Another photography excursion yesterday (resulting in the late, late entry last night). Went up to Ashley, PA to the abandoned Huber Coal Breaker. What is a coal breaker, you might be asking. Apparently it was a factor where coal was broken up for use. It’s long closed down, and, oddly, pretty much completely open. As we climbed up into the bowels of the tall buildings kids on dirt bikes, grown men on ATVs, and middle school girls did their thing near the buildings. The middle schoolers wandered by as one of us was shooting outside. They asked if she had a myspace page and told her about the coal miners who haunted the breaker. For a building that’s completely open the graffiti is minimal.
Shooting inside was difficult. It presented the double problem of being enormous and being difficult to move around in – hard to get far enough away for a good vista shot. Structurally the building was filled with disasters waiting to happen. Catwalk metal plates worn through, stairs missing, coal dust floating in the air creating all kinds of lens flair. When I got home and tried to sleep I could understand the black lung disease I saw last week in the Bodyworlds exhibit. Even after a single afternoon trudging around in an abandoned coal factory, not even a mine, my lungs felt as though they were filled with fiberglass. Breathing felt scratchy and labored.
I wasn’t particularly pleased with the shots I got, but I’m working on managing raw images. Blogspot is not letting me add any right now, but I'll do it later.
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