BLAST FURNACE MOON - Real Still

We’re pretty familiar with the tradition of naming full moons, such as the wolf moon or strawberry moon. I got a moon, and it applies to any month when the moon is full, it’s known as the blast furnace moon.

Moonlit furnaces and snow are bad signs for the steel business, since they so clearly signify a cold furnace and, with no electrical lighting system left, if a moon can light the mill, then the milll has reverted to a situation in place and time, before the mills were built.

The long time exposure and moonlight seems an appropriate way to light something that has always been on the level of visual drama, industrial and social symbolism, wehter shot with black and white oand objectivity or with real color.

A typical large integrated steel mill, even inside an urban area, has so much acreage, that the cities ambient light is overpowered by the moonlight to some degree. Carrie Furnace in Rankin, Pennsylvania had the most open space of all the mills I have sharp, and the ones mill towns that surround it are pretty well beat up, particularly Braddock, thus, they as towns and small cities don’t produce a lot of light at night. Similar to the situation was Acme Steel on the southside of Chicago and it’s neighbor the old Republic Steel mill that became LTV S Steel, and also closed one actually closed in 2001 during the great bankruptcy wave. Again, with so much open space and absolutely no lighting and in common with neighborhoods that are somewhat devastated particularly west of the mill, there is very little street light and I would say the moon probably produced 80% of the light and that at Carrie Furnace the moon provided 90%.

Other mills and the blast furnaces did receive more ambient light from the surrounding cities and, for instance, in Cleveland, with LTV Steel, the moon provided probably 60% of the light.

Almost equal to moonlight, in their qualities, a night with a high vaulted sky and extremely dry conditions can produce similar results that revolve around the fact that, it’s as if, that was a giant 1000 acre soft box with numerous 10,000 Watt HMI daylight led lighting, which produces a “soft” beautiful neutral light, whose main characteristic is illuminating the object brightly and equally on all the surfaces and angles. This valued dry sky is all about bounced light on the city below it, illuminating the object in 360 degrees.

I would also shoot cloudy full moon nights, they are shots with no sense or appearance of blue sky, and I found similar results that I liked, because they were successful on a technical level, given the exposures, for film, and in the night, were through the roof with the dangers of color shifts that can’t be corrected, amongst the many problems with using film.

Thus, I think, in retrospect, that this sort of pursuit, in order to illuminate dead blast furnaces, using color photography, film and digital, is where it’s at, and, I only say that on the level of more successfully communicating, with moonlight and snow, signifiers of a sad situation, the dissolution of the blast furnace in America. The largest producers of steel from scratch, with big integrated mills, are quietly moving away from blast furnaces to investments in electric-arc furnaces and DRI mils, like the one that Cleveland Cliffs built in Toledo.

In this sense these furnaces shot night-for-day, are monuments to, what really has been one of the great symbols of heavy industry, and, specifically, monuments to their demise in America. And that’s real and what’s been behind the struggle to capture the American blast furnace before demlition, hopefiully in operation, as well as, mnot in operation. It’s been clear, especially withe rise of the electric furnace, recycling scrap, direct iron reduction and the goal of a carbonless steel industryt aht is catching on so well now, with the two biigest traditional steelmakers – U. S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs – stopping imvestments in blast furnaces and only investiing in newer, cheaper and cleaner technology. Cleveland Cliffs began positioning itself years before acquiring all of Arcelor Mittal’s American blast furnaces and mills. where it is actively tearing down many furnaces, in favor of electric ones, and, instead of using their massive reserves of iron ore for the blast furnaces, they built a direct iron reduction facility in Toledo, where the ore is used to produce iron directly without the blast furnace and its need for coke, that produces so much carbon and pollution.

The night-for-day technique is the only way to provide light that often moves considerably over time, as in the full moon shots, and the moonslight plus bounced ambienet light combos is the only way to light such massive structures, evenly, 360 degrees, call it an architectural modeling light on a massive scale.