Recently I visited an old abandoned “Kegelbahn” near Brunwick. It’s similar to a bowling alley but the lanes are smaller expanding to the nine pins. The bowling balls have no holes though.

Anyway since the building is easily accessibly, I had a look inside.

It looks like it’s been trashed in the past. The graffiti is not to bad, though. The location offers a nice contrast between the outside and the inside.

Some parts of the main room are not lit at all. Only through cracks in the roof and walls is light able to come in and light the scene. This shot was exposed for 45s(+- human failure) to get the detail on the floor and walls.

This is maybe the photo I’m most proud of. Lots of lines leading to the wall with the fan at the top. There’s detail present in every surface with the grain helping the atmosphere. This room was the first room after the entrance from the front of the building.

I wish I would have exposed this shot a little bit more. The imperfections of the negative are visible as well as the loss of detail in the shadow areas. Despite that the very smooth contrast lends itself to the subject.

The place has a lot of sanitary installations. My best guess: the building was also used for some kind team sport activities.

All in all I’d say it was worth a visit. The place has many shooting opportunities that are not explored yet. The hard contrast lighting as well as the lines that can be found everywhere lend themselves to a structural kind of photography. Bring a wide angle lens and a tripod.

As for the gear:

I used 24mm f2.4 minolta MC lens and a roll of fomapan 400 for all shots. The highlight bloom is a highlight(pun intended) of this film stock. Most of the time I tried to overexpose 1-2 stops to have as much detail as possible in the shadow areas. Most of these images are interpreted darker than the negative actually is. For some of the images I wished to have used a higher resolving/sharper film like delta 100, as I had to use a tripod anyway. Also I should have used the sharper end of the aperture range like f5.6 more often than having to have everything in the scene in focus with f11 or similar. Also a lens hood would have been nice as it was hard to control flare when doing 45s exposures.

Would I shoot this film again? Yes, but I think treating it as a 200 iso film and pulling the shadows down in post is the best option.