A second chance for the Loray?

A view of the Loray Mill in Gastonia on Monday June 25, 2012. Gastonia leaders announced Monday the acquisition of a Federal Housing Administration loan of almost $21 million to reconfigure the historic mill into loft apartments and retail space.

A few weeks ago a developer announced plans to redevelop two historic high rise buildings in downtown Gastonia into apartments. This week it was announced that another developer has secured a major piece of the funding necessary to start a project to redevelop the historic Loray Mill into apartments. 

For a lot of people in the area, myself included, this is great news. For all too long these structurally sound but very old, and in the case of the Loray Mill, historically significant structures have been abandoned for decades. 

There are still quite a few challenges ahead for the projects, but I'm just glad to see these buildings put back to good use. 

New life

I just found out today that two old high rise office buildings, the Lawyers Building, here, and the Commercial Building in downtown Gastonia are going to be remodeled into apartments and will be open in the next year. I might be moving in...

You can read more about the project in the Gazette story. We should be finding out a lot more at a presentation on Tuesday. 

Studebaker

I found this old Studebaker Hawk rusting away and overgrown while on assignment at a peach orchard in Western Lincoln County. The inspection sticker in the windshield expired in 1968, so presumably this car has been rusting away since then. 

Waiting...

I recently took a tour of the Commercial Building in downtown Gastonia. It was built in the 1920s, and all but the ground and first floors have been largely abandoned since the '80s.

Walking up the stairs you sort of felt like you were in a time machine, with some of the floors abandoned and left as they were in the '80s, some very obviously in the '70s and still others seemed as though they were unchanged since the '30s.

Truly a forgotten treasure, this building appears to be in perfectly good shape for remodeling into something new. Perhaps a boutique model to compliment the new Gastonia Conference Center which sits on the same city block? That's what I would do if I owned it.

There was also quite a view from the top. I might have to post a picture of that view soon, but for now I'll just tease you.  

The Nurse's Dorm

Pathways Housing and Services Development Coordinator Kim Maguire poses for a photo in the former nurses dormitory on the historic North Carolina Orthopedic Hospital campus in Gastonia on Thursday March 1, 2012.

The building was most recently occupied by the Gaston County Department of Social Services until it was abandoned in the mid '90s. Maguire hopes to secure funding to renovate the building and convert it into veterans' housing.

Paint peels and crumbles away from water-damaged walls inside the building.

Furniture sits discarded inside the building. The last occupant was Gaston County Department of Social Services, who left for a new much large facility in the mid '90s.

Paint peels off of columns on the front facade of the building. 

From the Archives

A small cascade at Mount Mitchell State Park. Taken summer of 2007. 

I decided this week, for the first time in years, to pull out my light box and rummage through all the slides I shot from the time I was a kid up through college.

I started doing photojournalism, even if I didn't realize at the time, in the 7th grade while shooting for the middle school newspaper, but for most of my life nature photography was my world.

I was struck by how lousy most of my work from college was. I think a pivotal moment in my development as a photographer was my senior year in college, in summer of 2007 to be exact.

I had been doing photography since childhood, and always thought I was good at it. But after largely ignoring my camera in favor of new pursuits like rock climbing, fencing and a social life, I picked the camera back up my senior year only to find that I wasn't as good as I thought I was.

And it made me mad, even embarrassed.

In my state of humility I decided to get serous about my passion and start honing my skills and learning how to see.

If I can look back 5-10 years ago and see such a huge difference, I wonder what I'll think five years down the line when I look back at the work I'm doing now?

I'm hoping the best is yet to come. =)

Sunset over Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains, summer of 2007. 

Exploring an abandoned mine shaft into the side of Crowders Mountain. 2008. 

Sunset at Jockey's Ridge State Park on the Outer Banks.

My new TTV toy

Last week I acted on a tip that a local consignment store going out of business had some old cameras.

There was in fact a Polaroid model 150 roll film camera there. Unlike the other Polaroids I have, you can't get film for these older models anymore, but it was very clean and only $20 so I got it for a shelf piece.

Next to the 150 was a little Kodak Brownie camera for $15. Not in pristine condition by any means, but unlike the Brownie I've had for a while this one had a clear viewfinder with no lines.

That means TTV time baby!

That's "thought the viewfinder" for the uninitiated, wherein you use a modern digital camera to shoot through the waist level finder of a Brownie or some other such camera.

I know what you're thinking. It's sort of silly using the dirty viewfinder of a 50-year-old camera that wasn't even a good camera to start with in order to get low-fi pictures out of a $7,000 digital SLR set up.

If this boggles your mind, just think of the Brownie as a cheap but cumbersome filter that produces vintage looking pictures. It's sort of like the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone, but unlike the iPhone, I have all the motion-stopping shutter speeds and low light performance of that state of the art Canon Mark IV taking the pictures.

I took a little walk around downtown Gastonia the next day to play around with it. After adjusting to the reversed image in the viewfinder it was fun to use. I got these pictures a and a few odd looks from people on the street.