My obsession with all things abandoned

For todays blog post I wanted to do another throwback and talk a little more about my love for all things abandoned. A few years ago I got the opportunity to visit and spend the day exploring the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. I went with my friends Sterling and Harry and we met up with a couple of Sterling's friends up in WV. 

Since this was a 5 to 6 hour drive away we decided to make a vacation out of it. We drove up a couple of days before and decided to explore the state and see what we could find. West Virginia is a beautiful state with a ton of abandoned places to explore. We just drove around going down back roads to see what we could find and we found some goldmines. 

After driving down this back road with many twists we came upon this old house and when I say old I mean that there was no bathrooms inside this house old. I took some video and posted it to YouTube.

The next day it was finally time. The 5 of us met at the asylum in the very early morning and we met our guide for the day. While abandoned this place is open to the public. The ghost hunters have filmed episodes for the TV show here and they lead group tours but for today the 5 of us had the whole place to ourselves.

Our guide had mentioned that the place is haunted and that there is a ghost of a 9 year old girl that roams the halls. People leave toys for her throughout the facility. The first part of the asylum we toured was an area that was restored.

The one restored section of the hospital. 

Yea it's nice and all but I want to see decay. The main hospital was 4 floors and was a huge facility. We got a tour of each floor and then we had an hour to photograph it and then we would move on to the next floor. Below are some of my favorite images from the main building. 

Looking into the cafateria 

I love long hallways

Some of the many toys left for the ghost.

Is this creepy enough for you?

This was the only ghost I saw that day. Do you see the face?

My favorite shot of the day.

After we got done touring the main building we got to explore some of the outer buildings. There was the women's center and the building for the criminally insane. These buildings were the most decayed and were the most fun to explore. Since there was only 5 of us we were free to explore these buildings on our own and we were by ourselves for a good portion of the afternoon. It really made me think about what went on in these buildings. The guide had mentioned that a lot of lobotomy's were performed in this facility and it must of been hell for a lot of the patients. 

Another hallway. This was in the women's center.

I dont know what it is about bathrooms in abandoned buildings that I love so much.

And another hallway. 

Found the morgue. The guide said that people like to get their picture taken on the slab.

An old coffin. 

I hope to come back here again someday. Maybe when I start filming my movie I can make this one of my stops. Thanks for reading my blogs every week I really hope that you enjoy them. I promise to have some more new images soon. 

Playing around with IR

Hello everyone another Sunday is here and today I want to talk about infrared camera's. I picked up a Nikon D40x from my friend Steve that was converted to IR and started to play around with it. At first I was just shooting landscapes as I thought that is what it would be most suited for. For it's first outing I went out to Umstead park which is only 10 minutes away from me on a beautiful day and decided to for for a hike along the trails and I took these shots.

I really loved the way the images gave off that post apocalyptic feel. I knew now that I was hooked on IR. For my next outing with the camera I decided to bring ti with me on an outing with my local camera club to a train museum and see how shooting objects would turn out.

To say I was pumped about how the images turned out would be an understatement. Now i really want to experiment with it and see how portraits would turn out. I had a shoot scheduled with my friend Emily and we went back to Umstead park and while I shot most of the shoot with my normal camera I pulled out the IR camera and fired off a few portraits of her to see what it would look like.

Too my surprise it turned her brown hair blue and gave the pictures a fairy tale look to them. Another thing that I discovered was that it really smooths out the skin and removes all blemishes so there is really no retouching that is needed. 

Next I am going to show some images from one of my recent shoots with my friend Kristen. Her hair was already dyed blue so i was curious to see what color her hair would turn too. I was surprised to see that it turned her hair white.

Well that is going to do it for this weeks blog. I hope that you enjoyed the images as much as I do. I am going to start a whole series of portraiture in IR and I will share more of them on all of my social media pages. Until next week.

