Post 14 - Lonaconing Silk Mill
15-minute read, including photo captions at bottom
Abandoneers?
Abandonauts?
Abandonographers?
IDK….I’m tryna come up with a name for “those-that-are-driven-to-seek-out-abandoned-places-in-order-to-explore-and-maybe-photograph-them”. Any ideas? Abandoniks? Abandoneros? Abandonistas (nah - that sounds like a para-military guerrilla faction).
I mean, I shoot enough abandoned places, and I meet enough wayward souls that “heed the call of the decrepit”, that I figured there should be a name for people that suffer from this ailment. A rally cry. A “we’re-all-in-this-together” and “you’re-not-alone” kind of moniker. Or whatever. You know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t.
Ok, well - Abandoneers sounds too Mickey Mouse Clubish; Abandonauts sounds too Saturday morning cartoonish; Abandoniks and Abandonistas have political undertones; Abandoneros are actually a “thing”: it’s the name for the poor (mostly kids) in the Philippines who have become gold seekers (very sad - didn’t expect to run into that when I Googled the word).
So, I guess Abandonographers is the choice - and there’s already an #abandonography hash tag on Instagram, which, it seems, seals the deal.
And so it begins….Abandonographers Unite!
On September 15th, 2018, a small group of…wait for it…Abandonographers convened in the town of Lonaconing, MD - about 2 1/2 hours NW of DC - to pay homage to a site that has gained a mythic status among, uh, Abandonographers. (Damn, I guess it’s inevitable that now I’m going to totally over-use that word).
The Lonaconing Silk Mill (aka the Klotz Silk Throwing Mill and the General Textile Mill, after the companies that formerly operated the plant) is (was?) one of the last somewhat-intact silk mills in the US. I say “was?” because the owner of the mill, Herb Crawford, died recently, and since his family has stopped allowing tours of the building, its fate is somewhat in limbo-land. The place was in a state of extreme disrepair when I visited (a fair portion of the roof had caved in, and was leaking heavily in several other areas), and although Mr. Crawford had made several attempts since he bought the mill in 1978 to secure financing to re-open the site, none of them came to fruition. Allowing historical and photography tours was one way of generating some income to at least keep the place open.
Since the completion of construction in April, 1907, the mill operated - with a waxing and waning work force - until June, 1957. At its height, the mill employed over 350 workers, but due to changing socio-economic factors (including the Great Depression and WWII), by the time it closed there were only 6 workers on the payroll. The youngest employee on record was 7 years old, and there were likely many children of varying ages working there over the years. When it finally shuttered, nothing was removed or cleaned up, so there are still personal effects strewn about the place, and much of the machinery is exactly where it was at closing.
In 2007, the George’s Creek Watershed Association nominated the mill for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
I’m not 100% sure about this, but I believe that our group may have been the last -or at least one of the last - to visit the place.
The mill - then and now (not sure when “then” was, but it looks like a long time ago).
For an Abandonographer, this site is/was pure gold-spun Nirvana. Or maybe silk-spun Nirvana.
It was dark, dank, dirty, gritty, grimy, grungy and just generally super-utter-nasty in every way imaginable. It smelled awful, and many parts of the flooring were so buckled and mold-covered that you had to walk like you were on ice. There was standing water in several spots, and just touching anything guaranteed instant tetanus.
I was in awe of the place.
Except when some drops of water dripped down the back of my shirt while I was in the basement.
Then I just wanted to jump straight into a detox-shower since I imagined a complex brew of asbestos, lead, and a dozen other toxic chemicals seeping through the floors and into the pores of my skin and morphing my DNA into some horrible crab-clawed super-monster that must consume human brains to survive.
Yeah, the place as spooky as HELL. WAY spookier than the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, now that I think about it. If there are ghosts anywhere, this is where they’d be hangin’. Not literally. Well, who knows, maybe literally.
In fact, I couldn’t help remarking to myself several times that this would have been the perfect set for a horror movie. You know, the kind where a gang of drunken high-schoolers dare each other to hold a seance at midnight in the basement and end up awakening a bevy of hell-spawn that hunt them down one by one, graphically gutting and hanging them from hooks on the wall. Yah. Ok. Meanwhile, back at the Asylum….
