Rust & Ruinism

Photographing decaying or abandoned spaces has been a huge interest of mine for years. On a Sunday morning in early January 2025 an email from National Parks at Night landed in my inbox announcing "one space left!" for their Rust & Ruinism workshop. It took about a nanosecond for what I had read to register in my brain, and I hit the register button and had my credit card number entered in record time. I was committed! This workshop, much of which would be night photography, was being held in some impressive locations - one of which, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, a place I'd been wanting to photograph for ages. The workshop began in Mansfield, OH at the Ohio State Reformatory - this "prison" made famous by the movie "Shawshank Redemption." We then traveled to Weston, WV and spent an evening in the buildings on the grounds of the Asylum....the creepy factor was palpable. The trip ended at the Carrie Blast Furnaces in Pittsburgh, PA. It was a great week spent with amazingly creative photographers, tromping around once grand buildings meant to reform or heal, and getting dirty rummaging around in a hulking, relic of a bygone industrial era.