Time for another throwback

Hello everyone! It's Sunday and that means it's time for another blog post. This post is coming out later then usual as I normally write these on Saturday and then post them on Sunday morning but last night Jeannie and I went out to celebrate a friends birthday and it was also daylight savings time so that is my excuse. Ok on with the blog

For this week I wanted to do a throwback to a cool place that my friend Nita and I explored. She had told me about this old leaning barn that was in the middle of nowhere in southern Virginia. My friend and urban exploring buddy Sterling had shot the barn and the pictures were amazing and I decided that I needed to see this place for myself. 

We hit the road very early in the morning as we wanted to get to the location for sunrise and it was about a 90 minute drive to get there. After a couple of wrong turns we made it just as the sun was coming up. Got out my camera and got this shot.

I fell in love with this shot. The contrails from the planes and the road all led up to the barn. After this shot the sun was really starting to come up so it was time to try to get some different angles of this amazing barn.

The crazy in me decided to go inside to see if there was anything of interest in the barn. I felt that is was stable enough and I made sure to stay by the door so I could jump out quickly if I needed too. All that I really saw inside was a bunch of empty bottles of DDT.

As I was finishing up taking my photos I decided to get one last shot and I shot this HDR photo which turned out to be my favorite shot of the day. This is 5 shot HDR.

After i processed these i decided to make prints out of the first picture I shoed and this last one. The first one I had printed on canvas and the HDR I had printed on metal. When I got the metal print back i was floored on the amount of detail in the photo and how much it popped. I have hung both of these at the gallery and have sold a few prints of each. Every first Friday I get so many nice comments on this photo and I also get asked if I photoshopped the lean into the barn. I have to tell them that I am not anywhere near the skill level to do something like this in post. 

Now for the sad news. About a month after I shared these pictures another friend of mine made the drive up to photograph the barn and all he found was a pile of rubble. I am not sure what made the barn finally fall but it made me sad as I wanted to go back again and photograph it in different lighting conditions.

Well thats going to do it for this weeks post. If you would like to see these images in person please come see me at the gallery on the first Friday of every month. I am at 311 Gallery located at 311 W. Martin St. in downtown Raleigh. I will see you next Sunday for another post. 

The start of a very big project

Hi everyone! For this weeks blog I wanted to talk about a project that I have been wanting to do for quite a long time but I have been putting it on the back burner as I took care of other things but i figured it was time to see if I can actually pull it off.

As many of you know I love to photograph abandoned buildings. There is something in the decay of these old structures that just draws me to it like a moth to a light bulb. i have also been falling in love with shooting video and filmmaking and I have been studying filmmaking and honing my editing skills while running my own YouTube channel and the Peace Camera YouTube channel. Now that I feel that my skills are getting better I think I am ready to take the big leap on this idea.

So what the idea Dave? Just spit it out already. Ok so here it is. I want to make a documentary film all about abandoned places. I want to start out by filming some of the local places that I have been to already as well as meet up with other urban explorers like myself and interview them on what fascinates them with abandoned buildings.

I would like to travel around the country visiting a lot of abandoned spots that are high on my list of places to visit. This includes abandoned malls, schools, hospitals, factories and amusement parks. If possible I would even like to hit certain places around the world. One place I definitely want to visit and is the number one place on my bucket list of places to go would be Chernobyl in the Ukraine.  For years I have dreamed about visiting there. Yes I know it is the site of the worst nuclear accident in history but It has been over 30 years ago and it is now relatively safe to visit and they now lead tours through there. But it is an entire city that has been abandoned so I have to go if I get the chance.

So how am i going to do this you ask? Good question. I am hoping to do this with some help. I am starting to work up the numbers on the expense that this undertaking will be. Once I get all of that figured out I am going to record a trailer and place it on Kickstarter or Go fund me and try to raise the funds for this. I also need to figure out what my backers will get in return. One of this things I would also like to come out of this project would be a book documenting all the places I have visited and maybe offer limited edition prints as well. I want to make sure that I do this right and put out a product that I can be proud of and stand behind. 

