I was invited by a good photography friend for a private visit to a 100 year old part disused heating power plant in Ban Nauheim and of course I couldn’t turn down this fantastic opportunity. Join me for a tour back in time in large format!
Bad Nauheim is a really interesting town, one that I have visited before when taking shots at the world famous ‘Sprudelhof’ spa(link to my post here). Interestingly enough, the power plant we visited for this blog post has a 2km long tunnel that leads to the Sprudelhof spa. The plant is actually still used so it has state of the art facilities right next to unused 100 year old objects, making for a really interesting place to visit (let alone photograph).
According to an article I read, in 1912, the technicians started producing electricity and heat. The amount of electricity was sufficient to supply the entire city, the rest was transported to a power plant in Wölfersheim via a seven-kilometer line. The resulting heat, a kind of waste product, was used in the form of steam or hot water to heat the buildings of the spa. More info (including technical details) about this interesting power plant here and here (both in German).
All colour shots taken with my iPhone for documentary purposes. The final film images are shot on Fomapan 100 sheet film with my Linhof Master Technika 4x5 camera.
The power plant had quite a few (very large) rooms to it, and seemingly getting older the further away from the entrance you went. As you can see from my phone shots below, there are a ton of really cool looking old signs. There were even hand written entries in administrative books still inside some of the cupboards.
Getting the framing for this shot was quite hard actually and I am not sure I have the perspective right, but I like the final shot.
The final shot of this very large tank.
This room looked like it belonged in a James Bond scene. Also a shot of one of the crew with his Mamiya film camera.
Even though the final image came out quite dark, I really like the scene.
It was quite hard to decide to find a shot that wasn’t too busy, so in the end I decided for a view down a corridor, which I thought could be interesting.
The final shot - I love the detail and the sharpness.
This was one of my favourite scenes and right deep underground and the first thing I thought of when I saw the cart thingy was the Temple of Doom Indianan Jones film (if you know, you know).
This was also a crazy long exposure given there was very little light here (the iPhone shots are deceiving in that sense).
I wonder how Harrison Ford would feel inside one of those…
Another room where you really go back in time, what an honour to be able to spend time in here photographing everything.
I wasn’t the only one making good use of the time in this really old space!
Incredible to see these old mechanical machines with so much detail on them. I am really happy with the final shot and quite like how the light from outside brings a certain glow to the machine knobs.
More heavy machinery to photograph! Actually for both this image and the one above I would love to be able to do a darkroom print of them, I think the would come out really nicely.
This shot came out a bit dark and I found it hard to get a decent composition given the room was so busy with cables everywhere.
Overall observations
It goes without saying we had a great few hours just exploring the place and taking our time thinking about which shots to take, me in particular given I was logging around my 4x5 camera. It was fascinating and a real privilege to visit this interesting location and have the place to ourselves for a few hours. I am still amazed as to how well kept the original power station is, with everything kept in its place - even the administrative booklets in the cupboard. What most stood out to me was how organized everything was, you can see it in the clear handwriting in the notebooks.
I found some of my shots very dark, but that is probably due to the very long exposure times given so many of the scenes were so dark. Regardless, as always I just love the huge 4x5 negative size and the amount of detail it captures. These kinds of location deserve large format and long setup time and composition consideration, it gives you time to soak the whole place in.
A real treat of a visit - I hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I did taking them.
Thanks for stopping by and see you next time,
Neil
