Digital Ink'd

The withering dying days of another year and a new decade. I explored as much as possible this year but did not break 100 or 50 spots. So much going on in one year that time seems to melt away and before you know it it's the end of the year. Work, bills, and bouts of depression mixed in. It was an upside-topsy-turvy year. The biggest loss of the year was losing my DJI Phantom 4 drone. Just as I was getting into using it more, with new projects in mind and learning to manually maneuver without getting into the automatic settings, I lost it on a cold windswept park shoreline near the water. In hindsight, I should have packed it up and drove home. Instead, I took it up again pushed it hard toward the water, and turned. Pushing it again, I came back to shore low and fast. Before you knew it, it came in too close to a tree and reacted to the near object detection. Pulled up before I could throttle back hard it went up, clipped its rotors, and fell into the water. I had lost my...

Stumbling upon this piece in an unremarkable back room left me utterly astonished. It was a genuine masterpiece, standing as the sole example of graffiti I encountered in my exploration. The area was laden with metal piping, making the artist's choice to echo this industrial theme through their work particularly apt. The piece not only showcased their talent but also their keen ability to harmonize their art with the surrounding environment, transforming an otherwise overlooked space into a canvas that spoke volumes.

I believe this to be one of the best graffiti works I have ever come across in my explorations during last year. It even beats out the Brooklyn skull mural that I found to be widely creative and great use of an abandoned space. The intricate detailed eyes and wrinkles. The use of the full length of dry wall really captured my attention once I entered this warehouse in Pennsylvania.

Inside the white Calatraval piece before it became a commercial venue full of tourists from the WTC. A late-night Instagram meetup with fellow photogs roaming the streets of Manhattan. Good times.

I normally don't post night pictures. I have always been a day person. I never liked the edited night pictures I've taken in the past nor felt the need to publish them in general. I am hoping that the growing Lightroom experience I have been gaining over these past three years will change that. Here are to more nighttime pictures.  🙈 💀 👶

Recently and also in the past, I have come across a handful of old cars abandoned in mills, power plants and other buildings. I have started to notice I always come across more frequently than is expected. In one location, I came upon 20-30 trucks and heavy machinery just sitting rusting away behind a fence. Maybe I will share a photo from that place in the future.  👀

Starting off hopefully with a series of archive posts from today. For now, it will contain either one or several photographs of various decay and abandonment that will be posted in a full write-up, an undiscovered location, or something from the past, present, or future located in my two-year Lightroom catalog. Or it may never be written up or shared as a full album set. I currently have written up a post from this place but still debating whether to publish it or not. The only first time I have ever been caught exploring abandoned buildings. The pictures from here definitely carry significant emotional and mental weight. One, because I could have been asked to delete my pictures. Two, I could have had a criminal record or not based on a judge's leniency, or lastly having a gun-toting security officer pointing a gun at me. You definitely don't find intact glass in abandoned places and this place certainly had a lot of it.