Yes I know that this is a big undertaking. I will be bringing in help as needed and if I need to figure out a timetable for completing this project. I am estimating that this would take two years to complete. This would give me a year plus to travel to these locations and film and then about 6 months or longer to edit. Once it is done I would be submitting to film festivals to try to gain exposure and then I would hope to get it out on the mainstream media.

So yes this has been what I have been thinking about for quite a long time. I cant wait to get this started. I am working up the numbers and starting to cut a trailer that i hope to release within the next month or two. I hope that you will support me in this adventure. I will keep everyone up to date here on my blog and on my other social media accounts.

Until next week I will leave you with a few of the videos I have done in the past of abandoned places. 

Beauty and Decay with Jackie Tabor

For this weeks blog I am very excited to finally be able to share these images from a recent shoot. I had wanted to post them last week but since I had submitted these to some magazines for publication I was unable to as they require the images to be exclusive. Unfortunately I did not make it into the magazines but there is still hope for one more but they don't require the images to be exclusive.

There is an old abandoned house next to my apartment complex buried in the woods and is really only accessible during the winter months when all the leaves are on the ground and the bugs are not out. I had tried going in there during the summer months but I kept pulling ticks off of me and trying to avoid all the spider webs as well.

Since we have been having a warm February I reached out to a model that I have known for years on Facebook but I never had the opportunity to work with named Jackie. I reached out to her and explained my beauty and decay concept to her and she was in. My wonderful girlfriend Jeannie provided the dress for the shoot as well as a headpiece that she made for me as well as some props that we had found during some of our shopping trips.

The day of the shoot arrived and it was a beautiful morning. Jeannie did the makeup and we walked over to the abandoned house. 

We then walked back further into the woods to an old tobacco barn and fired off a few more shots.

I really loved the way the light was coming through the hole in the roof. This was Jackie's idea for this pose by the way.

As we started heading back I decided that I wanted to try one more pose. There is a few old cars buried in the woods by the house and I wanted to see if I could capture something with the car. This is the result.

Well that is going to wrap it up for this week. I am really going to try to get out and shoot a lot more for myself this year. Working with my girlfriend Jeannie on some of her shoots has really inspired me to do some more creative portraiture. Until next week. 

Model: Jackie Tabor

Photography: David Spector Photography

Make-Up: Jeannie Nadja

Wardrobe: NEW LOOK dress |JNS DESIGNED headpiece 

I wanted to post some images but instead it's video of my dog eating bubbles

So last night as I finished up editing the images from my shoot last Sunday with Jackie tabor I was all ready to share them with everyone in today's blog. Jeannie came over and i was showing her the edits and how beautiful her headpiece came out when she suggested that I need to submit these to some magazines to see if I can get them published.

I immediately became excited about the idea and we started doing the crops needed for the submission process. We came up with 8 images to submit and I will be sending them off to the editors today to see if I get accepted.

Since most magazines want exclusive images that is the reason I cannot share them with you today. But as soon as I find out I will share them so please be patient for the next couple of weeks. I have never been published in a magazine before  so this would be amazing if I get in. Jeannie has been published quite a few times.

Ok so now what do I talk about in today's blog post? Jeannie had bought some bubbles for her cat to play with but Spooky cat was having nothing to do with it so she asked if i wanted them to use with my two dogs.

When she came over last night we tried it so see of the pups would like it. Millie was like Spooky cat and wanted nothing to do with them but Buster was all over it. So i shot some video with my iPhone and got the below video. I smile and laugh every time I watch it and i hope you do as well.

That's going to wrap it up for today. I will keep everyone updated on the magazine submission process over on my Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/DavidSpectorPhotography/ 

Time for another throwback. This time with Emily.

