Another Great Meetup

This past weekend our meetup group visited East Broad Top Railroad in Pennsylvania.   The East Broad Top was once a short line railroad that transported coal from the mines to another railroad for transport to the end users.

Mother Nature did not really cooperate and we had a fair amount of rain, but there was plenty to shoot indoors and everyone really enjoyed this location.  


We are in the early stages of planning a return trip so be sure to join our meetup if you want to be notified of our next trip.

I Have Been Meaning to Share

The picture above is from a trip to Scranton Lace Factory in 2014.   I have a folder where I save images that I plan to share or blog about and just realized this image is almost a year old and it has never seen to light of day so to speak.

Scranton Lace Factory is located in Scranton, PA.  The company was founded in 1890 and the factory was closed in mid-shift  sometime in 2002.  The site has been undergoing cleanup for the last several years and I know the owners have big hopes for redevelopment of the site.


It was a great location to shoot,  but suspect the best shots were from a time when the site was truly abandoned.

The Ohio State Reformatory at Mansfield - Caveat Emptor

Last weekend Denise and I took a road trip with a couple of other members of our Meetup to the Ohio State Prison at Mansfield.  

It's a wonderful old building that looks more like a castle on the outside than a prison.  We had signed up for the "photography tour" at a cost of $150.00 per person.  Never having been there, I did not have any concerns and was looking forward to the experience.  Denise and I do tours at places like Eastern State Penitentiary and the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum and while the pricing is comparable,  both of these other places provide additional value for the money.  It could be freedom to work with minimal interaction with other tourists or access to places that are off limits to the other guests.  But in any case we have always felt there is extra value in paying more than the average tourists.

That changed this past weekend.  We arrived and stood in line with others who were paying $9.00 for general admission.  When it was our turn we paid $150.00 a person and was told to follow the tour route.  That translated to having to wait between 5 and 10 minutes at nearly each shot waiting for the tourists to be out of the shot.  Sometimes I elected not to take a shot because I just got tired of waiting the the people to get out of the way.

To be fair to Mansfield we did go during the summer busy season and after we expressed some concern about being over charged just because we had tripods, we were told they could take us to some places that were not part of the tour.  By that time we were just over it and wanted to get back on the road for the several hour drive that was ahead of us.

If I had it to do over again I would have left the tripod in the car and just shot at a high ISO and used the vibration reduction feature on most of my lenses.

So if you decide to go, I recommend that you go off season and get a clear understanding of what you get in exchange for your hard earned dollars!

The Softer Side of Grunge

When I'm shooting an abandoned building most of my pictures tend to have a "grungy" look.   This is usually accomplished with the use of Photomatix and some selective editing in Photoshop.  But a couple years ago on my first visit to Scranton Lace Factory I decided to take a different approach.  I did some shooting with my Lensbaby and the soft focus optic.

I love the soft focus optic and use it frequently with flowers.  The soft focus optic is different from the other Lensbaby lens options because there is no focus spot, rather the entire scene is soft, yet in focus.  But for some reason it seemed like the right tool for the scene in front of me.

Clients of Road Runner are eligible for a 10% discount on Lensbaby Gear.  Contact us for a discount code.

Photomatix is my favorite tool for creating HDR images.  It is available as a free download and is fully functional for 30 days.  If you decide to purchase use the discount code "RRPT" for a 15% discount.