Industrial landscape. Sunsets, sunrises and fumes.

The entire series were taken approximately at the same spot near Pikalyovo-2 station. Arranged more or less disorderly, regardless of a season and time.

August 2016, f14, 1/4s, CPL+gradient grey:

Northerly wind, f9, 1/6s, CPL+gradient grey, January 2017:

Westerly wind, f13, 1/6s, CPL+gradient grey, February 2017:

Morning, f14, 1/10s, CPL+gradient grey, March 2017:

Evening, westerly wind, f11, 1/6s, CPL+gradient grey, March 2018:

The same a bit later:

Morning, f13, 1/6s, something wrong with processing, on one hand, lighting conditions are quite fit, nonetheless the spot is rather of all not the best: 

Something new from the tailings dump.

A local landmark. But how would you want? Nothing else more impressing. 

As seen from a station, f10, 1/4s, CPL+gradient grey:

The same, another position, f11, 1/10s, CPL+gradient grey:

Trying to vivify an infernal landscape. Of course, heavily shopped, otherwise everything would be grey in this town of cement and alum earth. F10, 1/4s, CPL+gradient grey. 

Autumn, a set from elsewhere.

I had no remotest idea how to arrange these images, where they should be published. Eventually, due to absence of complete series it was esided to publish them together.

No so much poisonous fume as may be thought. It was shopped heavily. F9, 1/2s, CPL + something else:

The same with a gradient blue filter. It may pass for experimental, not too much valuable though:

Looks like a window. And fumes, as usual, falling upon our heads:

F11, 1/3s, CPL+gradient grey.

Lastly, a bit of infernal esthetics or rendering that more correctly, an industrial landscape: Eurocement and cemetry. Unfortunately, without tripod, f8, 1/13s, CPL+gradient grey. 

Bowdlerizing gloomy life.

Small towns built in the XX century around one or two factories typically provide no extraordinary opportunities for the landscape photography. However, there is a genre combining landscape and industrial photography traits, whose sustenance is the darkest and dullest sides of life in such towns: fumes, ruins of factories, tailings dumps, dust. I define that as infernal esthetics. Political including ecological connotation in this genre in my opinion is absent, it’s all about silent statement of facts.

Any attempt to find something eye-catching among routine circumstances of places like that typically fails in desperate efforts. Everything is fruitless like the barren land you see in this series. But if you have a bit of imagination, the things can change: lifeless, sometimes dangerous places like this tailings dump, become objects of human creative thought. Their nature being infernal from the very outset will never change, the gist here is disclosing, highlighting this essence.

As for technical means, here a photographer benefits by filters enabling him to improve his work quality in some way or another: gradient orange adds an infernality shade to quarries, ruins, landfills and eve storm clouds; gradient grey increases sky depth; the ND group up to 400th brings in an alien shade to bottoms of quarries, rocks and grey ruins of factories; skylight group sometimes (no warranty though) saves blue colour of sky covered by clouds or dissipated fumes. 

Doesn’t this genre bespeak signs of overgeneralization and exaggeration? No, absolutely, in my opinion, even more to say – I try to bowdlerize the reality that causes disgust in any sane person and impels him to flee from there, accentuating esthetic nuances created by nature. In particular, this goal is achieved by serial shooting of an object in different seasons and various weather conditions. 

Dawn over the factory. Northerly wind. CPL+skylight L1A filters.

Same, CPL+gradient grey.

Waiting for sunrise. CPL+skylight L1A filters.

Same, CPL+gradient grey.

Same, CPL+gradient blue.

Pink dawn. Westerly wind. CPL+skylight L1A filters.

Just before the sunrise. CPL+skylight L1A filters.

First sunrays. CPL+gradient grey filters.

Let's make that copper-like.

Sunset over the factory. Northerly wind.

Same with the gradient blue.

Copper-like sunset. CPL+gradient grey (unsure) filters.

The day is over.

Umber everywhere. CPL+skylight L1A filters.

Umber everywhere. CPL+gradient grey filters.

Same.

Sunset over a gloomy landscape.

Actually, it’s an old example of a genre that I call “Infernal esthetics” – just my personal definition, I have no idea whether it’s current anywhere or not. Here we see the entire set of preconditions to fit the infernal esthetics concept’s frames: the cement factory (“Eurocement”), railway, cemetery between the author’s position and the factory, technological road and dull landscape. The series was taken in 2015, now I have edited it anew. The set looks like a desperate attempt to vivify a gloomy picture. Unfortunately, I neither used filters nor saved data in .nef, those are pure jpegs.

Geometry. 

Sosnovka village and "Eurocement":

Pastel-like colours. Facing towards “Eurocement”: 

The same view from a railway: