Entering the subway in Stockholm is like an invitation to a surreal experience. The station in the photo is one of my favorites as it reminds me of the mystical and scary underworld I fantasized and dreamed about as a child. Nowadays I enjoy it also because of the sharp contrast of its raw rock walls and its shining metal of modern escalators. The rock walls are painted in saturated hues which make color photos very dramatic. But I chose to convert my image into high contrast Black and White to focus more on the aspect of surrealism. To strengthen that further, I played with lights and shadows in Photoshop to enhance the mystic and smoke-like texture of the rough rock walls, to increase the contrast between steel/stone, and to direct the eye of the viewer to the lone shopper (my husband) on his way up from the underworld.

I took this picture while touring the old Verla factory, a World Heritage Site in Jaala, Finland. Verla was a first paper mill that started to make cardboard out of wood pulp instead of rags in the early 1900s. Among scary big, old machines without any safety precautions I found this tranquil seen of a water faucet used in cooling down the wheel. Sony a7RIV with FE 70-200mm 4G OSS Sony lens at 70 mm; 1/10 sec; f 5.6; ISO 400.

This is a photo of the “Abandoned Presidents Heads” which are now on a farm near Williamsburg, Virginia.

Going Anywhere soon? was taken in Bodie, a historical State Park in California. The mining town has been left to decay. This truck was one of those objects and is not far from an old Shell gas station with the old style pumps and a metal shell-shaped sign with multiple bullet holes. What is nice is that the truck stands out, but the old buildings in the background provide context.

I got this at one of the “mud sales” near Lancaster PA a few years ago: Huge auctions to raise money for the local firefighters, attended by Amish and “English” [that’s us] equally. The Amish thing is so fascinating, and their children, dressed not like kids but as miniature adults, are even more so. Their interactions, like their lives, seem rooted in a different era.

I took this picture two summers ago on a tour of the abandoned Cresson sanatorium in Lilly, PA which was converted to a prison in 1987. I think it is kind of timely. Later on, the prison closed in 2013 so abruptly that the personnel found it out only from inmates who were watching TV in their cells at the time. No wonder, there were abandoned filing cabinets. And fast forward a few decades, who knows if there are more abandoned filing cabinets in somewhere, again. Sony a6300; GM 24 mm F1.4 Lens; 1/160 sec; 24 mm; f 5.6; ISO 400.