It was my final full day in America, my flight was due to depart the following evening so naturally we had to go out on a high of course. I had originally planned to see just one of these power stations but on the way to it we decided to stop off at another one on route and what a good choice that turned out to be. What better way than to finish a trip with a pair of power stations! Considering up until this point it had been an almost unbelievable six years since I last stepped foot inside a large power station that still had everything left in-situ I was pretty pumped.
Americans, as I'm sure you're now aware, are quite secretive when it comes to locations and sometimes it can be difficult to put two and two together but as soon as we stepped into the turbine hall here both me and my friend pretty much at the same time said something like 'ohhh it's this one!'. Everything was pretty relaxed once getting in, that is until the end when things got a little more tense. Now this power station although it's been hit quite hard by scrappers since it closed in 2011 has some fantastic retro laboratory rooms still in very nice condition and it was whilst I was in one of them with my friends that I noticed a pair of workers in hi-vis gear inspecting the side of an adjacent active building for something. It was a Sunday so we all thought this very odd, perhaps they'd been called out to check on something we thought. The good thing was the windows we were looking at them out of were tinted, the bad thing was they were directly in the line of sight of our entrance point. After a few minutes of debate we decided to just go for it as looking at the plant from the air and his rough position on the adjacent building we'd have a small amount of cover until we were about 1/3 of the way to the fenceline. At that point if he yelled anything at us we could just run for it and get out if need be. Thankfully we had no trouble exiting although it was a little nervy for a while as I really didn't want to fall foul of the law on my last day.
After escaping we stopped for some breakfast and headed onwards to the next one, which was our original target. On the face of it this power station looks in a lot worse condition, and in ways it is, but it's been closed since 2000 so has slipped into a much nicer state of decay for me. Add to this the gorgeous turbine hall lined entirely with glazed bricks (even the windows were glazed glass blocks) it seemed a world away from the drab grey and white of the previous power station and I found it a hell of a lot more interesting to shoot.
Thanks for looking
Americans, as I'm sure you're now aware, are quite secretive when it comes to locations and sometimes it can be difficult to put two and two together but as soon as we stepped into the turbine hall here both me and my friend pretty much at the same time said something like 'ohhh it's this one!'. Everything was pretty relaxed once getting in, that is until the end when things got a little more tense. Now this power station although it's been hit quite hard by scrappers since it closed in 2011 has some fantastic retro laboratory rooms still in very nice condition and it was whilst I was in one of them with my friends that I noticed a pair of workers in hi-vis gear inspecting the side of an adjacent active building for something. It was a Sunday so we all thought this very odd, perhaps they'd been called out to check on something we thought. The good thing was the windows we were looking at them out of were tinted, the bad thing was they were directly in the line of sight of our entrance point. After a few minutes of debate we decided to just go for it as looking at the plant from the air and his rough position on the adjacent building we'd have a small amount of cover until we were about 1/3 of the way to the fenceline. At that point if he yelled anything at us we could just run for it and get out if need be. Thankfully we had no trouble exiting although it was a little nervy for a while as I really didn't want to fall foul of the law on my last day.
After escaping we stopped for some breakfast and headed onwards to the next one, which was our original target. On the face of it this power station looks in a lot worse condition, and in ways it is, but it's been closed since 2000 so has slipped into a much nicer state of decay for me. Add to this the gorgeous turbine hall lined entirely with glazed bricks (even the windows were glazed glass blocks) it seemed a world away from the drab grey and white of the previous power station and I found it a hell of a lot more interesting to shoot.
Thanks for looking