Factory Girl: Every Picture has a story and process: Juxtaposer App

FACTORY GIRL

The Story: 

On Monday, Don Vetter and I visited the old Lonaconing Silk or Throwing Mill. We met Amy McGovern and her husband there. Amy had called ahead and let the owner know we were coming.  The current owner Herb Crawford is desperately trying to save it from the demise of time. (He raises money by charging admission of $75.00 to any desirous photographers.) He has guarded the mill for some thirty years now and single handedly has tried to keep the building in tact. He is fighting a losing battle now due to money, age  and resources. The rain has penetrated the roof and the lead paint is peeling off every wall, and the smell of well oil machinery permeates the thick air of history.
There are current attempts to raise awareness and money on many sites like this Blog by Rusty.
However, my sense is that the building will fall further into ruin. The image here Factory Girl, was inspired by the many women who's lives were both of the factory and ruined by the factory's unforeseen and sudden closing, leaving many of them to economic hardship. The personal belongings of some of them remain in the building today, covered with the dust of time. The tickets which most likely were used to tag spools of silk or monitor employee production were still seen throughout the mill in several places. This image was my visual attempt at sharing this thought, or feeling I had about those women.

The Process:

When I go into places like this I take shots of miscellaneous pieces; such as surfaces, or snippets of material that alone does not necessarily make a compelling image, but when brought together with other snippets just might make a compelling image. This image was made with this idea in mind.
So here's the process I used on the iPhone:

Three shots:
Shot 1: The Tags: shot in BracketMode and merged in TrueHDR

Shot 2: The Shoes: shot in BracketMode and merged in TrueHDR

Shot 3: The Brick Wall: shot in BracketMode and merged in TrueHDR

I then opened Juxtaposer and used the BrickWall as the base layer; I layered on the shoe shot and then the tag shot. Selectively erasing the part of the image I did not want in the final composition, and arrived at this image.

I ran the composite image through Grungetatstic and put a small inner border of rusty color around the images. Then I opened the app called "ScratchCam" and opened the composite image with the rusty border, tabbing through the options until I arrived at this one:

Although the image  was dark, I liked the effect the filter in ScratchCam gave the image, so I saved it and then opened it in Iris to brighten and make a levels adjustment:

 

I then finished the image by applying a black border in the app Crop'n'Frame.