1 post tagged “23”
This morning, around 8 a.m., found me hugging a streetlight, five feet above the pavement in one Kodak's enormous parking lots. The company was imploding another obsolete building -- its second one in two days -- and with less of a media circus, I decided to concentrate on the photography.
Expert Photo Tip: when there's a crowd you need to shoot over, look for a lamp post to hang from. Andrew Lang's old saw about statistics says they're used the way a drunkard uses a lamp post -- for support, not illumination. But when the dynamite's going off, and the pavement's shaking, and you're trying to wield a 400-mm digital zoom lens, I'll take the support, thank you very much!
Amateur Implosion-Watching Tip: wear earplugs, because these detonations are louder than anything you'll experience on the Fourth of July. Also, bring a paper filter mask, because there's no predicting which way the dust cloud will travel once the building implodes. I had my mask, but forgot my earplugs...!
I'm not a true enthusiast of such "big blasts," though judging by the spectators, there are a bunch of rabid implosion groupies. They chain their little platforms to a fence post to ensure they have a great vantage point. Maybe they don't get enough of this on the Discovery Channel. But it made for interesting photos.
On Kodak.com this week, we'll post a podcast about these implosions, with video footage. Til then, I've set up an animated GIF here.
Explanation: most of Kodak Park, a vast industrial complex north of downtown Rochester, supported Kodak's immense color film photography business. In the age of digital pictures, these buildings no longer serve a practical function. And because they're enormous structures -- 450,000 to 758,000 square feet -- they don't readily adapt to alternative uses. So the company decided to implode them.
And I didn't get much sleep this weekend -- not for the noise, but because we orchestrated PR events around the implosions.
Expert Photo Tip: when there's a crowd you need to shoot over, look for a lamp post to hang from. Andrew Lang's old saw about statistics says they're used the way a drunkard uses a lamp post -- for support, not illumination. But when the dynamite's going off, and the pavement's shaking, and you're trying to wield a 400-mm digital zoom lens, I'll take the support, thank you very much!
Amateur Implosion-Watching Tip: wear earplugs, because these detonations are louder than anything you'll experience on the Fourth of July. Also, bring a paper filter mask, because there's no predicting which way the dust cloud will travel once the building implodes. I had my mask, but forgot my earplugs...!
I'm not a true enthusiast of such "big blasts," though judging by the spectators, there are a bunch of rabid implosion groupies. They chain their little platforms to a fence post to ensure they have a great vantage point. Maybe they don't get enough of this on the Discovery Channel. But it made for interesting photos.
On Kodak.com this week, we'll post a podcast about these implosions, with video footage. Til then, I've set up an animated GIF here.
Explanation: most of Kodak Park, a vast industrial complex north of downtown Rochester, supported Kodak's immense color film photography business. In the age of digital pictures, these buildings no longer serve a practical function. And because they're enormous structures -- 450,000 to 758,000 square feet -- they don't readily adapt to alternative uses. So the company decided to implode them.
And I didn't get much sleep this weekend -- not for the noise, but because we orchestrated PR events around the implosions.
