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Showing posts from December, 2018

What Are Those Rusted Metal Ladders in Brooklyn Backyards?

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I was taking a walk down my residential street recently when a flash of weathered iron caught my eye. Poking up above a neighbor's inner backyard was a tall, rusted metal ladder. It stood upright, narrow and tall, reaching straight toward the sky. I stopped in my tracks to look at it. To anyone else passing by, it probably looked like a piece of industrial scrap left behind by a careless contractor. But I recognized it immediately. Growing up, we had the same rusted tower planted in our backyard. It stood two feet away from the exterior wall of the house like an unmovable monument. Through decades of changing seasons and vicious winds, it never leaned an inch. My parents never made any attempt to dismantle it or repaint it, even as thick flakes of orange rust gathered along its frame. Back then, whenever I looked out from our second-floor window, I would scan the neighboring lots. None of the other yards on our street had one. Down the enti...
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TP-Link TL-WDN4800 - 5GHz Not Found Solved! (Hackintosh & Windows)

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TP-Link Wireless Card Recently I have been having issues picking up the 5GHz channel from my router using the TP-Link TL-WDN4800 . Some days I would boot up and the computer picks it up from the jump but in the past few days, it would give me network errors dropping downloads and the Internet connection itself. At first, I thought it was my ISP but my Samsung S7 Edge and Apple iPad Mini 4 all seemed to be finding the 5GHz channel with ease. I did some Google-fu and found it has to deal with how the NIC picks up 2GHz/5GHz channels sent out from your router. I believe my ISP router was switching to higher channels on the 5GHz channel automatically and causing network errors when I was downloading huge files over WiFi from either compensating with the huge network downloads (2GB and up) or from the surrounding competing neighboring routers on my street. I changed out from the boxy router that was provided by my ISP and switched it out with a Netgear Nighthawk R6700...
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The eXperiment #2

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While reading an interesting article on Petapixel on the sweet spot of lenses. It came to mind that maybe if I shot at the required aperture of 5.6 @10mm which I shoot almost always I would substantially control variables in my little AEB experiment using my camera setup. It makes sense to shoot at the best aperture that produces the sharpest images I can get during my explorations. In eXperiment #1, my aperture was at different settings and may have skewed the final photos before blending them together creating slightly sharp photos due to the aperture. It is true that shooting at the sharpest aperture of your lens is important in this little eXperiment but found out that in the field shooting at aperture 5.6 @ 10mm didn't always produce the correct and proper exposure for the scene. Continuing on in the field I came back with the following. 6 Images 12 Images I could not discern any notable differences in image quality in both sets of images. Nothing popped out...
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The eXperiment

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The final AEB work product Before Final Edits This past weekend I explored with my friend J at a very cool power plant. I've wanted to shoot inside this plant for a long time since seeing the pictures from J's portfolio. Last weekend I got to do that. This time I was armed with a new photography technique from landscape photographers that I wanted to try out. I realized landscape photographers photograph similar to what I do whilst exploring. Landscape photographers final images always have a front to back sharpness and detail that I admire. It is a similar creative process I try to emulate inside abandoned buildings all the time. Armed with only my trusty Canon T3i I set about inside finding the right composition I wanted to experiment with once I got back to my photo lab. And boy, did I shoot the hell out of this place (238 photos, 5.45GB). I didn't even document every room because of time constraints. Lining up the shot, I clicked about nine shots...
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Inside the Abandoned Albany Central Warehouse: A Forgotten NY Industrial Giant (Photos)

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In the heart of Albany, nestled amidst the echoes of its bustling past, lies an abandoned warehouse, a treasure trove of stories untold until now. This isn't just any derelict structure; it's the cornerstone of my urban exploration journey, the first of many, but forever the one that initiated me into the world of forgotten spaces. Let's call it the ultimate introduction, the genesis of a passion that has since defined my adventures. Our story begins on a crisp, cold morning that promises adventure. I vividly remember the excitement bubbling up as I set off to pick up my companion, referred to here as "A," from Queens. The journey from the familiar streets of our neighborhood to the unknown mysteries of Albany stretched over three hours, a pilgrimage to our very own urban Mecca. We arrived ahead of schedule, anticipation building as we waited in the chilling embrace of dawn, our breaths visible in the air, our spirits undeterr...
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Kings Park Psychiatric Center: The Abandoned Long Island Asylum