For this week I didn't have anything new to share (but I will next week) so I decided to do another throwback blog post. For this one I wanted to share some of my favorite images that I have taken of one of my good close friends and an amazing model Emily. 

Emily and I met a couple of years ago at a Christmas party and I knew right away that we were going to be close friends. We messaged each other quite a few times and then we set up a shoot at Raven Rock State park.

We met and walked around the park for a while looking for areas to shoot. I saw a really nice formations of rock and we started to shoot.

We had a wonderful shoot and we knew that we had to plan another one.

My friend Nita had taken me to this property that she had permission to shoot at and it had a wonderful mountaintop view. I told Emily about it and we set up the shoot

On the day of the shoot while driving up there we knew that there was a threat of thunderstorms but we decided to risk it and shoot anyway. We hiked up the mountain and when we got to the location I could see the storm clouds rolling in and i knew we had about 15 minutes to shoot and then we would be getting the bad weather. I quickly set up and did our shoot. I have to say the storm clouds made the shoot .

After I took this last shot I told Emily that we had to leave the mountain. I quickly packed up my gear and Emily barely had a chance to get dressed as almost hurricane force winds started blowing around us. We started running down the mountain and I almost lost my way as the trail we came up now had a tree down across it so I didn't recognize the trail. Emily only in her underwear and I ran down the mountain to the car and to safety. I have to say I was scared that we were going to get struck by lightning or have a tree fall on us during the run down the mountain but it was all worth it.

For the last shoot that I want to share this week Emily and I went to a spot along the Eno river where I had assisted my friend Paul on a shoot a few weeks earlier and I knew that I had to come back to this awesome location. For this shoot we were going to do a fine art shoot and get Emily in the river posing along all of the rock formations in the river. Again there was another storm brewing but we had a lot more time to shoot before the weather would hit us. The water was nice and warm and I even waded in the water with my camera to get these shots.

Well that is it for today. I have a wonderful shoot lined up on Sunday morning with a model named Jackie and we are going to shoot at an abandoned house in the woods next to my apartment complex and i look forward to sharing them with you next week.

Running a YouTube channel for work

In today's blog post I wanted to write about a big new project that I am working on. A while back when I started working for Peace Camera I pitched the idea of doing a YouTube channel for the store to build up our social media presence and use it to showcase certain items in the store. Once we had finished the move to the new store location I was given the go ahead by the owner to start doing these videos.

For the first video I decided to do an unboxing video as those videos are some of the most popular videos on YouTube. We had just received one of the brand new Sigma 85mm F1.4 Art lenses and I decided to choose this for the first video. I tried to film it while the store was open and even if we were slow enough for me to film there was just too many distractions so I decided to film when the store was closed. 

i spent a few hours editing and making some lower thirds animations and I published the first video to the new channel. 

in the first day we gained 5 subscribers to the channel and a few comments that contained good feedback. The owner loved it as asked me to start doing more videos for the store. We decided that I would film and produce a video once a week to the channel. Now the next big thing to figure out is the content that I want to produce for the store. 

For my next video I decided to talk all about our used gear section as we are always buying and selling used gear. 

I am having a lot of fun filming and editing these videos. It not only forces me to push out a new video every week it also is helping me learn a lot more about video editing and also motion graphics. This week I filmed our latest video which was all about our huge supply of seamless background paper.

Next weeks video I think will be all about our wide selection of film developing supplies as every one of us at the store loves to shoot with film and it is certainly not dead in our eyes.

Now that I am producing these videos on a regular basis I need to start doing more videos for my personal YouTube channel. If you would like to subscribe to either the Peace Camera channel or my channel I will put links to both of them down below. 

Thanks for reading and I will see you in next weeks blog.

Peace Camera's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwLiuDE0QbHVdhksLgayQuw 

My Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdeTbKXbLpcEeRacp2l5J5g 

Another trip around the sun

Thursday January 26 was my 46th birthday. As I look back at the past year it was full of up's and down's. I lost my mom at the very beginning of the year and then I decided to make a career change and leave the world of IT and enter a career in the creative field of photography and videography. This is my passion and it's want I want to do for the rest of my life. 

