Abandoned 1913 Schoolhouse

On a recent road trip to the Midwest, I asked my Father to join me on a little 24 hour adventure to Indiana and photograph an old abandoned schoolhouse from 1913. I had barely made it into town and off we went on our 5 hour drive. For the next 24 hours, I would photograph this place at every angle. Shooting in the afternoon, sunset, midnight and an attempted sunrise that ended up being a thunderstorm. I had to make sure I got my shots. 656 to be exact. The first is the sunset. The other two were taken at midnight. The bright light in the distance is light pollution from a nearby town. Since these two were long exposures, I used a flashlight to “paint” the schoolhouse. And as always, share it if you like it!

Ok, now… you are probably going to look at the next set of images and think “BULL @#$%!!!!!!!! NO WAY” Well, all I can say is “WAY!!!!” My plan was to shoot the sunrise but a passing storm blew through and the sky lit up with light! The scary kind. The kind you check you shorts afterwards if you ever been in the middle of a storm. But oh man! What a wild morning. I will say this… the only things that was done to the photos were enhanced things like color, contrast, brightness, etc… But that lightning was RIGHT THERE!!! The first shot I was able to capture the lightning in a 6 second exposure. The second shot I got it in a 2.5 second exposure. So Randall, I think you’re right… time to invest in a lightning trigger!

After the storm passed, and all the interesting clouds had gone, we were about ready to pack it up when gentleman in a pickup truck stopped and chatted with us a while. Turns out his wife works at the courthouse in the assessors office and that she might be able to help with information about the school. So we went into town. She directed us upstairs to the Records Department. Now, they didn’t have the Beatles White Album (haha) but they did let us go through original newspapers from 1913. I could have sat there for days looking through this printed history but we didn’t have the time. So next stop… the historical museum. BINGO! The woman behind the desk handed me a folder of original photos and articles from the school. Not even Google had this kind of info! It was so cool to look at these photos and think 100 years later, I’m standing in front of it taking pictures. Here are a few of the photos and a couple of behind the scenes. Note: can you spot the old Coke machine? 🙂