From Excelsior Needle Co. to Timken: The Rise and Fall of Torrington's Standard Plant

Image
The Standard Plant and a Century of Making Things It was a hot May week in 2023, and J and I were already sweating through our shirts before we even made it to the entrance. We turned into the driveway off North Elm Street and passed a large Caterpillar backhoe holding up the red, white, and blue at the top of the arm. Patriotic machinery. Only in Connecticut. We moved toward the back of the complex with our eyes open, scanning for any sign of people or activity. We found cameras instead. A few of them, well-positioned across one of the buildings and up on an electrical pole, covering angles that made our original entry plan useless. We backed off, found a Plan B, and stepped into a dark room washed in tinted green light, then took the stairs down to ground level. The former Standard Plant sits along North Elm Street at a sunken grade, one story, with another building rising over the roadway to the far right when you're standing in front of it from North Street. It's the kind o...
Post a Comment

The eXperiment


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 at the same ISO of 100, shutter speed of 1/8, 4.0 aperture and three different focus points. As you can see below, the 6 blended shots turned out really well when zoomed in 100% but 9 shots blended together became a bit soft in the back and certain sections became a bit soft and fuzzy. Something I do not want. The 6 blended shot is on the right and the 9 blended shot is on the left. If you look closely at the "zon" word in the background you see less detail and sharpness around the letters in the 9 blended shot. As well as a bit of softness around the piping seen in example 2 comparison zoomed in 1:1.

To make sure everything seems fair and straight in this comparison test. I blended and merged the images using a third party Lightroom plugin that I have found to be quite good at blending images within Lightroom. The test image was edited into a final product. I find the HDR Merge feature in Lightroom to be lacking in the final result even with DeGhost amount turned off and even set at low. It introduced quite a huge amount of noise and even greater softness after blending 9 shots that I didn't even waste my time blending just 6.

Example 4 Comparison

Side by side they both look excellent at face value but at 100% zoomed in, a different story emerges.

Example 1 Comparison

Example 2 Comparison

Example 3 Comparison

Lightroom HDR Merge Sample

With the experimental results baring fruits at 6 photographs blending well together rather than 9 photographs. I am going to try again with something else as a subject matter. I am curious to see where 12 photographs leave me with....stay tuned.

Suffice to say I push my current equipment to its limits until I can acquire my Sony A7rIII.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Image
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...
Read more

From Excelsior Needle Co. to Timken: The Rise and Fall of Torrington's Standard Plant

Image
The Standard Plant and a Century of Making Things It was a hot May week in 2023, and J and I were already sweating through our shirts before we even made it to the entrance. We turned into the driveway off North Elm Street and passed a large Caterpillar backhoe holding up the red, white, and blue at the top of the arm. Patriotic machinery. Only in Connecticut. We moved toward the back of the complex with our eyes open, scanning for any sign of people or activity. We found cameras instead. A few of them, well-positioned across one of the buildings and up on an electrical pole, covering angles that made our original entry plan useless. We backed off, found a Plan B, and stepped into a dark room washed in tinted green light, then took the stairs down to ground level. The former Standard Plant sits along North Elm Street at a sunken grade, one story, with another building rising over the roadway to the far right when you're standing in front of it from North Street. It's the kind o...
Read more

Inside the Abandoned Horsman Doll Factory in Trenton

Image
  You’ve got to move when the chance is right. That’s something I keep telling myself—but just as often, I forget it. Or ignore it. And then I end up learning the same lesson all over again. It happened on a quiet afternoon when I pulled up to the old Horsman Doll factory. The place has long been abandoned, but it still holds stories—ones I try to capture through my lens. The main gate was slightly ajar. Not wide open, but just enough for me to slip through with my gear. It was one of those rare opportunities. But across the street, half-hidden behind a rundown house, a group of men sat drinking and shouting over each other. The kind of scene you don't want to get caught up in—especially alone, carrying expensive camera equipment. I hesitated. I debated. I bailed. My gut told me to walk away, so I did. I figured I could find another way in. I circled the block, hoping for a back entrance or even a broken window low enough to climb through. I found one window that looked possible—bu...
Read more

Diner Dreams and Declines: The Kullman Dining Car Company

Image
  While exploring the area for a different site, I stumbled upon this abandoned property, marked by a large pile of household refuse and debris from commercial demolitions, improperly discarded. As night began to fall, I hesitated to venture inside alone. This caution might have been fortuitous, for on a subsequent visit to Newark, New Jersey, I discovered a makeshift bed crafted from an oversized couch. It seemed someone might be using this as a makeshift sleeping area, unwittingly inhaling potentially lethal chemicals not meant for human respiration. The entry to this forsaken place was through a semi-open truck loading dock, obstructed by a concrete barrier, presumably to halt further looting of the structure or to deter unethical contractors from dumping their illegal waste under the veil of night. Once an industrial site, this property was marred by environmental pollutants such as metals, paint, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Ninety-one years ago, it was operational before fa...
Read more

Exploring the Abandoned Aerosol Techniques Factory in Milford, CT (Photos)

Image
When I arrived at the former Aerosol Techniques factory, I was filled with a mix of anticipation and curiosity. Meeting a group of new friends for a day of urban exploration in Connecticut, we had a lineup of intriguing abandoned sites on our agenda. Our itinerary included the hauntingly beautiful Seaside Sanatorium, a former hospital, along with a few other potential spots that we were less certain about. We chose the factory as our starting point, mainly because it offered easy access and was conveniently situated next to a Lowe's hardware store. Walking along a well-trodden path, our group made a seamless transition onto the property. The sense of camaraderie was palpable as we embarked on our adventure with eager enthusiasm. The factory grounds, long deserted, were a canvas for countless graffiti artists. Every inch of the building was adorned with vibrant and eclectic street art, each piece telling its own story. This rich color and creativity set the perfect stage for our imp...
Read more