Archive for the 'Urban Decay' Category
04
Jul
Happy 4th of July!
10
Jun
south Philly, part 1
I apologize for the lack of new content. I haven’t felt very motivated to shoot much lately.
So for now, here are some shots for the Philadelphia Grid Project from April when we were wandering around south Philly.
This past Saturday, I met up with some of the other members of the Phildelphia Grid Project to head out to Germantown where we were interviewed for FOX 29 news. The segment aired that evening on the news. In case you missed it, you can check it out on the FOX news website. I’m glad that they blurred me out because I really didn’t want to be on the news.
Below are some of the photos that I took in the area that day, but I’ll probably be heading back out to the area again to capture more for this month’s grid.
06
May
Centralia, Pennsylvania
My friends Albert, Steve, and I went to Centralia, Pennsylvania on Saturday. For those who aren’t familiar with the history of the town, Centralia is a town in central Pennsylvania that has had underground mine fires burning for the last 46 years. Yes, you did read that correctly. Most of the residents abandoned ship while a whole 21 remain living in what remains of the town (which isn’t a whole lot). I couldn’t summarize it better than WikiPedia.
We explored the entire town…and like I said, there wasn’t much to see. There was a hill where you could see smoke coming out from various areas in the ground. And there’s an old section of Route 61 that has been closed where there are large devouring cracks in graffiti covered pavement. I imagine that it’s even more impressive in the fall when it’s colder. Nevertheless, it was still a sight to see. It’s been on my list of must-visits for many years now and I finally got to check it out.
We were also a bit freaked out by the insane number of tent caterpillars that appear to be taking over the trees.
I never got around to posting my March photos for the Philadelphia Grid Project. I got some useful images, but nothing that I was really happy with this time. However, we did check out a really awesome abandoned house that was in the process of being torn down and had some really cool remnants inside of it. March’s grid fell within west Philly, encompassing the area of Mantua where most of my photos were taken.
We had our meeting last night to review and discuss the photos. My photo to be entered into the archives for the month of March is the first one below: a photo of a Polaroid found in the abandoned house.
04
Apr
on the rails
So that night I mentioned in my previous post….Went to sleep around 9:30. Around 10, I started to have insane pain on my inside parts. Possibly another kidney stone. All I know is that I spent 4 hours praying that the pain would go away and hoping that I’m not waking up the family from numerous trips to the bathroom. At 2:30am, I knew that the only person who might possibly be awake is my cousin. After a text message, she convinced me that I needed to wake someone up and go to the hospital before it got worse (if that was even possible at this point). So I woke up Andy and Melanie and then jumped in my car, headed for the ER. Thank goodness I bought that GPS! I never would have found the hospital without it.
I was seen almost immediately, they did some tests and concluded that I did not have a kidney stone but a really bad bladder infection of sorts. They gave me a shot in the ass with some heavy duty antibiotic for the worst of infections, and some pain medication.
An hour and a half later, I was out of there. I drove around with the goal of finding a 24 hour pharmacy to fill my prescription. Not a chance. Nothing was open. But a donut shop was open so I stopped in to grab two donuts. After deciding that I wasn’t going to go back and wake up the family, I found a grocery store parking lot where I curled up in the backseat of my rental car with my sleeping bag for 2 hours before Andy called me. They were awake so I went back and slept for a few hours. I had to go out to get gas in my car and get my prescription filled. On the way back, I decided to photograph an abandoned Drive-In theater.
I felt tired and groggy for the day, but I needed to get up the coast. I had made a reservation at a hotel for the night and man, was I happy about that. It had a fireplace, a couch, a huge bathroom, and a king size bed and was along the beach. I took full advantage of everything that night. I started to feel quite a bit better.
09
Mar
powerhouse
After making a trip to my favorite camera shop in Bristol, Pennsylvania, Albert and I went on a hunt for a park that he had seen while riding on the train one day. We found the park…and we found this amazing abandoned power plant!
Last month, I wrote about the Philadelphia Grid Project and posted a bunch of the photos that I had taken. Well, February’s Grid was a different area of the city. It included the neighborhoods of Frankford, Wissinoming, Bridesburg, and a small portion of Juniata: all located in northeast Philadelphia. The monthly grids are fairly large in this project so it’s difficult to get the same photograph as anyone else in the group. In fact, the grids are so large that it’s really difficult to even see the whole area. I’ve found myself already wanting to go back and explore many places that I didn’t get to see that month.
We had a meeting last night to review photos from January. It’s interesting to hear the different views and interpretations of the other photographers in the group. Everyone seems to have their own interpretation of what the photo represents, which is really great. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a group critique of sorts. It really helped me think outside of the box and look at my work and the work of others from a different perspective. In fact, it was pointed out to me last night how a group of my images were three dimensional and others were one dimensional; I never really thought about that. It’s made me realize that my photography has made a composition transition over the years. In the distant past, I only chose to shoot from odd and bizarre angles…which isn’t necessary a bad thing. I still do that sometimes, but now it depends on the subject that I’m shooting; I’m more particular. But now I almost seem to prefer shooting parallel to my subject most of the time. It’s almost as though I’ve grown to be mathematical about it. Why? I don’t really know. What I do know is that angle makes all the difference in the world; we need to find the perfect angle to make any subject look its best (amongst other things). Whether it be a photo of a person, plant, building, etc. You need to be the angler of the angle and just fish that big boy of a photo right into your camera knowing that you got the best possible catch that you could.
Anyway, here are some of the images from the February Grid.
25
Feb
urban dynasty
