Ball & Socket Manufacturing Co. | From Civil War Buttons to an Arts Complex

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This one stings a little. Not every location hands you a story worth telling and then slams the door before you can photograph it, but the Ball & Socket factory had other plans for J and me that day. The cold was the first thing I remember. A sharp Connecticut chill that had absolutely no interest in our ambitions. We worked our way into the inner courtyard, feeling reasonably optimistic, and then hit a wall literally. Locked doors on every side. No entry points that weren't either sealed or watched. The only building we managed to get inside looked less like a historic factory and more like a very long parking garage that had given up on itself. Even the boiler house was off the table. We circled, debated, and eventually made the call that every explorer has to make when a site is still secured and possibly still monitored: we walked. Some days you document. Some days the building wins. We never went back, and before we got a second crack at it, word came down that the complex...
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Bad Apples Bring Trouble


Green Blighted Brooklyn Apple Tree
Bad Apples -  Super-Takumar 135

Up Close Green Brooklyn Apples
Green Apples but bad to the core - Super-Takumar

I shot these blighted apples over in my neighbor's yard with the Super-Takumar 135mm with a hood.  The lighting source was trickery with a hood on and outside being cloudy in some places and bright in other areas. Hopefully tomorrow I can get access to this abandoned place I want to shoot so badly.

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