To complete our trip to the Power Plant. Through many twists and turns at the top of the long coal shoot we found our way into the main building. Coal shoot land was also pretty enormous, shoots shot off in several directions and at one point when I’d retuned to get some gear I’d set down while searching I twice went into the wrong doorway.
As with most entries, the way in we’d found was a door where someone had already knocked in the bottom panel. This is our normal mode: finding a door or window that’s already been busted in. The moment a structure is abandoned, kids, nature, and other photographers start invading. By the time we arrive, it’s usually only a matter of locating that entry.
Inside everything was beginning to look pretty large. I walked across an open grate section of the floor, like crossing the ocean, and arrived at a series of enormous engines. An engine house sat between each one. The doors to most engine houses were locked, but the small windows in every door were broken. Massive semi-circular pipes swept away from the engines in different directions. Everything was a monochromatic shade of white-beige rust. It looked like every engine house, every wall, every floor had been covered in a soothing layer of chalky white, almost as if the place had been painted that way when they closed it down. It gave this part of the plant a theatrically odd look, as if it was preparing to be a Keith Herring photo backdrop.
Finally, after shooting engines (and waiting for my partner to return from her long trip to retrieve the gear she’d left it at the bottom of the coal shoot), we continued our quest for the main engine room where we knew the working machines were far more massive than what we were seeing here. The “room” where we finally found those machines could have housed an indoor football field. The stunning architecture, clearly from another era, was filled with intricate and caring detail – even in an industrial building. The arched roof swept down to every corner in a series of gentle curves. It stood eight or ten stories above the floor of the building; all in between was air.
I’d never seen machines this large; they looked, at once antique and futuristic. No wonder Transformers II had recently filmed here. It was a perfect backdrop for a science fiction movie that wants a retro-fitted past. We spent the rest of the day in this cavernous place finding both tiny and enormous things to preserve in camera. I was happy to have my new, wider angle, lens. Every time we approached the front part of the building we saw security immediately outside and we had to remember to keep our glee in check. At one point I was ducking down just inside an open window at the end of a long hallway, trying to get a shot of fifty feet of doors standing open as if everyone had just run out of their rooms. Not fifty yards behind me, outside the large window through which I’m certain my tripod was visible, security stood around chatting.
As the golden hour began to pass, that brief time as the sun sets and casts a glowing ethereal light, we made our way out of the main building and back across the ocean of grated floors. First, to retrieve our gear, and then to find the way we came in. It was clear there would be no easier way out. All first floor doors were welded shut, they wanted no sightseers in this plant. Egress was simpler though, the crew working on the power outage had gone and the security detail seemed down to one man sitting near his truck a football field away. As we emerged from the wooded path that led to the fence several people were fishing in the stream leading to the river; they’d brought metal folding chairs and plastic coolers.
The fishers had parked where we wanted to park but were too nervous to. Instead where we had parked seemed like the poorer choice at this moment. A man inside a BMW sat just behind the gate we’d parked in front of. Since we’d been doing something wrong we were certain he knew that as we loaded our gear into the trunk. The moment we pulled out a police car was behind us. Whether they suspected what we’d been doing we never knew. The man remained in his car behind the gate and the police car turned off away from us, but not before stopping a long while and watching us drive off. It was slightly unnerving. But at that moment, we were just industry tourists down by the river. These days, officials are particularly cautious about people with cameras around power plants – we didn’t want to get reputations as terrorists. We’re just simple photogs, explorers with camera. One more site conquered.
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