Hello all. It has been a very long time since I made a blog post. I'm sure you all know how it goes. Life gets busy, work and kids etc...I was sitting here tonight refreshing my website with some current photos. I realized it had been over a year since my last blog post. So much has happened since then. I was trying to figure out where to start. This is the obvious choice, my two trips to the abandoned Hamms brewery in St. Paul. This place was a magical photographic wonderland for a guy like me. I LOVE old buildings and anything industrial. I had always wanted to get into this place but had no idea how. A fellow photographer sent me instructions on the current entry point. (it changes) I should mention before I go any further that entering this building is against the law. If you are caught in there you will go to jail.

I entered through the basement by the old loading docks. It is said that this is the level you want to go to if you are looking for all of the underground tunnels. I am not that brave personally. I stuck to the main brewhouse and fermentation buildings.

This was pretty much my entry point once I found my way up from the basement. Whenever I am in an abandoned building like this one, I can't help but think about what this place looked like in its prime. All of the people working there every day. The millions of gallons of beer they must have produced.

A questionable/beautiful brass staircase.

Here it is from another angle.

Here's the stupid part. I decided to come here less than an hour before full dark. I was by myself and had never been in this building before. This was actually a poorly planned not very good idea. I also had too much gear with me. You end up having to climb a bit on the stairs. The gear made that harder. It ended up being ok but it was a good lesson for when I would come back the next morning.

And there's huge holes in the floor everywhere.

Don't worry. I'm not a complete idiot. i did have a flashlight and headlamp. I spent about an hour and a half in the brewery that night. I captured what I consider to be some of my best photographs.

I was having the time of my life but knew from a safety standpoint I should leave and come back when it was light out. I went home and pulled up the images on my computer and knew I was going back in the morning. This time I only brought my Sony A7S because of its low light capabilities. A 16-35mm wide angle and my 50mm. Also a small travel tripod. I entered in the same spot as the night before. Needless to say, I had the place all to myself. I spent another 3 hours there that day. I shot something stupid like 750 images. I guess my thinking was that I probably wasn't coming back for a long time if ever. I had the balls to go in twice but I'm not trying to tempt fate and get arrested.

It's a graffiti wonderland. Not all of it is good but there's tons of it.

So many ways to hurt yourself in there lol.

So, to sum up my experience: the Hamms Brewery is easily the coolest place I have ever been to make photographs. I doubt I will find anything close to this cool for a long time. The possibilities for photos in this building are endless. I was there for a total of four hours or so and I barely scratched the surface. there were so many rooms I didn't have time to go into. Hell, so many floors I didn't have time to explore. I didn't even really go out on to the roof. Maybe I'll go back. not for a while though. Please look at the gallery at the bottom of this post. I have far too many awesome photos of this place to embed them in the blog post. It's good to be back at this again. Thanks for reading this. More importantly thanks for looking at my photographs.

Cheers, Phil.