January 2011
20 posts
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Hellingly Asylum - Exit Strategy
As the construction / destruction is continuing at pace at Hellingly there are several parts of the remaining buildings where there were once corridors that are now open to the world. Although there are plenty of wards left, many of the connecting corridors that we used to traverse are no longer left and iopen out to the external rubble. This is a point in case. The bath being one of the few...
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Hellingly Asylum - The Great Hall
My penultimate trip to Hellingly (probably). This is almost where it all began for me and many others, my affair with photography, urbex and processing images, heck, I even met my other half at an asylum! Whilst taking the images, I’m totally in the zone, thinking about what to shoot and how to frame images, but on my return and reviewing the shots, I do feel quite sad that this place is on...
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Hasard Cheratte - Winch II
One from the vaults. After reading about other favorite photographers looking through their old shots I decided to take a look through those that I had taken during the summer of last year and came across some from the abandoned mine in Belgium.
This shot depicts the winch at the foot of the main shaft. The cables would have been hooked up to the top of the mine HERE. The area was pretty run down...
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Cliffe - Wreck of The Hans Egede
Part of the trip to Cliffe Fort was to see the wreck of the Hans Egede. Unfortunately after being predisposed within the fort I didn’t really have enough time to dedicate to the wreck due to the weather turning and advancing tide. I only managed to get a couple of sets of brackets off, none of which I was particularly happy with.
The Hans Egede is a wooden, auxiliary 3-masted vessel, built...
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Heygate Estate - RAGE
On Sunday I took a trip to the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle in London. This estate was completed in 1974 and was originally conceived as a model of modern urban living with large airy rooms and great views over the center of London. However in recent years due to architectural and maintainence issues fallen into disrepair and had become a haven for anti-social behavior with tenants...
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Runwell Hospital - The Kitchen Sink
This may not in fact be the kitchen sink, it looks more like a cleaners room! I liked the setting of this room, the five main parts of the shot work well together - cracked paint, window, sink, mirror frame and radiator.
I’ve taken a slightly different route with the processing on this shot. I wasn’t happy with the original image composition and had to do a bit of work to straighten...
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Runwell Hospital - Not An Exit
This room is downstairs from the previous post, you can see that everything is boarded up. Luckily the inside courtyard, now overgrown is not boarded, its totally enclosed, so there was enough light to be able to shoot. The symmetry of the door and windows grabbed me along with the boards behind the door that I thought would process well.
The door would have opened to the outside, maybe giving...
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Runwell Hospital - Out Of The Blue
One cold November morning Howzey and I went to the asylum. It was frosty on the ground still and we couldn’t initially find our way in, the entrance that had been used before was boarded, but with a bit of looking and climbing we gained access. This was an early kick off and I’m glad we made the effort, the light was great as can be seen in this shot - streaming through the windows to...
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Mortuary P - The Slabs
Here’s one from the vaults - I was looking through some of my older photos and came across this one which I have processed before but thought it would be fun to have another go now that there are different skills in the bag.
This is a mortuary at a hospital fairly close to where I live. It’s basically only four or five rooms, the slabs and fridges being the most photographically...
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ECVB - The Pipes
Here’s an image from ECVB - the derelict power station in Belgium. This is truly one of my urbex high points. The site is massive with loads of rusty pipes. Its on a grand scale too - over 10 floors I would guess.I was exploring alone, in a foreign country knowing that there was security onsite and a live station just next door. I was totally wired to every noise, crack, groan and creak that...
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Self Portraits - Your Choice!
One of my Flickr groups has a self portrait competition this month. I have already entered one shot but though that I’d take a bit of time over another.
I was hoping to go out for some urbex today, but things transpired otherwise, so I decided to spend a bit of time taking some SPs. As I mentioned in a previous post, I really enjoy doing these - it takes time to get everything right, for...
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Dadi Park - Slippery
One from my summer trip to Belgium from the disused amusement park.
Sometimes there are images that need to be toned down and require a more sombre mood, others need to be shiny and bright. This is somewhere in the middle. During the post process I did have a version that was super shiny. I quite liked it, but overall it was way to eye searing. I like the way this has turned out. Muted trees and...
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Dungeness - FE119 - Gone Fishing
A welcome return to Dungeness images. I seem to have hit everything I wanted on this day out - images that I am very happy with that are in focus and fairly well composed. What really makes this set though is the light. Its not really something that I have thought about that much before. I know that there is good and bad light, but what about the magical Golden Hour.
This set was shot during The...
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Another Narcissistic Self Portrait
Due to Photoshop having a bit of a hissy fit on me this evening I decided to post one that I took last night whist messing with the flash. I really enjoy portraiture and it’s something that I’d like to excel in. At the moment its limited to self shots. I’m not yet skilled enough to get out there as there appears to be a lot of tweaking required and I feel I’m the only one...
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Birnbeck Pier - Stop Whispering
The Compton organ on Birnbeck Pier in all its fading glory. This was a rushed set due to the tide coming in, If i had taken much more time I may have had to wait for quite a while for the sea to recede and the causeway to this location to re-appear!
The time restriction made me realise the two sides of shooting more than ever. On one side of things one should take time and make every shot count -...
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Birnbeck Pier - Gentlemen
Had a busy end of week so not been able to process a recent picture, so here’s one from my Flickr last week
Its taken on a disused pier in Somerset, UK. The pier is only accessible during low tide when a causeway appears as the tide recedes. Therefore Urbex time was quite limited. I arrived about an hour later than expected so the water was at it’s lowest ebb. I knew I had about an...
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Plymouth Hoe - Red Rail Blue Rail
There are lots of interesting places on the Hoe, little
cubby holes, arches and steps. Its interesting down by the shore as
the tide has great variation between high and low, weathering
concrete and metal. It made me think again of the contrast between
the summer and winter, in the summer this place is packed, almost
standing room only and its been that way for many many years.When
we were...
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Plymouth Hoe - Around The Bend
My second trip to The Hoe over the Christmas period was again to use the ND110 filter and to show Viveca a little of Plymouth’s nicer side.
On arrival we noticed that the water was flat, very flat, hardly any tidal ripple at all which pretty much negated what I had come to do. On the positive side of things that meant that there would be no re-occurrence of my trip earlier in the week where...
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Kit Hill - Danger Mine Shaft
Kit hill is a small peak near my Mum’s place in the town where I grew up. We used to have the pleasure of running up here is sports at school. I tended to walk most of the way!
I thought it would be good to end our New Year stay with a little drive around the local area and have a look at a few of the sights. The view from up here is pretty good on a clear day and Eddystone lighthouse can...
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Plymouth Hoe - Hold The Handrail When Descending
Viveca and I took another trip down the Plymouth yesterday. I wanted to spend a little time trying to get better captured using long exposure and the ND110 filter. It had started raining previously so I wasn’t able to get the shots I was after. This time the water was flat calm, no wind and very little tidal movement, so my search for milky water didn’t come to much. I think that this...