A friend and I started talking about getting out to do some light painting, but that quickly turned into a plan of exploring an old factory and flying my drone inside of it, in the evening. Then light painting inside of it at night.
I was very excited to fly my drone inside of it, because the only time I have tried to fly it inside of a building. It did not go very well and ended with multiple crashes. So the first thing I did once inside, was put it up and started shooting video and these pictures.
After I was done with the drone there was still a lot of sun light. So we wandered around this old crumbling factory with a very cool history.
This factory was built in 1912 by the Westinghouse company, as a foundry and lamp-manufacturing plant. During WW1 it served as a barracks for the military and by the 1960s it became a major manufacturing site for electrical equipment and appliances.
Westinghouse sold the property in 1986 and it was used for storage, distribution, and as a scrap metal facility until being acquired in 2019 by McMaster Innovation Park for redevelopment. Since being abandoned, some tragedies have happened here. A scrapper electrocuted themselves and an explorer fell from a beam and died. To this day scrappers have taken the building over, one even came to check out the drone.
These plans have been all but cancelled with what is being called a strategic review under challenging business and real estate environments.
The original plan was to do this explore the day before we did, but we held off because of rain. Not because we were afraid if melting, we hoped for a lot of large puddles for reflection shots. This proved to be an excellent move!
There was also new art since the last time I had been here (Sept. 2024)
As the sun set, we started to set up for light painting. With such an incredible explore and so many photos, the light painting will be posted as a part 2, to this post. I will also post the drone video in the near future.
It wasn't until I got home that I realized that I hadn't taken any exterior shots of the building (so I will have to return again), but you can check out my other post of this location here:
@terrywayne/olivia-in-westinghouse