Digital Ink'd

The Pink Flamingo on Harrison Street Whether it is a dead mill or tannery, a car will always be sitting in a discrete corner.  Gloversville, New York, earned its name for a reason. For decades, it was the undisputed glove capital of the world. But today, the massive tanneries, dressers, stitching factories, and dyers that built this city are quietly disappearing. One of the most fascinating casualties was the former Cayadutta Tanning Company Inc. Locals called it the Pink Flamingo. Before that, it was E.S. Parkhurst & Company, a place workers simply knew as the Hair Mill. Sitting at the southwest corner of Harrison Street and NY-30A, the property spanned two parcels. A private owner held one piece of the land, while the city owned the other. Visiting the abandoned site felt like stepping into a forgotten tannery that just needed a bit of TLC and elbow grease to restart operations sans a pocketed overhead roof. Just outside the main tanning building, a junked Mercedes sa...

For weeks, I had been orbiting the perimeter of the impending demolition of the Church of St. Michael and St. Edward, a once revered church in the heart of Fort Greene, like a moth drawn to a flame. The neighborhood, a patchwork of tight project housing, seemed indifferent to the fate of this historic edifice. The intel I had received suggested that entry was as simple as scaling a wooden fence, yet the timing had never felt right. Until one day, it did. With a mission in New Jersey looming, I knew it was now or never. The demolition was advancing at a startling pace, the church's twin steeples already reduced to rubble. The skeletal remains of timber beams and rusted steel frames peeked out from the ruins, a testament to the relentless march of progress. Summoning a surge of courage, I seized a moment of quiet in the bustling housing project and vaulted over the fence. My heart pounded in my chest as I slipped unnoticed into the church grounds. The once grand entrance now stood as...

A former coal-fired power plant in Yonkers sits quietly by the waterfront, its redevelopment ambitions repeatedly running aground against community resistance and logistical hurdles. Once an industrial hub, the site has spent years in limbo, tangled in unrealized visions of transformation and contention with local stakeholders. The most recent development proposal called for a 157,000-square-foot mixed-use office space. However, the Yonkers Planning Board faced strong pushback from residents. Parking became a flashpoint, with the community voicing concerns over how the new project would accommodate vehicles. Efforts by the developer to secure parking access at nearby Trevor Park and the John F. Kennedy Marina were met with such resistance that the plans were scrapped altogether. Adding to the tensions, critics took issue with the property owner's financial contributions to the city. Many residents felt the developer had been avoiding paying a fair share of Yonkers' property tax...

Rare Taisei Kogaku 135mm Twin Tele A remarkable lens from Japan, very sharp wide open, of the famous zeiss inspired design with preset aperture. It's well made, all glass and steel, with excellent color and contrast. The optics in this lens are amazing, it is simple and it works. It's bokeh and colour rendering are brilliant and it's as sharp as a razor. This is one of the mythical lenses of the days of lore, and hard to find even on ebay. There is about 340 degrees of rotation on the focus ring. The lens came with a 2X adapter as well. This series of lenses (model 680) were made between 1962 & 1969. The included tele converter is shown in the picture. This gave the kit the twin tele name.  Sharp Kogaku 135 Also known as the Taisei Kogaku [Tamron] Tamron 680 Twin-Tele 135mm f/2.8. A rare lens with the hard to adapt praktina mount. Mounting this lens onto to a EOS Rebel won't be easy. I have been trying to source an adapter for my Canon 600D Rebel but...

The old brick walls of Brown's Mill still rise above the Salmon River like a stubborn memory. Trees push through cracked floors. Rusted metal hangs from the ceilings. Broken plaster and splintered wood cover the ground inside what remains of the once-busy paper mill. Yet even after decades of abandonment, parts of the machinery still stand. Two hydro turbines sit silent beside the river, and a massive steam engine remains planted inside the ruins, a reminder of the years when the mill pulsed with noise, heat, and labor. Locals still call it Brown's Mill, though its official name was the Brown Brothers Paper Mill. For generations, the factory sat along the western bank of the Salmon River beside Comstock Bridge Road, shaping both the economy and identity of the Colchester (East Hampton) community in eastern Connecticut. Today, only two of the seven mill buildings survive: the main structure and the northern building, both rebuilt during a modernization effort in 1929. From P...