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I’m in mourning over the end of summer.  It’s been an insane season as our wedding photography business grows at a furious pace, and increasingly difficult to keep up with our creative, artistic shoots.  One of our primary goals is to constantly be creating art, no matter how busy we are.  So it’s only now that we’ve been able to finish the latest shoot in our ongoing  series of decaying amusement parks and abandonment in “The Last One to Leave” with model and clown babe Rev. Mackenzie Moltov.

There is a sweet spot when shooting the remnants of a word gone by.  A moment in time when there is a still an abundance of light, and when the days are still warm enough that you’re not risking pneumonia to shoot.  The best spots may boast stunning graffiti, but before people who have no respect for the space destroy and loot it into complete destruction.   We are always careful not to damage or take from the areas we explore, but rather our goal is to breathe life and create something new and stunningly beautiful amongst the ruins of locations once filled with love and laughter.

In our last road trip of the summer with Mackenzie we set our sights on Penn Hills Resort.  Founded as a tavern in 1944, the resort grew in popularity in the 1960’s, as a honeymoon resort which catered to swingers.  With over 100 guest cabins, complete with heart shaped tubs, beds with mirrored ceilings, floor to ceiling carpeting, a wedding bell shaped swimming pool, and famous New Year’s Eve parties with the motto “No Balloon Left Unpopped”, the Poconos resort was completely abandoned in 2009 when it’s owner died.  It would have been an incredible time capsule had it not been so completely destroyed by idiots with no respect for the past.

We once again called upon stylist Joey Mason and with an armload of looks from Philly Aids Thrift, we worked quickly and silently, as Mackenzie embodied a lost and lonely soul in sad old rooms once dedicated to love and passion and happy couples.  As we worked our way through the old moldy, garbage filled pools, an office with boxes of paperwork, carefully climbed rotting wood stairways to abandoned cabins and picked our way through a tikki bar littered with shattered glass, we all felt an unease, as if we weren’t alone and dangerously vulnerable.  Since then, the old resort has been boarded up, and remains under intense scrutiny and patrol, as possibly having been a hiding place for fugitive and suspected cop killer Eric Frein.  We may be last to have gotten in, and to have created something incredibly beautiful in those ruins.

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The wonderful thing about being a photographer, is when an idea takes you down a road you hadn’t imagined possible.   It may start with a group of like minded artists or an idea, or a location or just one shoot.  A theme that make you want to explore more.  A shoot that becomes a series.  The series morphs and changes and becomes a different idea entirely.  And so begin our roadtrip adventures with Rev MacKenzie Moltov. It started with a road trip with a just barely pregnant MacKenzie to an abandoned amusement park in Pennsylvania.  It was a thrill.  I know that people have gotten into these delapidated, decaying  old parks before.  It is a little different when you’re sneaking in with a load of camera equipment and a half dressed statuesque beauty in full clown makeup lugging a bag full of sequined gowns and a lyra.  It was everything we love about location shoots.  A little danger, a little excitement and urban exploration with an unparalleled sideshow performer.  One Sword Swallowing Maternity and a Naked Philly Clown Mom shoot later, and it was time to get back on the road for another adventure.

For our second roadtrip with MacKenzie, we found a quirky little park a few hours outside of Philly.  We packed up our clown, who’s a delightful backseat companion. (Really, if you want an entertaining drive filled with stories and jokes and songs, bring your own clown. They’re perfect!) This park was a lot more open than our last. Surrounded by fences and no trespassing signs, high visibility from all angles. This was the type of little town that watches out for each other, and for the park who’s owners still hope to re-open despite it’s current state of total disrepair.

We parked a bit away, and found a way in.  Quickly dashing from building to building we were able to shoot against various walls and creaky old buildings.  There was even a collapsed carousel from a brutal winter from which it didn’t survive.  MacKenzie is a dream to shoot.  Fearless and whimsical and sexy and dirty and awkward and funny and beautiful.  Between the three of us, we have an ideal urban exploration team. We are totally respectful of the places we find.  We don’t vandalize, remove, harm or in any way alter the objects or areas left behind.  We don’t advertise where we’ve been in hopes of keeping them as they are.   We breathe new life into them.  We create art in what others consider garbage.  We honor the spirit of love and fun and happiness that still exists in what remains.  And we brought some old peeling walls a clown to show her love.  We have another road trip planned.  But this time we may be bringing a friend.