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Kings Park and the Education of an Explorer Every pursuit has a place where beginners go first. Skateboarders have their parking lots and curbs. Climbers have their local crags. And if you are just finding your way into the world of urban exploration on Long Island, sooner or later someone points you toward Kings Park. The former Kings Park Psychiatric Center has become, over the years, something like a finishing school for people who don't yet know they're enrolled. Getting onto the grounds is straightforward. Finding a way inside the remaining buildings, if you know where to look, is not much harder. Which is exactly why the Parks Police have written thousands of trespassing tickets here in a single calendar year, why security visibly tightens every Halloween, and why local photography groups have been known to show up with large, enthusiastic crowds of people who want to take what they call "creepy" photos of old hospital asylums. The place attracts everyone, which...
Read more: Kings Park Psychiatric Center: The Abandoned Long Island Asylum

What Are Those Rusted Metal Ladders in Brooklyn Backyards?

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I was taking a walk down my residential street recently when a flash of weathered iron caught my eye. Poking up above a neighbor's inner backyard was a tall, rusted metal ladder. It stood upright, narrow and tall, reaching straight toward the sky. I stopped in my tracks to look at it. To anyone else passing by, it probably looked like a piece of industrial scrap left behind by a careless contractor. But I recognized it immediately. Growing up, we had the same rusted tower planted in our backyard. It stood two feet away from the exterior wall of the house like an unmovable monument. Through decades of changing seasons and vicious winds, it never leaned an inch. My parents never made any attempt to dismantle it or repaint it, even as thick flakes of orange rust gathered along its frame. Back then, whenever I looked out from our second-floor window, I would scan the neighboring lots. None of the other yards on our street had one. Down the enti...
Read more: What Are Those Rusted Metal Ladders in Brooklyn Backyards?

Former H. J. Mills Paper Box Company

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The Box Man's Legacy: How H. J. Mills Went from Match Boxes to a Parking Lot There is a community parking lot in downtown Bristol, Connecticut, that does not look like much. Cars pull in, cars pull out. The lot sits in the middle of the business district, unremarkable by any measure, crossed underneath by a culverted stream called Ivy Brook that runs east to west beneath the pavement. For twenty-three years before the asphalt went down, this ground held a burned ruin, then a vacant lot, then weeds so thick and deep that homeless people took shelter in them. Before any of that, for 120 years, it held a factory. The man who built that factory also ran a newspaper, served in the state legislature, belonged to the Masons, the Knights of Pythias, the Bristol Lodge of Elks, and the Hartford Gun Club, and died in 1933, leaving behind a house that still stands on Summer Street. His name was Herbert J. Mills. His company made cardboard boxes. And al...
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Crown Heights' 73-99 Empire Boulevard Erased for Luxury Housing

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Photo courtesy of NYC Municipal Services / 1940s.nyc From Mack Trucks to Apartments: A Century on Empire Boulevard For most of the twentieth century, the block at 73-99 Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights handled the heavy work of the city. Trucks came in for service. Tires were swapped out. Parts were stocked and sold. The buildings on this stretch of Brooklyn were built for vehicles, and for about sixty years, that's exactly what they served. The site directly neighbors the much taller Ebbets Field Apartment complex, which is the housing that replaced the ballpark. By 2025, both were rubble. By September 2026, the foundation of a 13-story apartment building was going in. A hundred years of industrial and automotive history on a single block, cleared in a matter of months. The main building at 73-99 Empire Boulevard went up in 1925 and opened as a Mack Truck auto service facility. At 29,000 square feet, it was built for the scale of commerc...
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