Over the weekend, I traveled with my Dad and Brook Ward to a portion of the Pennsylvania Turnpike that has been abandoned since the late 1960′s. It is open to the public to walk/bike at your own risk. It is a 13 mile stretch including two abandoned tunnels. We biked the entire trail from one end to the other, going through both tunnels in the process. More on the tunnels later. Here is a stretch of the highway from about where we parked the cars. As you can see, it hasn’t been maintained in years. Stop back for more on this awesome location!

Did you know, if you click an image, it will view it on black? Go ahead and try it!

Here we have the outside of the abandoned school located on the St. Peter and St. Paul Church site. If the outside of this place doesn’t look creepy, I don’t know what does. I think we were so lucky this building a) had an opening, and b) had no prior occupants in it. It was an excellent day filled with exploring and photography. Please, stop by for more photos of this truly awesome place.

I snapped this HDR on our departure from Lawrenceville last weekend. My Dad, Brook and I were initially going to photograph an abandoned steel mill in Lawrenceville, but it had been purchased by CMU and turned into a Robotics Warehouse. We came across this cement business on our way to the abandoned school (see previous photo). Signs everywhere stated “Do not enter,” “Authorized personnel only,” etc. I saw that puddle beneath the old crane and had to get a photo. We stuck around for about ten minutes until the owner of the cement business came and kicked us out for trespassing… Well worth it.

I joined my Dad and Brook Ward on a photo walk yesterday looking for some interesting places to shoot in Pittsburgh. This very creepy school is located in East Liberty; directly behind Target. I drive past it almost everyday and have been eyeing it up since I moved to Highland Park last August. It sits on the site of St. Peter and St. Paul Church (which is also abandoned.) Initially, it was the church that I wanted to gain access to, however, it was boarded up tight. This school behind the church, was calling our name. This is located in a really bad area of Pittsburgh so I was a bit hesitant to walk in. Brook went in first to scan the building and luckily it was clear. Please stop back for more photos of this awesome location. I have many more great shots to come.

I have taken this exact photograph before. When I was down at the North Shore last month, I walked underneath the Roberto Clemente Bridge and thought I might as well take a picture of it while I am here. I actually had no intention of editing or posting this until fellow HDR Photog Brook Ward posted his take on this photo from an entirely different photo walk than mine. (Usually we go out on photo walks together.) I had to give mine a whirl to see how it would turn out. See Brook Ward’s take on this photo here on his website.

I got the chance to go out and do a little bit of photography last weekend. It was somewhat warmer throughout the day. As soon as the sun went down, it got pretty chilly. I am not really sure what to call this peculiar structure. Odd as it may be, I have used it in more photos than I can remember. The structure really needs some work though. When viewing up close, you can really see the pieces breaking off and crumbling apart.

I have been wanting to take a panorama of the North Shore for a really long time now. Over the weekend, I finally got the chance to do so. Unfortunately, the sunset was pretty boring. I wish it could have been more like the previous photo! Anyway, this was one of the more difficult photos to edit. There was a lot going on within the photo, especially with the sky. I am still not overly pleased with the end result but I am not going to put more time into the photo. I will just retake it when a more dramatic sunset presents itself!

This was taken on one of my favorite photo walks of 2012. Taken a year ago almost to the day, it was over 60 degrees that night. I didn’t have a jacket on and we walked around the city for hours taking photos. Not only was it warm that evening, the sunset was pretty awesome as well. I am ready for it to start warming up here in Pittsburgh to go out and take some new photos. Thanks for stopping by!

This was taken way back in October on my Birthday. I took the day off work, got up for sunrise and drove up to Mt. Washington. Unfortunately, it was a very dull sunrise. Just cloudy and grey. I still had fun taking photos. I beat a day at work, that’s for sure!

I took this over summer while on a photo walk in downtown Pittsburgh. This is one of those things I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but never had the guts to climb up here and do it. I am sure I got tons of dirty looks while snapping these brackets off. I am actually shocked this didn’t have any motion problems. It was very shaky on this section of the bridge as cars, especially buses, went past.