Can we talk about how a $12 camera flash light helped me shoot the old Sears storefront in Gary?

Harper Wright · 2026-10-09T02:40:10.012919+00:00

I shoot dead malls as a hobby and the lighting inside those places is always a mess, dark one minute and blown out the next from the skylights. Last month I went to the old Sears in Gary, Indiana and brought a cheap flash light I got at Harbor Freight for $12 instead of my usual camera flash. I walked the empty shoe aisle and shined it up at the ceiling tiles, and the bounce gave the whole room this soft even glow without any hotspot. The weird thing is the workers had carpeted half the sales floor with that thin gray stuff and the light picked up all the dust lines where old display racks used to sit, which I never would have seen in normal pics. I got 40 shots that look like the store just closed yesterday. What I learned is you do not need gear that costs hundreds, you need something that throws light far enough to read the room. Anyone else figure out a cheap trick for shooting the inside of a place like this?

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Can we talk about how a $12 camera flash light helped me shoot the old Sears storefront in Gary? | Dead Malls - Discusd