Rocky Point Amusement Park closed in 1995 and sits just off of a large public bike path in Warrick, Rhode Island. The Photographs represented here were acquired from some hooligan-urban explorer, and they do represent the views of Moorehart Photography. In all seriousness though, the place is unsafe as hell: dust, asbestos, and black mold cover most surfaces. The floors in the Dining Hall are collapsing, the ceiling has caved in, and there are glass shards and sheet metal strewn everywhere. Even so, the abandoned amusement park is pretty irresistible from a photographer's point of view. Rhode Island has done the rest of you urban adventurers a favor in keeping this hidden gem long past its expiration date.
You can see the dining hall below just after it closed down in 1995, still shiny and clean, awaiting chowder fanatics. It's a powerful contrast to say the least.
ABOVE, A STILL FROM THE ROCKY POINT DINING HALL (1995)
We, I mean some dude and his brother, shot the space with nothing more than a Canon 5 D mark iii with a 24-105mm 4f L series lens, and a Canon 40mm tilt- shift lens. Minimal equipment kept everything mobile and safe. The tilt-shift lens worked well to narrow the focus points in shots with lots of clutter, and helped to uncover interesting plains of focus to crop shots around.
Dolls. Why the fuck are there dolls everywhere? Are you kidding me? The place is terrifying on it's own without having the dark ruins riddled with doll parts.
HEADED TO THE PALLADIUM
Only about One Third of the Rocky Point Grounds are represented in these photographs. By using Google Earth you can zoom in and plot out your entry and exit points, plan your route, set your photography goals, and you can see the main Dining Hall and the Palladium- the only two large structures still intact.
This shot was taken in the bar area of the Palladium, the beam of light was not added during post processing. These photographs were all simply color corrected in Lightroom 4.0. Non of these photos have ever entered Adobe Photoshop for any manipulation (except for the very first image in this post which is a simple manual double exposure in Photoshop CS6). The dust in this room was heavy (so I hear) and the blue light that shot from the ceiling was a combination of sunlight, hints of purple in the ceiling and rugs and general good timing. There are no fake light sources or blur techniques. Luck and lenses captured these images in a (my) camera.
PALLADIUM DANCE HALL
Scattered throughout the grounds you can still find clusters of perfectly preserved tickets lying safely under fall ceiling tiles and overturned tables. People Have mixed feelings about souvenirs in regards to urban exploration. The purists might say that you enter a space, explore it, leave nothing and take only memories. Some will take photographs, a few will take objects ( a sign, a chair, an old jar), and some will pillage, smash, and destroy. At the end of the day it is a land without law. You make your own code as you go, be it selfish or selfless.
Personally my goal is to preserve it for the next person as it was preserved for me. That said I do try to take a small insignificant, object from each location. Something that is plentiful, say a corner piece of floor tile, a broken poker chip, a flyer or ticket, something that fits in the palm of my hand and won't alter the experience of the place when it disappears. It is to be added to a small catalog of unrelated objects on a shelf. It acts as a sort of alter of appreciation for the experiences, and memories from these places.
In this case I folded three rocky point tickets and put them in my pocket. I won't go into detail about the nightmare that I had that night, but it was righteous and haunting. I woke up covered in sweat, and with an incredible urge to burn the tickets (I even woke my brother up to tell him).
The urge to simply get them out of my possession was incredible, yet against my better judgement they've stayed at my house. The experience was interesting and powerful a hint that maybe I need to revaluate my code next time I return ( i.e that dude and his brother go back). We'll see what happens in two weeks.