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I love a good old prison, and when it comes to prisons, Brushy Mountain is everything that you would expect from an American penitentiary built in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. It’s imposing and frightening, and it has many ghost stories attached to it. What makes this spot even better is that it has been reopened as a tourist location that embraces the fact that it was one of the worst places to be jailed. Part of the post-war reconstruction in the failed and defeated Confederate States of America included the rapid industrialisation and expansion of modern infrastructure. Part of that reconstruction includedRead More →

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Don’t worry, this isn’t a post about new-age music. Back in August, I had the chance to tour one of Canada’s museum ships again; we don’t have many, especially here in Ontario. But it got me thinking about how important these museum ships are in bringing us closer to history. It’s all well and good to read about the naval battles of the past. But being able to walk the decks of the ships that were right in the thick of things is something else. My first experience with museum ships came way back in the 1990s on a family vacation to Hilton Head andRead More →

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I knew, I just knew that one day I would end up here with a large format camera. You could say I was influenced by the Film Photography Project and one of their hosts specifically. The Crown Graphic was one of three large-format cameras I owned and used; it was also the one that ‘fit’ my style of photography best, and the one I used the longest before I left the format. While not the largest format I used, 4×5 was the sheet film format that I used the most. If I had to lay the blame for my getting into large-format photography, I wouldRead More →

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There’s something so unique about looking back on a trip and thinking, “I was in a place where history was being made.” Remember, not all history is good history, but it was history all the same. Ten years ago, I visited a city I had wanted to visit for some time, but it had always slipped through my fingers. But in 2016 I finally decided to take some time and visit Washington, DC. It was the final place I needed to photograph and visit to complete my massive War of 1812 project, which, at that point, had been going on longer than the war itself,Read More →

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After I got into the Nikon autofocus system, I started looking at cameras that were better than my Nikon F80. Don’t get me wrong, the Nikon F80 was the right camera for me at the time, and it produced some fantastic images and got me on the course I’m still on today with the Nikon system. But I knew there was something better out there, and I quickly latched onto the Nikon F5 as my grail camera of that time. But at that time, the Nikon F5 still commanded high prices on the used market, and many professional photographers were still using these cameras. ButRead More →

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The VCXPEX events were a great way to check out locations I usually would not see. Old industries in Ontario were few and far between and often had been restored with some adaptive reuse or so run down that it was unsafe to enter. Enter the former Hooven & Allison Rope Factory or Cordage company, depending on where you looked and who you asked. This massive 19th-century rope work factory in Xenia, Ohio, was a local attraction even though it had been burned three times. Tracking a complete and chronologically accurate history of the Hooven & Allison Cordage Company proved difficult. Mainly because the peopleRead More →

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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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A few weeks ago, an event that I first attended in 2012 had its final form. Back on the 20th and 21st of June, a group gathered to celebrate the life of Bill Schwab, who had passed away in 2025 while doing what he did best: leading a group of keen photographers to explore the world. Bill was the brains behind an event called Photostock. It started as a small gathering in the woods on his property in Michigan, far from the dirty industrial south, but in the far more beautiful northern parts of the state. And while I’m a fan of an event becomingRead More →

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The main reason behind this epic road trip was to fill in a bunch of gaps in my War of 1812 project. I was on the tail end of the project and wanted to fill in a bunch of gaps before I got married in 2017. And there were two areas that I had not yet explored and wanted to because they offered up parts of the conflict that are often forgotten or not even presented here in Ontario. While the majority of the war took place here in Ontario, there were also a series of battles along the East Coast. So I plotted theRead 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 →