Pennsylvania Avenue Subway, Reading Railroad, Philadelphia, 2004.
Pennsylvania Avenue Subway, Reading Railroad, Philadelphia, 2004.
Pennsylvania Avenue Subway, Reading Railroad, Philadelphia, 2004.
#photography
Captured with a Fuji GX680 camera, 80mm lens, T-Max 100 film. Some tilt was applied to control focus. It was very dark in there, and focusing required the use of a flashlight.
The Pennsylvania Avenue Subway was built to provide a sub-grade freight connection between the Reading Railroad's main line and its "City Branch". It served the Baldwin Locomotive Works' Callowhill plant and the Philadelphia Inquirer's printing plant, among other Center City industries. Abandoned in the 1980's.
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Old stuff like that is fascinating, it has such a sense of mystery to me. St. Louis had a similar tunnel that also served the newspaper.The GX680 was a fun but very unusual camera that couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be. It's a truly gigantic beast of a medium format SLR camera providing (limited) view camera movements. It shot 120-format roll film with a 6x8cm frame (so a 3:4 aspect ratio), with a built-in autowinder. It's sort of what you'd get if you merged a Nikon F4, a Hasselblad, and a Crown Graphic. Definitely not a point & shoot camera.
@[email protected] The subject and feel of the photo is kind of "solid" so I'm not surprised it's from your hefty beast.
I went all digital about a year after this photo.
I love that so many creative people are going back to film today and keeping a lot of that technique from being lost (not to mention maintaining film and developer industries), but I doubt I'll join them. I don't buy the argument that film photography is somehow more "pure" (whatever that means), or that digital photography is "cheating" because it doesn't require certain skills. I'm glad I have film experience, but also glad to leave it behind.