Sometimes things take a while...

Those who know me personally are aware that my photography of abandonements has very little to do with documenting the places I visit.  While I definitely have an interest in the history of the sites, I try to recreate the feeling I had when I was at a particular abandonement.  Sometimes, doing so takes some time and you've got to let the image and your treatment of it perculate.

I took this image in one of Buffalo's grain elevators a few months ago.  While I liked this image from the moment I shot it, I was never 100% happy with the mood evoked by it.  Every now and then I would go back to the image and work on it some more.  It wasn't until recently that I finally got to a final product that I think captures the mood I felt when I'd taken the image in the first place.

Grain Elevator

Another view of an abandoned grain elevator in Buffalo from a trip sometime ago.  There's always a little bit of extra excitement when I get to explore a new type of building.  This was the first grain elevator I'd ever had the opportunity to explore.

Pristine Decay

In theory, the words pristine and decay should contradict one another.  Yet, on this occasion I found myself within a church that while undergoing obvious signs of decay still have a rather pristine quality about it.  It hasn't yet been exposed to a large amount of activity from scrappers, vandals, or even graffiti artists. Standing within this church, the term seemed a perfect fit.

Starving

Buffalo, NY was the world's largest grain port from the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s.  As such, the waterways in and around Buffalo were home to a large number of grain elevators, a key component in grain receival, storage, and logistics.  Today, many of these grain elevators are decaying shells, mere reminders of their former glory.