33 years of exposure to light and the elements will do this to your film...

DREW WILEY · Mar 28, 2019

Like our own Superfund sites and abandoned military installations, there is likely to be a lot of other kinds of hazardous contamination in that dust besides radioactivity.

Andrew O'Neill · Mar 28, 2019

If I still lived in Japan, I would definitely have visited Fukushima.

mooseontheloose · Mar 29, 2019

Andrew O'Neill said:
If I still lived in Japan, I would definitely have visited Fukushima.

You’ll be back sometime right? Maybe it’s worth going northfor a change.

Andrew O'Neill · Mar 29, 2019

mooseontheloose said:
You’ll be back sometime right? Maybe it’s worth going northfor a change.

Ya I tend to get over there every couple of years. Planning to go Summer, 2020... It'll be a tough task convincing my Kyushu wife to go up there! Summer... oh the humidity of it all!

mooseontheloose · Mar 29, 2019

Andrew O'Neill said:
Ya I tend to get over there every couple of years. Planning to go Summer, 2020... It'll be a tough task convincing my Kyushu wife to go up there! Summer... oh the humidity of it all!

Remember to avoid the time around the Olympics! That will be a level of craziness I would want to avoid at all costs.

Andrew O'Neill · Mar 30, 2019

mooseontheloose said:
Remember to avoid the time around the Olympics! That will be a level of craziness I would want to avoid at all costs.

Should be well away from it. I'll be thinking of those poor athletes competing outdoors in hot, humid Summer such as the marathon runners... whilst I sit in air conditioned Mr. Donuts drinking my アメリカンコーヒー　and munching on a チョコファッション... ha ha

Vaughn · Mar 30, 2019

I was glad I visited my son in Kyoto in December (2017) for a couple weeks. We then headed down to Kagoshima and exploring Yakushima Island before heading home a few days after Christmas. On Yakushima we got a bus pass for 5 days that got us all over the place and up into the mountains to see the native old-growth cedars -- very few tourists. Hot springs next to the ocean water, coral on the beach and all sort of neat stuff. No great desire to explore Fukushima or Three-Mile Island.

mooseontheloose · Jul 13, 2019

For anyone interested, I finally finished my blog posts (including lots of photos) from my trip to Chernobyl. They took a long time to finish just to make sure I got all my details and facts straight, and although the posts are quite long, I still feel like they are a very abbreviated summary of what happened there (though most of what I write about (including the photos) is about my personal experience there). Although I took scores of rolls of film, as I've only just finished processing them all, none of the images on the blog are of film, just quick shots I grabbed with my phone. I hope to get some prints done soon so I can post them here on Photrio.

Day 1 (Visiting the self-settlers, some abandoned villages, and the amusement park in Pripyat)
Day 2 (A full day in Pripyat, including the Palace of Culture, a middle school, the Azure swimming pool, the hospital, and more)
Day 3 (The Duga-1 radar array and local town, a summer camp, the abandoned rail station, cooling towers and a lab/former fish farm)
Day 4 (Chernobyl town and inside the Chernobyl nuclear power plant).

Ian Leake · Jul 13, 2019

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing this

Kodachromeguy · Jul 14, 2019

These are fascinating and extremely well written. You did a lot of research on the background and the events pertaining to the explosion and what happened to the town. I am surprised that more readers here have not commented. Your way of photographing is similar to mine: straight on, somewhat complicated views, this is what the place looks like. I will look forward to film photographs. Well done!

P.S., I have considered visiting Chernobyl, but it definitely has been "done" photographically by plenty of talented photographers, including you and other film users. Who know, maybe some day? I have seen some Russian web sites where decayed site spelunkers have explored old Soviet cold war bunkers, bases, and power plants. There is a lot to see in Russia and Ukraine if you are interested in that type of topic.

twelvetone12 · Jul 14, 2019

I read your blog posts, thank you is much!
I've been studying the accident for the last 15 years or so, and I still cannot complete wrap my head around it. I would like to go and visit the plant this fall. Did you book through their website?
Great photos BTW!

Andrew O'Neill · Jul 14, 2019

Wonderful! Thank you for sharing!

mooseontheloose · Jul 14, 2019

twelvetone12 said:
I read your blog posts, thank you is much!
I've been studying the accident for the last 15 years or so, and I still cannot complete wrap my head around it. I would like to go and visit the plant this fall. Did you book through their website?
Great photos BTW!

