Archive for August 18th, 2023
Soggy socks at Carrie Furnace
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bands of thunderstorm were blowing through, and it was occasionally raining furiously, at the Carrie Furnace. You do the best you can with the circumstance when you’re behind a camera, so I did. I intended on using every minute I was there productively, so a solid three hours of focus occurred.
A humble narrator has attended enough of these sorts of photographer focused events in the past to know that the areas in today’s posts were where most of the rest of the attendees would go first so I went there last instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a bunch of informal etiquette I follow in these sort of gatherings, including making sure I don’t walk into someone’s shot without first checking if their shutter is open. Not many of my fellow travelers on this outing did the same, which was kind of annoying.
I’d love to get locked in here for an entire night. Sunset to sunrise. All by myself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of the shots in this series are at least a few seconds long, and shot at a fairly low ISO. That made the rain basically disappear. I decided that ‘telling the story’ properly needed at least one shot where the rain was visible, hence… above.
A quick scuttle through the downpours occurred, wherein a set of rain slicked steps were mounted and I proceeded into the main chamber of the furnace.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Western Pennsylvania, once you leave the ‘city’ areas, is extremely dark. I mean, blindly waving your hand in front of your face dark. My old flashlights weren’t cutting it, so another new toy I’ve acquired is the Nightcore T4K. It’s expensive, as flashlights go, but it’s about the size of a BIC lighter and super bright. Also, it recharges via USB-C. The same company also makes a great head light which is very popular with the camping and hiking crowd.
I was using the thing inside the building. It’s got a burst mode which pumps out about 4000 lumens worth of light with a ‘throw’ of at least 60-80 feet. I’d trigger it for half a second to a second, which allowed for a sort of camera flash effect which I could bounce around off the walls and floors while the shutter was open.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everybody else had moved on from this spot by this point, and I soon found myself all alone up in the furnace for a good long interval. Perfection!
On my way out, somebody told me that they knew where I was from outside, as they’d see a burst of super bright light peeking out of the machinery.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a fascinating section of the site which allows for this sort of view. Luckily, it was starting to get truly dark outside, and as I always say: The night time is the right time.
Back next week with the last post in this series, and a culminating bunch of neato photos.
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