This event - running in two “shifts” (day and night) and incorporating a light-painting tutorial in the evening - was led by Don Rosenberger (of the Fairfax (& DC Metro Area) Photography Meetup), who also led the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum tour in April, 2019.
Don gave a free lecture in January, 2020 entitled “Rust and Ruins” where he introduced the concept of neuroaesthetics, which goes a long way to explaining the attraction of Abandonographers to “broken places” (which, let’s face it, are usually “broken” due to being abandoned):
There is a body of research within the fields of neuroaesthetics and neuroanatomy that deals with the way we process visual information. To simplify, our vision works on the tonal changes and edges, and our visual cortex initially produces basic geometric shapes and then overlays the interpretation. Furthermore, we "like" tension, especially light vs. dark, color vs. B&W, etc.
When you consider "decrepitude", the subjects are often characterized by strong geometric shapes and distinct lines (headlights, door edges, prison bars, rows of equipment, etc), textures (lots of transitional tonal ranges), and areas of contrasting light.
So, we like abandoned places because they’re full of awesome shapes and textures that satisfy the inherent pattern-recognition algorithms hard-wired into our visual cortices (yeah, I had to look that one up since “cortexes” got the red underline of the spellchecker). Makes total sense to me - in fact, it’s the first explanation that really seems to have nailed it. And it sounds so freakin’ cool when you say “neuroaesthetics” out loud. That is some serious PhD-level lingo right there - makes you smarter just thinking about it.
I took the time to quote Don’s lecture from my notes, not just to take you down a science-y rabbit hole, but as a segway into what will characterize many of the photos you’ll see in this set. Besides the fact that you feel like you’re stepping into a time-capsule, one of the main attractions of this site is the row-upon-row of symmetrically-placed machinery that dwindles off into a distant vanishing point. In short, this place was full of “distinct lines”, “textures”, and “areas of contrasting light” that makes your visual cortex do the Ed Grimely dance (Martin Short character):
There are many more images in the Gallery for this post so don’t forget to check that out to get the full view of the Lonaconing Silk Mill.
Here’s a short “atmospheric” video to give you a feel for what it’s like walking around inside the mill, something you may not get from the stills alone:
Like last week’s post, many of these images have been heavily processed, so in a few relevant cases, I will share the before-and-after screenshots with some thoughts about the process and reasoning behind my editing choices.
The nature of this place put me in the mind of recreating some of the “old-timey” feel of historical photos. With that in mind, in several instances, I chose a faded B&W look, with “worn” or “burnished” edges (basically a reverse vignette in which the corners are lightened instead of darkened).
Bumping the highlights and shadows on the original, and adding a desaturated olive/cyan split tone, resulted in the age-worn, “well-thumbed” look of the final image.
I used nearly the identical technique as the photo above (except for adding some more grain into this one). These classic Toledo brand “Honest Weight” No-Springs scales were by far the most popular industrial scale in their day, and Toledo scales - in various forms - continue to be a dominant brand in the marketplace.
Here’s that “dark, dank, dirty, gritty, grimy, grungy” look that I was talking about.
Pretty much the same settings as the previous two images - including split tone and grain - produces the gritty B&W final image.
Increasing the contrast and shadow levels, and desaturating all colors except blue and purple, led to the final image, shot down in the basement during the “day shift”. Note that the shutter speed on this shot is 20 seconds, indicative of how dark it was inside, even in the daytime.
The V-shaped positioning of the shelves in the foreground help emphasize the repetitive lines and textures of the machinery, as well as add depth to the image.
Even though the color settings of this shot are identical to the last one, the difference in lighting and natural rust colors of this scene make it look very different to the previous one.
This has the same split tone effect as the previous images - in this case you can clearly see the (desaturated) olive-y/mustard-y tint in the highlights and the metallic bluish/cyan tint in the shadows. The difference in this image, though, is that I turned off the grain, and bumped the sharpness to give it that “cleaner” look and enhance the reflections in the water.
The reason for my processing choices on this one should be clear once you see the before and after comparison - I much prefer the more pallid, but refined, feel of the final image over the dark, muddy-brown original. Don’t you?
