Abandoned Church

by Brian Wallace

Title

Abandoned Church

Artist

Brian Wallace

Medium

Photograph - 2d Film Image

Description

An image of an old abandoned church near Langford Estates on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

You could say I have an affinity for old abandoned structures. Thinking back on it now, I feel rather stupid, taking the chances I did, going through these decrepit places when they could have collapsed at any time or had wild animals taking refuge there. Many of these dilapidated structures ceased to exist shortly after I visited them to explore and take pictures.

At the time, my parents lived near this area. There was only one way in and one way out and you had to pass by this old abandoned church on every visit to my parent's house.

Next to this church, near Langford Bay Estates, were some modest headstones in a small neglected, cemetery. Not long after this image was taken, while traveling to my parent's home, I noticed the old structure had vanished.

Exploring the Church...
As I started walking across the floor of the old church, camera in hand, a window on the right side suddenly flew up of its own accord. Don't ask me why I didn't high-tail it out of there pronto, but I'm convinced the vibrations I caused while walking triggered the window. When I looked on either side of the window, hanging inside the walls were ropes with counter-weights which at one time would have helped one to more easily raise the window up. Although an unexpected surprise, the experience proved to be a very interesting excursion into this old abandonment.

The original picture was taken with a Konica SLR film camera many years ago during the colder months. I breathed on the lens, aimed, and waited until just enough evaporation before snapping the shutter to obtain the foggy effect.

On an unrelated (I think) but also strange and unusual occurrence, I left my parent's home and was on my way back out to travel to my own home near Baltimore. It was warm weather and I had the windows of the car rolled down since it had no air conditioning. The Eastern Shore of Maryland is pretty much all country, made up of flat farmland. Traveling to and from my parent's residence consisted of roads between fields for much of the trip.

As I was traveling, and incidentally near the area of the old abandoned church, suddenly something from outside shot through the passenger side window. It hit the headrest and in the next instant there were green feathers floating about in my car. When I checked the back seat I found a small dead green bird!

Two things were very odd about this event...
One, the actual occurrence of a bird flying into an open window of the car while I was speeding down the back road.
Two, I had never seen a green bird on the Eastern Shore of MD my whole life growing up there!

For whatever reason, it seemed appropriate to call this event, an OMEN.

Uploaded

August 6th, 2011

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