Earlier this week my friend Paige Eden and I took a short trip east of town in search of an abandoned airfield. We had heard about many different airfields but most of them no longer exist. Paige turned me on to this cool photography site that explores urban ruins. These folks have it down, they check out old asylums, empty hospitals and cool detention centers. We wanted to see something similar.
With this in mind we searched for anything that was no longer inhabited in the Denver area. Sure enough, Paige stumbled on this cool old airfield. The runways are barely visible but two main buildings remain. During operation, there were a series of hangars, a fuel station and even a restaurant. All that remains are, what appeared to be, the restaurant and the traffic tower.
When we arrived it was snowing pretty hard. We hoped to find the landing markings on the tarmac; those would make cool pictures. Instead we found quite a bit of old furniture that had accumulated around the concrete pads of the old hangars and office buildings. The decaying sofas proved to be cool subjects in their own right. I took out the camera and decided to shoot the entire day with a wide open shutter. I was looking for a super short depth of field and hoped it would add to the mystique of the area.
After getting everything we wanted from the airfield we moved to the buildings. One of the things I find funny about this type of location is all of the gang graffiti. We are no where near the city and still the structures are rife with all different gang tags. How do they get all the way out here? The building looked like it had been used as temporary shelter, party house, teen-age get away and shooting range for the last decade. Unfortunately a mismanaged fire destroyed a solid third of the building and made for very treacherous exploration.
We were able shoot from the windows of the first floor and then ventured into the basement. Inside was a hodgepodge of leftover chairs, old televisions and random clothing. The charred remains mixed well with the trashed insides and the silently falling snow added to the eerie mood.
After an hour or so of exploring, we packed up our gear and headed home. When the weather warms up, we are both excited to head back for a cool fashion shoot. Make sure to check out Paige’s Blog to see the images she took.