What to pack when a trip centers on gas station preservation

What to take away

• A long lens is the most important item, because the good detail is on the other side of a fence.
• Wear proper boots. Broken forecourt concrete, glass and rebar are the standard surface.
• Do not enter a closed station, and never go near an open pit or vault on one.
• Water and shade, because a forecourt is the most exposed place on any street.

Filling stations are the roadside subject most likely to be visited badly. They sit derelict, they look empty, the door is often open, and photographs of the inside are all over the internet.

Pack in a way that makes the good version of the trip easy and the bad version unnecessary.

The lens matters more than usual

Most of what is worth recording at a closed station is behind a fence: the canopy soffit, the porcelain panel joints, the pump islands, the maker's marks.

Bring something with reach. A moderate telephoto turns a frustrating site into a productive one and removes any reason to climb anything.

Pair it with something wide for the whole site, and leave everything else at home.

Footwear and clothing

The ground is the hazard. Cracked slab, gravel, glass, rebar, curbs at odd heights, and vegetation growing through all of it.

Boots with a stiff sole and ankle support, long trousers, gloves in the bag. Bright clothing if you will be near traffic, and none of it is a substitute for standing somewhere sensible.

Why you stay outside

This is worth being blunt about. Closed filling stations are not the same as other empty buildings, because the site can contain tank vaults, sumps, dispenser pits and voids that are not obvious under debris.

Those are confined spaces in the technical sense, and the reason professionals treat them with elaborate care is set out in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's confined spaces material: restricted entry and exit, and atmospheres that can be dangerous without any warning at all.

The same body's respiratory protection requirements explain why proper equipment is a fitted, trained and tested system rather than a dust mask from a hardware shop. If a site genuinely needs that, it needs someone else.

So the rule is simple: photograph from public ground, or with the owner's permission and their supervision. Never alone, never through a gap in a fence.

The rest of the kit

• Two liters of water per person. Forecourts have no shade at all.
• Hat and sunscreen, for the same reason.
• Notebook and pencil, because these sites raise more questions than answers.
• Offline maps, since many are on stretches with no signal.
• A rubbish bag. Taking a bag of litter off a site you photographed is good manners.
• Cash, for buying something at the station that is still open down the road.

What to leave behind

Anything that encourages entry: torches, bolt cutters, a ladder, a step stool. If the frame needs one of those, it is not your frame.

Also leave the drone. Fenced industrial sites and low-flying aircraft are a bad combination for permissions and for goodwill.

Before you set out

Check which sites are operating businesses, which are adapted to a new use, and which are closed. Operating and adapted ones are the productive stops, and they involve buying a coffee and asking politely rather than standing in a weeded lot.

What that adaptation involves is set out in how the preservation process works, and the pacing that suits this subject applies here too, since the best stops are places where somebody will talk to you.

Common questions

Is it legal to photograph from the pavement? Generally yes, from public ground. Entering the site is trespass regardless of whether it is fenced.

What if the owner is on site? Ask. Owners of closed stations are frequently glad somebody is interested, and some will walk you round themselves.

Do I need a hard hat? If you are being taken onto a site by an owner, they will tell you. If you are asking the question at a fence, the answer is that you should not be going in.

How much time per site? Twenty minutes for a closed one, an hour for an operating or adapted one where you can talk to somebody.