A few from a decommissioned tuberculosis center

William Petruzzo · May 25, 2009

Last night, I made a trip to a local tuberculosis treatment center that been long-since decommissioned. The intent of course was to catch some long exposures. Of course, the abandoned building pictures are somewhat obligatory, but I think they turned out pretty well. I thought I'd share them.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

For what it's worth, the Flickr set is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/petruzzophoto/sets/72157618780643242/

invisible · May 25, 2009

I'm drawn to the last one, which I think might have worked perfectly well without the light effect (maybe with the vanishing point off centre); the effect, however, breaks the symmetry and makes the photo very interesting (at least to me). Can you explain how you did it?

William Petruzzo · May 25, 2009

The hallway had no light whatsoever. According to my meter I was going to need something light a 23 minute exposure. I didn't have the equipment or the patience with me to do something like that. But also, I wanted to capture the same thing, but differently than others had done it before me. Hence the light effect.

It was achieved by taking a long exposure and having an assistant run down the hallway while twirling a flashlight around in front of him. The black lines on the ground are where the light disappeared behind his legs each time in spun around. I had a number of takes of the same concept which had more uniformity in the lines, but I liked this one best because the uniformity of the background juxtaposed the randomness of the lines perfectly.

Here are a couple of the other takes:

The first here was my second favorite after the one I originally posted. These all happened using the same technique.