While my main type of photography is landscapes and cityscapes, I often enjoy visiting some urbex locations to capture some of history's past. Often, urbex shooting involves visiting abandoned, run down buildings, and capturing the rust, decay and anything else that might be present. So when Denise Ippolito offered a 2-day workshop at the last standing silk mill in the US, I was ready to go.
Located in western Maryland, it was a 7-hour drive for me to get there. It sort of is the middle of nowhere, but I was not disappointed. Many of these abandoned buildings are in terrible shape, and this one is no exception. The owner is trying to get tours into it to help restore it a bit. The great thing about the silk mill is that many of the items used to produce the silk are still there. This box of old silk spools, for example, was just sitting on the floor, and one might imagine it being used on the last days of 1959, when the mill closed it's doors.