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Secrets run naturally among the urban exploration community. In Hamilton, Ontario, secret locations were common, and hiding the actual name of the location was common practice. But the Chicago community took things to a whole new level with good reason. By the time I started to explore the area briefly, there was already a great deal of tension between different groups. In the long run, I got into a better group. It netted me a chance to visit one of the prime locations in the local catalogue, and even now, more than ten years later, I still feel weird exposing the name and history ofRead More →

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Once the Royal Connaught Hotel was among the jewels of the Hamilton Urban Exploration scene, this stunning early 20th Century Hotel had a glamourous past. It ended its life as a slum hotel with only a shade of its former glory. A good urban exploration event often includes a trip to the Royal Connaught. The rooftop offered stunning views of the city’s skyline, especially the industrial zones by the lake. However, when it comes to locations, the hotel was dull from a photographic standpoint. Still, it offered up a rich history that traced back to the city’s glory days to the slump and is nowRead More →

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It’s always fun to revisit trips on anniversaries. Last year, I posted about the ten-year anniversary of my epic three-week trip to Europe to participate in the 200th Anniversary Reenactment of the Battle of Waterloo. And I was recently thinking about the last time I did a big trip, and after someone favourited an old image from my NOPEX trip back in 2011, I realised that this year marked the 15th anniversary of that trip. So, for a bit of context, NOPEX, or “Northern Ontario Products Exposition,” was a week-long car-camping trip through Northern Ontario with my good friend James. The groundwork had been laidRead More →

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When it comes to camera systems, I have only switched systems once. There was a brief attempt to go with Sony E-Mount, but it never got very far. That one switch has always been from Minolta SR-Mount to Nikon F-Mount. Now I have since added systems like the Minolta A-Mount and Canon EF-Mount, but these have always been secondary. As I mentioned in a previous entry, the Nikon F80 is the camera that got me into the autofocus world of the Nikon F-Mount and eventually into the manual focus world of the F-Mount as well. Last month, I wrote about my entry into the digitalRead More →

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Abandoned hospitals in Ontario were few and far between, especially in my part of the province. While many hospitals were still expanding or constructing new buildings, these were often on active properties with lots of security. But when word got out of a fresh location, and by fresh, it had only closed three years before my getting in, you tend to jump on any chance you got. In an interesting turn of events, I ended up exploring the hospital where my father was born, both cool and weird at the same time. While our modern healthcare system in Ontario is not without its faults, itRead More →

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My introduction to photography came in the early days of digital photography entering the mainstream, so my medium of choice had always been film. You could pick up decent film cameras for cheap while digital cameras were still the realm of professionals or the rich. And the early options were low-quality. I had used digital through high school and my first years of college; my high school had the early Apple digital camera and also the Sony Mavica (the one that took 3.5″ floppy disks). And my dad had won an early HP digital camera through work. But I realised it was only a matterRead More →

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We’re picking up where we left off last month with the second of two locations we hit up on a quick Labour Day trip to Buffalo in 2012. If you aren’t part of the classic hot rod hobby, the name Houdaille might be lost on you, but even today, these styles of shocks are highly valued in the hobby, especially when restoring or rebuilding cars from the 1930s and 1940s. The location itself didn’t spark anything interesting because it was empty. Its real value is in the history. In March 1909, French inventor Maurice Houdialle filed a patent for a new style of shock absorberRead More →

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I can thank the sale of the Konica-Minolta camera division to Sony and a gift of a Nikon F80 that marked my one and only system shift in my photographic journey. The F80 was my go-to camera for many years, and it was the one that helped build up my Nikon AF system. There’s even one lens in my kit that I got with that F80. While my first two cameras were purchased through Garage Sales, the X-7a and the F80 were both gifts from other members of my church. It came to me from a teacher at Sheridan College. I wish I could rememberRead More →

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I had not been exploring in Buffalo proper since 2007, and honestly, if they had including some of these locations at that event I probably would have had a better time. So taking advantage of the invitation to join in a short Labour Day exploration in 2012 to check out a couple of locations on the other side of the border, I jumped on the chance. Both locations we checked out were right next to each other in a former industrial corridor on Northland Avenue. Of the two, the most interesting is this spot, the former Curtiss-Wright metal forming works, but its history is muchRead More →

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If there was a symbol of Hamilton’s rise, fall, and rebirth, that symbol downtown would be the Lister Block. It also was one of the jewels of the Hamilton Urban Exploration scene and could make for a fun night of exploration, which, depending on access, would see an easy group including the Lyric Theatre, Tivoli, Royal Connaught and then Lister Block. After getting out, I grabbed slices from National Pizza. But those days are long gone, Lister and Connaught being restored, Lyric long gone, and Tivoli is sealed demolished. Among all the places I explored, Lister Block is one that I was around when itRead More →