I have also been dealing with a bunch of medical issues. I have a hiatal hernia and that means I get a lot of acid reflux and pretty much feel like crap most of the time. I am on a very restricted diet and I am unable to eat most of the foods I want and even with the medicine I am on I still get sick at least once a week. On top of that my gastro doc does not take my new insurance and now I have to find a new doctor and start the process all over again.

Back to the good side this year I met the love of my life Jeannie and she has been so good for me. She helps motivate me when i am not feeling motivated. To say that she is the best thing to happen to me would be an understatement. Words can not express how much I love her. 

Knowing how much I like to do light painting photography and how much i like Star Wars she combined them both and got me some toys (I mean tools) for light painting for my birthday.

I am really thinking that this will be the year for me. I am in love and I want to work hard to kill it this year with my business and make my dreams come true. i am going to cut the blog short today as I am tired but i am going to leave you with a video playing with some of the new lights that Jeannie got me and it also shows how i am just a kid at heart. See you next week.

Saying goodbye to an old friend

In today's blog post I want to talk about saying goodbye to an old friend. (well sort of) When I first got into photography many years ago I went to Peace Camera on Peace St. in downtown Raleigh and I purchased my first DSLR a used Nikon D60 with an 18-70mm lens. This purchase ignited the fire in me and I found my passion and love for photography. 

I shopped there for many years. I have traded in my gear to upgrade to better gear and also have made good friendships with most of the people that worked there. I have also taken classes there and I have learned a lot from the staff members. 

A few months ago as my career path was changing I was given an opportunity to work there part time. I loved this idea as I would get to talk photography all day and pass along my knowledge of photography that I have learned over the years to customers who came into the store. Right after I started working there we were told that we would have to move. our location along with all of the other stores in the two to three block radius was going to have to do the same. A new project was going to rebuild the offramp from Capitol Blvd and then bulldoze all the buildings and build a high rise condo complex with a Publix supermarket on the ground floor. 

We had a few months to find a new place and move the shop. As the search for a new place began we knew that we had way too much stuff to move. When you are in a location for over 20 years you accumulate quite a bit of stuff. Every Saturday we would move our clearance items outside and have a moving sale. We sold quite a bit over those weekends and really thinned out what we had. 

We had also found a new location in north Raleigh in the Quail Corners shopping center. The store was much smaller then what we currently had by appx. 1800 square feet but we felt that it would be a good location for us. Plenty of parking and lots of food choices would help draw in a lot of new customers. 

Moving day had come and we had our last moving sale on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and when we closed up that evening we all stayed and started packing the store. Sunday morning we all gathered and loaded the store into the back of a U-Haul and what we could fit into our cars and started the moving process. It was quite a long day as we had to load and unload two full trips with the U-Haul and many other trips with our cars but we got it done. 

We spent the first few days getting it all set up and we had our grand reopening on black Friday. There were quite a few more trips made to the old store over the next few weeks to bring over as much as we could to the new location and I have to say I am really happy with how the new store turned out. 

Friday the 20th of January was the last day that we had the opportunity to get anything at the old location and have the keys so I decided that I wanted to go down there and take some pictures and video. 

I had mentioned to the others that in my previous stops over the last couple of weeks to the old store that it really looked like one of the old abandoned buildings that I love to explore and that I was going to photograph the store in that style. 

Looking towards the new equipment counter and the book section.

Behind the used equipment counter 

Lot's of old manuals for old camera's

obsolete camera parts

I also shot some video as well and I will leave that below for your enjoyment. While I say goodbye to the old store I say hello to the new one and hope to enjoy it for many years to come. If you would like to come see the new store we are located at 5039 Falls of Neuse Rd in Raleigh. until next week.