ABANDONED WAREHOUSE

Anyone who has browsed my blog knows that I seem to have a fetish for abandoned warehouses.  Maybe it's because I like architecture and Milwaukee simply doesn't have much diversity in modern architecture.  More likely it is because the city, given its industrial roots, is "blessed" with a goodly number of abandoned and deteriorating buildings.  One of those is an abandoned warehouse that I believe was originally part of a former tannery campus in Walker's Point that is undergoing a gradual renovation.  It's obvious that that process hasn't yet reached this building.

A couple of weeks ago I took a shot of the building on a cloudy, shadowless day.

It is evident that I was not attracted to this building for its distinctive architectural detail.  I liked how the shot looked as converted to a black & white.  Even though the lack of shadows made for a "flat" appearance and a lack of contrast, the photo was very crisp for handheld.  My one complaint was that the shot did not include any part of the ground in front of the building, and that bothered me aesthetically.

So more recently I returned for another try, this time armed with my latest "toy," a circular polarizing filter.  It was a sunny day, and I thought it would give me a chance to play around with the filter.  Here is one of the first shots that I took.

At least this time I included the ground at the base of the building and came to understand why I had excluded it in the prior shot--the frumpy looking loading dock in the lower right corner.

On a sunny day the polarizing filter gives me a choice on how to handle the sunlight reflecting off the windows.  I can either accentuate that reflection or reduce it, darkening the windows.  In the above shot I essentially deactivated the polarizing filter, but in the shot below I used the filter to reduce the amount of reflection.

And this provided for more detail in some of the windows, particularly in the lower portion of the image.  This is perhaps shown better in the following shot that I left in color.

And I love the way the building looks beat up.  But note that I had conceded not including the ground because of that unattractive loading dock.

Here, finally, is more of a detail shot that shows off the windows in the lower left of the above shot.

John