Same scene, same settings, wider view, emphasizing that “time-capsule” feel with things just sort of left to rot in situ.
A tighter shot of that cart from the previous shot, this time processed using the Painterly Color preset that I mention in the Shenandoah post.
Since water was seeping down to the basement from the leaky roof three floors up, I made several attempts to catch a drop hitting the water. It took a few minutes, but I finally caught a drop in mid-splash. I wish this was the only drop I caught, I could have done without the one that went down the back of my shirt.
Back to the gritty, grungy look for this one - a muted color scheme and healthy dose of sharpening and selective lightening bring out the rust of the gears in the foreground.
You can see the effects of adding Texture and Clarity, as well as bumping the highlights in the foreground, to result in that gritty look.
Due to the reflections, there is something strangely peaceful and bucolic about this shot, despite the decrepit surroundings. It reminds of post-apocalyptic films where a small band of survivors trudge through a cityscape of broken buildings with weeds and trees growing everywhere - you know, the ones where “humans are the virus” and the “Earth is healing” now that most of the population has been wiped out… : -)
Another great example of repetitive leading lines - my visual cortex is doing somersaults right now. Rather than show you before-and-after shots of this, I’m going to show you multiple views of this fuse box - I must have spent 15-20 minutes shooting this enthralling subject, trying out different light-painting techniques and focal lengths.
A slightly wider, grittier B&W shot, using the same olive/cyan split tone settings from previous shots.
Zoomed out a bit more, showing more of the surroundings, including the crud-encrusted pipes overhead.
Someone must have put this newspaper here after the mill closed since it’s dated October 28th, 1962 - but it’s still an interesting historical artifact, given the headline and time period it covers. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to live through the Cuban Missile Crisis, especially for the kids during “duck and cover” drills at school. On the other hand, at least they got to GO to school…..
An overloaded shelf, groaning under the weight of too many heavy electrical motors.
The same shelf, shot at night and light-painted with a blue gel over the flashlight.
Another fascinating fuse box - complete with multiple views:
I love a good, sharp, high-contrast B&W, but sometimes the power-punch of color is nothing short of revelatory…
A lot of photographic compositional advice that I’ve seen can be summed up with the phrase: “fill the frame”!
Another example of a gut-punch of color - there’s no way this scene was destined for B&W!
Sometimes “super-soaking” the colors - and turning the sharpness all the way down - just feels right. You can see how much I’ve saturated everything here - I do like the occasional blunt-force trauma to the retinas!
Here are two subjects that could go either way - first the ultra-sharp, gritty B&W….
….followed by its softer, saturated color-counterpart, sharpness turned down as far as it will go.
As much as I love the industrial-strength, gritty sharpness of this B&W….
…I also love how the interplay of light and shadow of this night time light-painted version lends a dreamy depth to this soft, saturated color version.
There were many racks and shelves (above and below) that were strewn with artifacts of the previous population that worked in this building. To me, these scenes are equally fascinating for their historical insight as for their “still life” look-and-feel.
Although I enjoy this shot for its photographic value, I’ve included it mostly as a historical artifact. The date on this is June, 1913, so it’s been there since shortly after the mill opened - but, what’s really funny is that the phone number (just visible to the right of the McKaig’s name) is only 3 digits (754)! I’m guessing you would have rung the operator and said “Give me Cumberland 754” (or something along those lines), since this would presumably have been before phones could be dialed. Man, I’m really dating myself, just by being able to make a reasonably confident educated guess like that!
If memory serves, this was the second floor of the factory. I used my Painterly Color preset to add the dreamy depth to this shot.
Normally, I would try to “correct” the over-exposed bank of windows on the right (using the Dehaze function and various filters), but in this case, I like that hazy, dreamy, “blown-out” feeling, so I actually enhanced it by turning the sharpness all the way down.
Another historical artifact, this calendar shows the month of February, 1957 - just 4 months before the final closure of the mill in June, 1957.
Some more light painting from the “night shift” - although I used the same split toning settings as many of the previous B&W shots, the effect on this scene is very different, not only because it’s in color, but because of the overall color scheme of the scene (predominantly blues and reds).
