Weight Room

May 2009

Even though I've been coming to Kings Park for twenty years, there's always something on the property that surprises me. In the past year I've explored sections I've never been to before, as well as revisiting familiar scenes with the infrared camera. Still life ghost town landscapes have been a major influence in my portfolio since I first began carrying a pocket 110 camera back in the late 1970's, and this place has a limitless supply of all of that and more.

I had a hour or so to kill before a meeting, so I decided with an overcast day and a slight mist in the air, that it would be perfect for shooting infrared. I hadn't been to the powerhouse area for a while, so I parked near St. Johnland Road and walked behind the towering hulk of building 93. The power plant sits behind it on a lower elevation, with the concrete piers of the abandoned rail spur crossing the yard.


I've shot these uprights before, they make for some interesting compositions, depending on the light. But it was a building off to the side of the plant, through a broken window on a loading dock, that I found the image that opens this column.

I'll be coming back for this again. I already wish I'd gone to the car for my tripod; this was the steadiest of the seven shots I made. And even though it was made with the InfraRebel, because of the lack of direct sunlight or organic material, it's more or less a straight black and white.