slag rayne on the silos

This is a composite photo of 3 separate images merged into a single exposure. What I did was first light-paint the silos with a powerful light source for the first photo. For the second two, I actually had to climb up the rickety, rusting structure which had some missing stairs and was generally quite sketchy and a rush to climb up there. Not just because the structure was so dilapidated, but because what I was doing... I almost knew I was going to have to deal with some sort of encounter with the law to pull this one off. It ended up manifesting that way as well. This was a highly visible location in a small-ish town in Poland.

I had spent about an hour on the location, which was across from some abandoned rail road tracks. It was about 11pm at night and across the tracks there was a large facility adjacent to this one that was also patrolled by security. As I was setting up my tripod for the shots, a security guard shone his flashlight at me for several minutes. At the time, I got sort of annoyed, like "you really think I'm up to no good huh?" while I was there with clearly a tripod and camera. In retrospect, he had reasons for being suspect. I just stood there and watched him shine his light at me and eventually he left. Alas, the real encounter with the law wouldn't happen until I had actually packed all my gear away after finishing the shots.

As I had put the last of my things away, I saw approaching headlights coming in and laughed to myself. I remember I was casually taking a farwell-location piss at the time. The thought of making a dash biking away briefly passed through my mind but I felt calm and I wasn't about to start trying to run from the cops with like a camera bag and a tripod bag to boot. Would have just made myself seem like I was doing something 'wrong' when in my mind, I wasn't doing any harm. Had it been really, really dry and a risk of fire I of course don't spin steel wool but everything was covered in a thick layer of dew. I wasn't really vandalizing anything either, and the only person I was risking was myself.

I spoke to the cops and it's amazing what you can get when you speak to people - anyone for that matter and speak 'person to person' with compassion/understanding the results can be astounding. I simply showed them the pics I had been taking on my SLR and told them what I was up to. They thought I was crazy and did seem concerned for my safety however I assured them I realized what the heck I was doing, was sober, had a phone in case of emergency, etc. They of course looked up my information and it was a small town so it wasn't hard for me to corroborate things as well. So they just told me to go on home which I gladly did.

It was funny though because at one point they asked if maybe I was a terrorist but I got the vibe they were sort of taking the piss at that point we all had a good laugh in the end. Including the security guard whom they had brought along with them - I questioned the guard weather it was him earlier with the light earlier and he seemed confused... I was sure it was the same security guard from before who called me in but they denied it and made a motion in the opposite direction, towards which there was a street. I said aha... Said goodbye and headed out. So happy to have pulled off something which I had thought about earlier and it's amazing when you actually show up and put your ideas into motion!

_{One of the original exposures during which the steel wool had launched itself out of it's cradle leading to this 'spiral' effect}

slag rayne on the silos

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