Urban Exploration

Christina Laing is a fellow urban explorer from Buffalo. She has an incredible portfolio of urban exploration photos covering some of the best abandoned buildings in the Buffalo area. In fact, I can't think of another photographer that loves capturing images of Buffalo more than Christina!

A few days ago, I was fortunate to be able to turn the lens back on her during a photo shoot in Lackawanna's abandoned Bethlehem Steel North Office. Her stunning eyes remind me of the infamous Afgan Girl photo that was on the cover of National Geographic in 1984.  

85mm, 1/1250 second, f/2.5, ISO 1250

Update: here's another photo of Christina modeling for me at Bethlehem Steel North Office.

85mm, 1/125 seconds, f/1.8, ISO 1600

In recent years, there has been a lot of news coming out of Harvey, Illinois about the infamous Dixie Square Mall. The mall, only open from 1966 until 1978, was made famous in the Blues Brothers movie as the backdrop for a car chase scene.

Leading up to the filming of that scene, Dixie Square Mall had been in steady decline. The mall opened to great fanfare and 64 stores, including a Woolworth, Walgreens, Montgomery Ward and JCPenny, in November 1966. By the mid-1970s, crime and poverty in Harvey had a residual effect; the mall was down to 20 stores. The mall underwent renovations in 1976 to try and bring back shoppers, but these efforts failed to be effective.

After the movie sequences were filmed (in the summer of 1979), the mall was completely abandoned and fell into heavy disrepair.

10mm, 1/25 second, f/8.0, ISO 100, HDR

By the early 1990s, Dixie Square Mall began to look more and more like the above photo. I shot this photo on day 34 of my road trip across Canada and the United States.

CFB Rivers is an abandoned Royal Canadian Air Force military base located northwest of Brandon, Manitoba. The base opened in 1942 during World War II and closed in 1971. It now sits adjacent to a hog farm.

10-22mm, 30 minutes, f/5.6, ISO 100

Cars sit idly decaying behind an abandoned industrial building in northern Ontario. This handheld HDR was photographed on day two of my road trip across Canada and the United States.

10-22mm, 1/30 second, f/8.0, ISO 100, HDR (handheld)