Thanks - I'm not sure which website you are talking about. To visit the exclusion zone you have to book a tour (group or private). The visit to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is arranged by the tour company/guide. In my case, since I was on a private tour, it added an extra $100 to the cost. For a group tour I'm sure it would be folded into the price of the total tour. The guide I went with (Misha) recently got to visit the inside of what's left of the control room for Reactor 4, which looks like a burnt out version of the one I went to, but I don't know if that's part of the standard tour now or if he got special permission to do so.

If you plan to visit before winter sets in, book your trip/tour ASAP. Even before the mini-series "Chernobyl" came out, the tour companies were struggling to find enough guides to meet the demand. I can only imagine what it's like now. If you plan to stay overnight (as I did), there are only 2 places that offer accommodation inside Chernobyl town, and those hotels are pretty small and solidly booked. I think a great time to visit would be when the leaves turn colour in October, unfortunately due to my teaching schedule, it's not a time I can ever visit.

mooseontheloose · Jul 14, 2019

Kodachromeguy said:
These are fascinating and extremely well written. You did a lot of research on the background and the events pertaining to the explosion and what happened to the town. I am surprised that more readers here have not commented. Your way of photographing is similar to mine: straight on, somewhat complicated views, this is what the place looks like. I will look forward to film photographs. Well done!

P.S., I have considered visiting Chernobyl, but it definitely has been "done" photographically by plenty of talented photographers, including you and other film users. Who know, maybe some day? I have seen some Russian web sites where decayed site spelunkers have explored old Soviet cold war bunkers, bases, and power plants. There is a lot to see in Russia and Ukraine if you are interested in that type of topic.

You should definitely visit. Even if it has been "done" by others, the fact that the buildings are in a constant state of decay means that there are always changes to document. I came across one photographer (I'll see if I can find the link) who's been going for years to document the changes and even he is surprised at how much things changes from year to year. Even though the Ukrainian government has just announced that it will be an official tourist site (until now, it was not), the fact of the matter is that the buildings are in an (unrepairable) state of decay and nature is reclaiming the area - at some point in the near(ish) future, it will become too dangerous or difficult to visit many of these areas.

As for other Russian sites, I've been looking into a few of them. I'll be visiting Central Asia this summer (the 'Stans) and had contemplated visiting the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan, but I don't have much time in the country and as the site is in the middle of nowhere (and it's a big country) it doesn't make sense this time around.

Kodachromeguy · Jul 14, 2019

mooseontheloose said:
You should definitely visit. Even if it has been "done" by others, the fact that the buildings are in a constant state of decay means that there are always changes to document. I came across one photographer (I'll see if I can find the link) who's been going for years to document the changes and even he is surprised at how much things changes from year to year. Even though the Ukrainian government has just announced that it will be an official tourist site (until now, it was not), the fact of the matter is that the buildings are in an (unrepairable) state of decay and nature is reclaiming the area - at some point in the near(ish) future, it will become too dangerous or difficult to visit many of these areas..

Hmmm, you are persuasive (and your blog and photographs most definitely are!); you have 99% convinced me. I will put that trip on the list for October 2020. You may have noticed that I am in Mississippi; much of the infrastructure here is falling apart and being engulfed by nature. But seeing the similar process in a northern climate would be most interesting.

I recall when the reactor exploded. My mother and sisters lived in Greece and immediately bought as much butter, cheese, and milk as they could store in their refrigerators. They enjoyed these new-old-stock milk products for months. (Like my new old-stock film in my freezer.)

RalphLambrecht · Jul 14, 2019

mooseontheloose said:
...aka, my visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion zone. While visiting one of the community centres, I came across this small room that had dozens of mostly uncut negatives strewn throughout the floor. It looks to be colour film, possibly motion picture? - I didn't want to get too close as officially we were not allowed to be inside the building, nor to touch anything. I'm sure it was fine, but if you set off the sensors when going through the security checks, it can lead to some awkward questions as to where you've been. Anyway, I wasn't sure exactly where to post this, but this seems like as good a place as any:

View attachment 220196 View attachment 220197 View attachment 220198 View attachment 220199 View attachment 220200 View attachment 220201

this being where it is, the damage may be due to more than just light.

Alan Edward Klein · Jul 14, 2019

Very thorough writing and pictures. Well done. Thanks.

mooseontheloose · Jul 15, 2019

RalphLambrecht said:
this being where it is, the damage may be due to more than just light.

Of course! Actually I'm surprised that wind and rain and who knows what else has not cause more of the papers (and film strips) to get tossed outside. There's a surprising amount of debris left inside the buildings (well, whatever hasn't been looted over the years).

33 years of exposure to light and the elements will do this to your film...

DREW WILEY

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