St. Francis Hospital, uptown Pittsburgh, was scheduled to be imploded early this morning to make way for the Pens' new arena. I wouldn't have made it then, but when I heard it was rescheduled for two o'clock (due to the "bad weather" -- the dusting of snow we got overnight), I decided to check it out.
I hadn't used my camera's burst feature before this afternoon, and in the car on the way there while my wife was driving probably wasn't the time or place to learn (I got dozens of yawn-inducing shots of the ride there). Still I felt I figured it out well enough to get some decent photos of this.
I decided that atop one of the parking garages at Duquesne University would offer a good view. I set up the tripod, set picture mode to HQ for faster processing, took a few sample shots, and then we all sat back and froze (I try to turn photo shoots into family outings where possible). Technically it's spring, but it was in the thirties today, snowing slightly, and a brisk wind was blowing. And guess in what direction -- toward us from the implosion site.
After about fifteen minutes of waiting, I decided to turn the monitor of my camera off for a few minutes to save the battery. No sooner did I do that than I heard the first bangs. I began to fumble to get set up again, and it's probably a good thing it happened that way. I forgot that a good five to ten seconds passes between the sound of the first explosion and the first sign of the structure starting to give. I would have gotten a burst of shots of nothing and then the building would have fallen while I was resetting.
So I got a good two-thirds of the implosion and then a burst of shots of the dust cloud that swallowed up the whole scene. We picked up and took off before the cloud arrived.
Not sure what I could have done differently or how I could have paced myself to capture more of the scene. I'm open to suggestions. In any case, here's what I captured:
EDIT: Minimal processing here, by the way. Levels, USM, resize, JPG. That seemed to be enough...
You done good! Thanks.
It's pretty cool the way the windows sort of sheared downward evenly in the first few frames. That's the way to demolish a building. Your "oops" worked out just right with the restart at the first detonations. I think that you captured the best part of the show just right. The even timing between shots is nice too, as it shows the exact timing of the building dropping to the ground.
So, did you contact the press about using some of them yet? I am guessing that there were a lot of photogs on site for this event, but maybe not since it got rescheduled.
man !! - thankfully i don't live in the adjacent neighborhood or anywhere nearby.
seems a bit of a waste IMO.
but good capture of the process.
Yes, the taxpayers here are real excited about funding the THIRD brand new sports venue to be built from the ground up in ten years. So uptown is being leveled. In this case, the building was so solid and perhaps overbuilt that it wouldn't yield to less catastrophic means of demolition. They tried for weeks.
And yes, business owners in the adjacent neighborhoods were real pleased to find that they lost storefront windows in the wake of the blast.
You done good! Thanks.
It's pretty cool the way the windows sort of sheared downward evenly in the first few frames. That's the way to demolish a building. Your "oops" worked out just right with the restart at the first detonations. I think that you captured the best part of the show just right. The even timing between shots is nice too, as it shows the exact timing of the building dropping to the ground.
So, did you contact the press about using some of them yet? I am guessing that there were a lot of photogs on site for this event, but maybe not since it got rescheduled.
There were news crews and photographers everywhere actually.
Thanks for sharing Brian... those are awesome shots. Good thing it happened the way it did (with your battery save), or this thread probably would not exist (or just have been really boring) ;O)
Love the last shot with the debris flying everywhere. Almost looks like a "Dante's Peak" kinda cloud coming at you. I probably would've high-tailed it at the same time you did!
