Sunday the 10th of January was the first local explorers get-together of the year, or at least the first one I made it to. Most of the crowd consisted of people I hadn’t met before including a couple from Syracuse and one visitor from Buffalo. I had brought my friend Dan and Andrew was supposed to be there but he hurt his back shoveling snow and falling down stairs.
After some food at Boulder Coffee (the traditional meeting place for some reason) we left for Mount Hope Chapel in the Mount Hope Cemetery. I’ve seen this building many times but never from the inside and I had no idea what to expect. The interior was surprisingly well preserved and still quite beautiful. Before shooting I decided to scout the rest of the building and wandered downstairs where I had half a dozen or so bats fly past my head as I disturbed them with my flashlights. Being the first to wander to the back of the lower level, I was apparently the only one who saw the bats.
In the basement an old hydraulic lift which used to be used to bring caskets up to the chapel for services was one of the most interesting features in the entire building. I quickly became set on trying to figure out how best to photograph it. Because of the light coming through the ceiling in the center over the lift and the low light levels elsewhere I had to take multiple exposures for compositing or HDR blending later. As a result I knew I would be doing exposures in to the minutes so this was the perfect moment to try out my new TC-80N3 controller for my camera! After a few false starts I had figured out how to use it but by then it was apparent I was holding up the rest of the group (this is why I don’t normally shoot much during these group events). We decided they should just leave for the next location and we’d catch up, so off they went while I continued to take exposures ranging from fifteen seconds to four minutes.
Bad news
A few minutes after they left my phone rang. It was Mike, one of the members of the group I knew from before. Being underground with two levels of concrete flooring above us made it nearly impossible to make out what he was saying before my phone lost the call. It sounded like he was saying “we’ve got company.”
I motioned to Dan (who stayed behind with me) to be quiet and we listened. We couldn’t hear anything from upstairs except the occasional sound of cars on the nearby roads. I decided to continue shooting because at that point we were stuck and what else was there to do? After a couple minutes Dan remembered we had left our bags upstairs on the pews in the chapel and we decided he could go get those and carefully look around while I kept shooting. I knew they were up there and I was already debating in my head over whether to get them or not and I hadn’t decided what to do until he had said something.
After taking the four minute exposure I decided against the eight minute one even though I wanted it. I just didn’t want to keep shooting forever down there with the thought of getting caught running through my head. I quickly set up and took a shot of the Pepsi can we had discovered down there and packed everything up. If you are curious about why I shot the Pepsi can, check out these two previous posts: Jewel Meats and Sykes Datatronics.
Dan and I quietly made our way upstairs and peered out through cracks around the doors to see if there was anyone awaiting our exit. The coast was clear as far as we could tell so we beat a hasty retreat to my car, sort of. I got through the door and kept moving and I thought Dan got through as well but apparently his bag got caught so I nearly left him behind to a horrible fate. I checked my phone when we were about a half mile from the cemetery to find a text message from Mike: “False alarm….” Either the text never made it to me while we were in the basement or I never noticed since we had both switched our phones to silent.
Enough suspense for one day
After that excitement and adrenaline rush we regrouped at Genesee Brewery which was bigger and much more interesting than I had anticipated. We will definitely be visiting there again with more time and a focus on doing some serious shooting. We made one more quick stop at the War Store only it wasn’t actually the War Store. It was the abandoned and nearly demolished concrete silos next to the War Store. I suppose that’s another trip for another day as well!
If you’re interested in seeing a few more photos from the day please visit my set on Flickr.
