Here are some photos i took back in the UK of Abandoned places.

This is a photo taken in an abandoned Hospital in salisbury, this was one of the first photos i took using my new camera, i like this photo because of the lighting it was also the first chance i got to take photos along side my friend Jake.

An old record i found in an abandoned Hospital near Salisbury.

I took the day off from work yesterday to shoot some HDRs at Beelitz-Heilstätten (abandoned sanitorium) and at the Kaserne Krampnitz (former WWII German Panzer Training Facility and also a former post WWII USSR military base).  Came away with some images that I thought were worth sharing.  Here is one from the halls of the sanitorium.  I was the only one there at the time, so it was a little creepy feeling.  Good thing I had my trusty flashlight!!

With more than 20 plants across Belgium, this concrete producing group is one of the biggest in the country, producing more than 2,5 million m³ of concrete on a yearly basis. However, as times evolved, some concrete plants had to close, the ‘Nord’ one in a harbour-city close to the sea was one of them.

This post is actually a rather long reply to a question about flash photography in a heritage forum Midland Heritage, so it may read a little strangely.

Blimey now this is a big can of worms. Firstly I would really recommend the strobist blog as an excellent resource lighting 101 this will take you straight to the first page of their (rather long) lighting tutorial which will give you all the info you could possibly want.

One way to use these flashes  is  to fill shadows   when you are lighting a dark dingy room, I would suggest that a set of triggers is a good first purchase for this and will help immensely, especially if you havent got any of the shiny flashes that will trigger wirelessly.

I always find it easier to work from an example and I quite like this one as it is not immediately apparent that I have used a lot of flash.

I have just used the one unit which has been placed just behind the door on the left and bounced off a silver reflector (though the wall would also work).

The reason I needed to light this was that the difference between the sunlight streaming down the stairs and the door which was deep in shadow and rather gloomy, so I metered for the stairs and used a process of trial and error to find the correct fill.

With this shot there is some evidence that I may have used a flash, first the colour of the light is different, cool the side where I have used the flash and warm on the other where the sunlight is coming down the stairs. Secondly the light is concentrated at the bottom of the door which is a giveaway that a small light source has been used (firing two or more flashes through a diffuser or large bedsheet may have helped lessen this but it is not really the most practical or portable of solutions).

I will often use a flash to highlight a section of detail aswell, this shot is the usual long exposure on a tripod which people are used to 1.3 seconds at iso 100 and an aperture of f13. the flash here is lighting the foreground and bringing detail to the “thing” at the front.

In this shot the flash would have been firing at quite a high power despite the long exposure, this is due to the aperture being so small and the way that flash lights a picture.

Put simply the flash only cares about aperture as the burst of light is emitted for roughly 1/10000 sec, only one burst is emitted during a normal exposure so it doesnt matter what the shutter speed is to the flash.

Having said this the ambient light obviously cares about both so in a long exposure the flash may not appear as evident but this is only due to the natural light taking over as the dominant light source and stifling the light from the flash.

Going back to the picture the flash is very evident here because the area it is lighting is in shadow allowing the flash to be the dominant source of light, it needed the high power to allow enough light to hit the sensor through a small hole in a very short space of time.

This was the part of flash photography I always struggled with but the best way is really to experiment.

Another way I will often use flash like this is to kill all the ambient light in a room and allow the flash to light the scene on its own.

The geek info for this image is: 1/250 sec at f10.

It would make sense for me to increase the shutter speed further to something like 1/1000 as this would allow me to reduce the aperture and put less strain on the flash units, however the flash will not sync at this speed 1/250 being the maximum on my camera. So I am stuck with f10 which isnt so bad as it allows me to keep everything nice and sharp.

Without the flash the frame is black, the little detail you can see on the background is due to spill from the lights

To light the picture I used two lights, one on a stand right in front of where the model was jumping at around chest hight on the model. This flash was zoomed in towards the model as I wanted to concentrate the beam of light on her (this also reduces the power needed as more light goes where you want it) doing this makes the beam harder and narrower and is a great way to bring attention to a specific point in an image.

