Consequently, I’m bringing my camera.

I’ve also realized that my wide angle lens leaves some sharpness to be desired. I’ve been drooling over Nikon’s 14-24mm f/2.8G lens for a few months, and decided that Colorado’s picturesque vistas will be the perfect place to see if I can push this lens and see its benefits.

Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G

So, I’m renting one from lensrentals.com (I tried rentglass.com, but they were out of stock). It arrives tomorrow, enough time to play around and get used to it before I leave. Wish me luck.

-aigulf

Blueprints discovered in one of the offices at Carrie No. 7

The first time through, the site overwhelmed me. It was impossible for me to critically look and identify any of the components, the whole facility seemed like a mess of pipes, valves, and rust. But, now, I can picture the facility, operational and buzzing with the activity of machinery and man.

Furnace no. 6

I can imagine the clouds of steam erupting into the air as the molten pig iron is drained from the blast furnaces into torpedo cars, for the trip across the river to be refined one last time into steel.

I can feel the heat radiating through thick glass and asbestos, into the operator’s booth, and I can almost taste the soot.

But, mostly, I can feel the weight of the place. The lives made here, the dreams that died here, the resignation when this place died, when the hundreds here lost their livelihood. The abruptness with which this facility closed is evident everywhere. Things scattered, like someone locked the door while everyone was away at lunch.

Check out the full set of photos on flickr (from both trips).

-aigulf

A few months ago, I took this photo…

Nothing special. But I thought it was funny how someone had written ‘Pee Hole’ on that valve. I laughed. I showed it to a few people. They laughed. That’s it.

What’s surprising to me is how popular this photo is. A few weeks ago, while checking out my statistics on flickr, I noticed that the photo had over 300 views. It’s my second most viewed photo, and it’s simply a snapshot of some graffiti. What’s going on? It wasn’t like I put the photo in a butt load of groups and spammed a bunch of discussions with links to it. I shared it was about a dozen people, and never expected it to get past 20 or 30 views. When I looked at the photos stats, I saw a trend. The photo below shows the daily hit count for the last month. This is almost 6 months after the photo was posted…

It’s not that it’s getting a huge surge of hits or anything, what’s funny is that it’s always getting a hit. Every day I get at least 1 or 2, and this has been happening constant since the day I put it up, 6 months ago. Why is this photo so consistently popular?

The answer….look at the referrals.

Not surprisingly, it’s coming from web searches. But, what are people searching for…who could possibly be looking for this random snapshot of some graffiti?

I’ve tracked this every day over the past month or so and the search terms are always some variant of “pee hole”, “pee hole pictures” or “pee hole photos”.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

Every single day, there is at least one person out there on the interweb who is looking for photos of a “pee hole”…and they’re usually taken to this photo.

I feel dirty.

-aigulf

That sinking feeling...

-aigulf

Nothing's forever...

Carrie Furnace, a derelict remnant of Homestead Steel Works, in Pittsburgh, was named a historical landmark a few years ago, and is set to be renovated as a museum sometime in the near future (although, how near that is may change with the current economic status). I recently came across some photographs of the furnace, showing the decay and graffiti that has peppered the remains of the furnace that created the skyscrapers in many of America’s cities.

Wire-frame Deer

What I really want to know is if this deer was built before or after the furnace was de-commissioned in 1983.

EDIT: It was an effort by several local artists in the early 1990′s.  They used materials that they found on-site.

Gnorm is sad...

There are about 30 photos in the set…check them out.

-aigulf

p.s.
sorry for the long hiatus…it was christmas…and i’m lazy…

Not just green

Open Courts

And, of course, a self-portrait (who doesn’t like looking at my ugly mug?).

Self-Portrait

I will try to capture the perigee moon tonight, hopefully the skies are kinder.

-aigulf