The Vault

This former bank vault is now a dinning room for 12 people inside the Pittsburgh Engineer’s Building in the downtown area.  A few weeks ago, Pittsburgh held an event called “Open Door Pittsburgh”.  Basically this meant that there were around 30 buildings that are not normally open to the public, open to the public on this day.  Some of the buildings had guided tours and others were just self-guided tours of the spaces.  The Vault caught my eye on the marketing material, so I made sure we hit that spot first.

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In Search of the Perfect Vault

Guest Blog by Kendall Smith:  June 15th, 2015:

Towards the end of September, I was completing my first round of queries to literary agents in order to find a home, or publishing house, for my thriller, Vault 21-12. That process took six months, and as a writer, I knew it was time to change strategies. The next logical move was to pitch independent publishing houses and start crafting a cover concept to share with prospective editors.

The idea of using the vault as the main image is relevant to a core theme in the book: What is in the vault? Given it is located in Switzerland and was opened during World War Two, there’s a mysterious element to the story. Frankly, it’s the main hook, and what better way to entice readers than to provide a visual of the vault itself.

That, on many levels opened a Pandora’s box. Hours, if not days were spent searching the web to find the perfect visual. I hired a graphic designer to assist in the process. This element of the pitch helped to sell the story and concept to the team at Percussion Publishing. The story sold them, but my graphic designer and I were on the hook to find and design the covers (front and back).

Given the challenge, we tried a few different approaches but in the end we simply had to find an image of the perfect vault. One night, late in February and well past the deadline, my designer found Brook Ward’s visual – a picture of a bank vault located in the Washington Trust Building in Washington, Pennsylvania.

The second I saw it I was enthralled and grateful. We finally found the perfect image to represent Vault 21-12! We had complete control over the layout and design, and when we submitted it to Percussion Publishing, they were impressed.

After five more revisions, tweaks and color treatments, Vault 21-12 came to life. The title has already received thirteen 5-star ratings on Amazon and is selling well.

We tip our hat to the photographer, Brook Ward, for his skills behind the lens. We will recommend him to other writers and editors and speaking as an author, I hope you’ll check out my thriller.

Kendall Smith  (Author, Vault 21-12)

Available on Amazon, Kindle and Nook.

Amazon:  http://amzn.com/0692460438

Kindle:  http://amzn.com/B00YHLNAHS

Nook:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/vault-21-12-kendall-smith/1122001387?ean=2940151273169

           Before...and After (my original photo on the left.  The final book cover on the right)

Vintage Bank Vault II

I got so many great photos of the vacant Washington Trust bank vault that I keep posting pictures from this day.  I am sorry if you’re getting bored of them, I just can’t help it.  I am hoping to go back to this location at least once more to capture a few more pictures…..

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From The Picture Vault - Grand Canyon

This one is from the picture vault.  I took this picture of the Grand Canyon as an excursion from Las Vegas.  MJ and I spent an extra day out there to make this side trip to Arizona.  We took a pink jeep, a tour bus, a pontoon boat and a helicopter during the course of the day to experience the Grand Canyon from all aspects.

Photo Technique:

This is a single exposure captured with my Nikon D90 and 18-105mm lens.  The camera was in Aperture mode set at f10, 18.0 mm focal length, 1/320 second and ISO set at 200.  I ran the image through Photomatix Pro to create this tone mapped final image. 

Enjoy.

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Vintage Bank Vault

On Thursday this week, Dave Truxell and I were given the opportunity to photograph the inside of a vacant bank.  In downtown Washington PA, there is a tall building (probably 15 stories tall….I didn’t count or look) called the Washington Trust Building.  The Washington Trust Company built it over 100 years ago and the bank occupied the main floor.  The bank (Washington Trust Company) went out of business long ago and numerous other banks have operated in this space over the years. 

Currently, a bank is operating in the front portion of the space, but the back portion has been vacant for years.  As you can imagine the entire space is build with marble, large columns, tall ceilings, etc…like you’d expect for a grand building constructed back at that time in our history.   The original Washington Trust Company bank vault is still sitting there, just waiting for me to come along a take this photo. 

The vault door is 21 inches thick and weighs 36 tons.  It has a cool glass cover on the inside of the door allowing you to see all the gears and mechanical parts.  The door is at least 8 feet tall, if not more.  I can’t even imagine how they installed this vault back when we didn’t have forklifts, etc….  The inside of the vault is approximately 12 feet by 40 feet filled with brass safe deposit boxes of numerous sizes. 

Photo Technique:

I captured this with a 5 exposure auto-bracketed in Aperture mode set at f11.  Merged the images in Photomatix Pro to create the HDR image and completed some minor edits in Photoshop CS6.

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