RAGING WATERS
October 16 2021
This type of post is a first from me because I’m writing it the day of. This is new for me mainly because I’ve been trying to catch up and write posts from a little while ago when I first started shooting film. If you’re wondering I still haven’t caught up, this is just a little pause and jump to the present. This kind of post is also new and probably kind of rare because all my photos from today were digital, so I didn’t have to wait for development and scanning. All I had to do was edit them! Which… even with me that can take a few weeks, so I’m stoked that I got these all done today.
I should probably give some background first, Raging Waters was a water park in Salt Lake City, Utah that opened in 1979 and has been a childhood staple until 2018 when it closed because it’s structures became unsafe. Here is an interesting article about it What to do with ‘Raging Waters’. Today the site is in disarray with crumbling cement walkways, deteriorating waterslides and spray paint everywhere. I used to visit Raging Waters frequently as a kid, so it was strange and sad to see it in such a state, but for photography it was incredible. The twisting slides and steep staircases provided interesting silhouettes and shapes and the ruin and abandon were a photographers dream. It was really fun to shoot inside Raging Waters, but it was trespassing and I DO NOT encourage trespassing. Trespassing is illegal and dangerous so please do it at your own risk and please don’t think that you need to trespass to get interesting photographs.
That photo is from a June 2020 when I visited the park with my sisters. I didn’t go in that time but still took some interesting photos from outside the park. The slides from any vantage make for an interesting background so I didn’t need to get any closer for that shot… there was also a security guard that time, so we couldn’t go in.
Today we basically walked in. The photo above was our entrance, the city had started their demolition of the park so there was a huge opening for trucks on the east side. And we came early for sunrise so there wasn’t a security guard in sight. I and a few other SLC film photographers met at the park at 7 AM to sneak in and grab some blue hour shots before the sun came up. I only brought a digital camera with me today which was great in the morning for the high ISO. However, it was a bummer not having film in such a cool location… but I have seriously been cranking through film lately so I needed a break.
After sunrise we explored a little bit and then Sterling and I went up the green slide that you see in the first picture. I took a bunch of pictures of Sterling on the slide as well as the view of the park from it, but while we were up there a Salt Lake City car pulled into the waterpark so we spent ~5 minutes up there just hiding inside the slide. Whoever was in the car didn’t seem to see us or mind that we were in the park, so they drove away. Sterling and I saw it leave from the slide, but the other guys that where with us didn’t so they ended up leaving the park from an exit on the west end.
I didn’t take too many photos after the water slide because I wanted to find the other guys, but I did grab some portraits of Sterling which turned out great and was awesome since I need to take more portraits… if you can’t tell people aren’t my forte.
The camera I brought turned out to be perfect for the day. A Rebel T2i isn’t a camera that I would seek out for myself… mainly because I don’t like Canon… but my grandma gave me the camera and I found a super tiny 24mm pancake lens so I was actually pretty stoked on the setup. On an APS-C sensor 24mm is around 40mm on a full frame camera which is an awesome everything focal length. It was perfect for capturing scenes before sunrise and then taking portraits later on. AND to make it even better I was super happy with the colors straight out of camera, I didn’t really need to edit all that much, which was great. I’ll make sure to do a post about the camera because it is a setup that I never thought I would be using but I was surprisingly pleased and am actually looking forward to using it again.
I’ll finish with my favorite picture from the day, it’s a pretty simple image of Sterling standing by the wave pool but it feels like he is waiting to leave somewhere so I thought it would be fitting as the last image.
As always thank you for reading! And I don’t have comments set up yet so I can’t get your feedback, but I hope that you enjoyed the more ‘blow by blow’ style of post. It was fun to write, and I might do more of it if I keep bringing digital with me on these excursions.