659 - Seneca Mill
Today I visited an abandoned mill.
AKA… The Seneca Mill. This place cut the sandstone that was used in many of the famous DC buildings, including the Smithsonian Castle. Now it’s rotting beside the river, north of Great Falls.
I found it using the good ole’ “zoom in randomly on Google Maps and hope you find something” technique. A method that sparingly pays off, but when it does, it does.
Kind of like using a metal detector on the beach.
But the more you do this adventure photography thing, the more you realize that simply Googling “best photography spots in XYZ” doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. All these blogs have the exact same twenty spots and once you’ve run through them… You’re out of luck.
The good news is that the more you shoot, the quicker you can spot a decent subject just by looking through trashy iPhone photos on Google Maps.
Which lands us here.
We showed up on a rainy afternoon, with the intent of snagging some tasty overcast forest shots. I’ve been going hard on the abandoned spots recently, because they’re pulling insane views on Instagram right now.
It’s a niche that pro photographers haven’t quite grasped yet, making it a nice little market gap that I can slide into. Most of the urban ex content on social media right now is just teenage kids filming their one-off adventures- and the bigger the spot, the bigger the views.
The entrance to this place is probably my favorite shot out of the bunch:
But once you’re inside, there’s a lot to love:
What remains of the place is practically everything you see above. I do wish there was some old rusty machinery to flirt with, but it is what it is.
Next up… I’m hitting the Weverton Cliffs. Apparently it’s the best view in Virginia that’s not Harper’s Ferry. We’ll see about that.
