But things changed. Industry, which had never worried about its byproducts, faced new laws limiting pollution. Foreign competitors, not hobbled by such laws or the need to pay their employees the high wages that American workers enjoyed, began to garner a greater share of the market. Eventually money-hungry capitalists began to move their factories overseas to take advantage of this same laxness, thus profiting at the expense of their workers and the cities that they had called home.

Now the steel mills of Pittsburgh and Cleveland are dark; their blast furnaces and coke ovens gone cold. Massive steam engines and dynamos stand still and silent, when they stand at all.

Now we live virtual lives in an "information age". We've convinced ourselves that we are somehow above the mere manufacture of goods and that only backwards countries still "make" things. Gazing down from our Olympian perch, we forget that cars are still made of steel, that somewhere mills must weave the fabric for our clothes, and that even computers have to be built by someone, somewhere. It's just not us - and it isn't here.

- Harry Skrdla

Snow is great.

I love snow. I'm sick as a dog right now. But if I weren't, I'd be outside taking photos tonight. In the mean time, hanging out of my kitchen window will have to do.

- Mike

Processed.

I finally finished processing the set of photos I took yesterday at the DC Children's Center. I'm pretty happy with the results. Look for some HDR images from this shoot in the next couple of days. In the mean time here are the images:

DC Children's Center Photographs

-Mike

Just a couple

Wow, today was so awesome. Abandoned Asylums are so much fun! I took so many images and I can't wait to process them all. I have some great material for HDR and will be posting a new gallery to the site in the next day. Stoked!

- Mike

Dig.

Just a shot from a construction site around the way. It's been a long week already; I'm stoked for the weekend.

- Mike

Vive la Resolution!

This past weekend was chock full o' photography. A buddy and I spent most of the day inside the Schenuit Rubber Factory building on saturday and a few hours revisiting the Scrap Yard I checked out last year. (things are pretty much the same)
My resolution to take more photos is in full swing. I'm a machine lately. Thanks to family and friends who gave me lots of books on photography for xmas. Thanks for the inspiration!
- Mike

Resolution

...As in my resolution for this year; I'm not talking about pixels, is to get off my duff and take a whole lot more photos.
That is all.
Good day.
- Mike

NYC

Finally got around to processing some of the images I took in NY while I was up there for the show. Here are a few street shots taken while walking from gallery to gallery in Chelsea.

- Mike