I’ve included the Split Toning panel on the right of this screen shot to show you the two colors used for the highlights and shadows (see the two rectangle “swatches” circled in red).
I was very new to light painting for this shoot - in fact, it was the first time I’d done it on such a large scale - and I struggled a bit with hiding the light of the flashlight from shining directly into the camera. At one point, I basically decided “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, and did a series of shots pointing my little handheld LED light directly at the lens. I experimented with several different colored gels attached to these tiny keychain lights, which are incredibly bright for their size. I also used various LED and incandescent flashlights (with different colored gels) to provide varying shades of color:
Keychain LEDs with gels taped on
Mini-Mag light with red gel and plastic “hood” taped on to help shield the bulb from direct exposure to the lens
With the following shots (above and below), I’m just fooling around with different lights to see what will come out. In these shots, I’m also wearing a headlamp - sometimes on the white light setting, and sometimes with the red bulb on - which is why you see two sets of light trails - one from my arm moving and the other from my head bobbing.
Flashlight-illuminated racks ‘o junk in the basement
I used the same split toning color scheme and other settings from previous shots, but I also had to bump the exposure quite a bit (about 2 stops) on this one. I kept the ISO set to its base level of 100 (to minimize long-exposure sensor noise) and the aperture at f/8 (to maximize sharpness), but even at a 30-second exposure, that left the original image severely underexposed.
As I learned from Don - and through practice on this night - the most effective light painting is done by keeping the flashlight moving close to your subject. For a scene like this, ideally you would have walked along the row, highlighting the elements that you wanted to emphasize (as long as you keep moving - and wear reasonably dark clothing - you won’t show up in the photo). Since that was neither safe nor practical (the floor was too slippery to move quickly enough to paint the rows within the 30-second shutter speed, and the space was too narrow for my enormous hulk to fit comfortably), I had to light the scene by focusing the beam of my flashlight on the tightest setting and moving it up and down the rows from a single point (behind the camera). To further highlight the various parts of the scene I wanted to emphasize, I used some post-processing trickery. MWA HA HA HA HA. (That’s evil laughter, in case you didn’t pick up on that).
The red oval overlay on the lower right row of spindles shows the affected area of the radial filters I applied in Lightroom. The settings for that filter are shown in the panel on the right - in other words, exposure bumped by 0.8 stops, contrast, highlights, and shadows increased, etc. Lightroom will only display one overlay/filter at a time, but the red-circled Edit Pins show the position of the other (similarly-shaped) radial filters laid out along each row - all have the same settings. I used a similar technique in many of the shots of this set.
As you can see from the original, simple global changes to the image would not have helped light up the individual elements of the frame - the radial filters are necessary to simulate the depth of “proper” light painting technique.
This shot used a more straightforward light painting technique: moving the flashlight in a circular motion in the center of the frame. No major editing or post-processing trickery involved here - just some slightly boosted highlights.
Although these women’s shoes are surely “authentic”, I doubt that’s how they sat since the closure of the mill. I’m sure some photographer moved them into that position at some point to get a shot, but I used them just as they were. Incidentally, if you look closely, you can see (at least the legs of) a ghost on the far right edge of the frame….I guess they do exist….unless that’s a photographer doing some light painting….you think?
An example of multiple gels of different colors used in the same shot. In this case, I’m able to walk down the row to the right, shining my lights from above and through the machinery to give it that back-lit look. You can just see the light trails of one of my flashlights (with a red gel) in the upper right corner of the frame. No major post-processing on this one, just bumped the exposure and saturation a bit.
I’m going to leave with a case of Pareidolia - no, that’s not the latest novel virus strain.
In case you’re not familiar with the term, Wikipedia defines it as:
“…the tendency for incorrect perception of a stimulus as an object, pattern or meaning known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music”.
If you scrunch up your eyes a bit, and move back from the monitor, you can just see a gaping mouth, (crooked) nose, eyes, ears, and even “hair” in the front “face” of that set of gears up above. Or maybe it’s just me. Yeah, probably just me. Oh well, what can I say - been staring at this stuff too long, I guess….
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