The second light was low down right below the camera and bounced off a silver reflector, this light was as wide as I could make it and lower power than the first as I wanted a soft light just to fill the shadows left by the main beam (it is also this light that caused the spill).

The only problem with lighting this way is you are forced to blend the light, filling any unexpected shadows and keeping the light from becoming a distraction.

You are not restricted to darkness for these techniques either and they can be a viable and interesting alternative to a HDR image. This shot was exposed for the sky on a bright day with the sun at my 5 o’clock. This caused the top of the Helicopter to be exposed, but left the detail at the bottom dark and in the shadow. To counter this I used two lights one either side of the helicopter (my 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock), these lights were used to give the bottom of the helicopter a little more exposure than the light hitting the top, bringing your focus to the front of the helicopter and giving the picture more impact than a normal exposre could allow.

I hope this has been somewhat useful to some people, and sorry about the length, this is a technique I use in most of my images at work and while it may take some getting used to, once you have an idea about what the light will do it becomes a very powerful tool that can be set up quickly and easily

A note on my kit: All the above were taken with a Fuji S5 Pro, a Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 lens and one or two nikon speedlights. I use an old Sb26 connected to a trigger and an sb800 which fires wirelessly when it detects the light from the first flash (or any other flash for that matter) my bag also contains a silver/gold reflector and a cheepo Jessops tripod which I use as a stand. All fairly cheap and most importantly very portable

I regularly put images using this technique on my Flickr page and include a brief description of the lighting used.

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan

Finished processing the Al Tech photos. For now at least. It’s an amazing place, and there’s no way I was able to capture the full scope of this abandoned, crumbling, toxic landscape. sebastien.b and no3rdw’s sets can give some more context, they have some great wide shots.

24 photos. Don’t miss the slideshow.

Built around 1920, this was one of the first Belgian military airports. The airport was closed in the mid 90’s. The airstrip is still being used by a local flying club but the barracks and sporting facilities were left abandoned.

“I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy.” -Baudelaire

A handful more shots from Al Tech. Almost done processing these.

Check out sebastien.b and no3rdw’s sets, and deebee | photography has several HDR shots, or view the slideshow. Earlier: Part 1, Part 2.

Notre week end en Belgique et au Luxembourg ne s’est pas tout à fait déroulé comme nous l’aurions souhaité !
Départ Jeudi 12 Novembre à 5h00 du matin. La route défile devant nous comme un automatisme; cela fait 3 fois que nous l’empruntons. Mais pour l’heure, une première surprise nous attend aux abords de Bruxelles : les embouteillages ! Première erreur d’anticipation dans notre organisation ! Bien vite, nous constatons en quoi “l’exploration urbaine” en semaine s’avère bien plus difficile que pendant le week end.
Nous patientons donc dans les embouteillages quasiment 1 heure. Enfin, nous arrivons au premier point prévu et première déconvenue : le château que nous devions immortaliser sur la pellicule (enfin sur le capteur) s’est habillé de merveilleux échafaudages témoins d’une réhabilitation en cours. Tant mieux pour le château, tan pis pour nous.
La plan A échoue, passons au plan B….par les embouteillages du “ring” bruxellois bien sur, direction une ancienne maison de correction. Très bel édifice en très bon état et pour cause, les engins s’affèrent à redonner à cet endroit l’allure d’un espace de vie agréable pour de futurs logements flambants neufs ! Je dois avouer qu’à cet instant, notre moral s’affaiblit légèrement.
Pourtant, même si nous sommes debout depuis plus de 5 heures maintenant, nous passons au plan C : le château de Beaulieu. Entrée des coordonnées dans le GPS et en route. Nous ne verrons jamais ce château en raison des travaux qui interdisent l’accès au village dans lequel il se situe ! Nous vivons notre *Jeudi NOIR* !
Le château de Rochendall se livrera sans résistance et constituera la seule victoire de cette matinée. Une bien maigre récolte cependant.
Brainstorming dans les décombres du château, changement de plan et direction le complexe hospitalier Salve Matter, en partie abandonné, une valeur sure de la friche Belge et une vieille connaissance. En tant qu’habitués des lieux, nous nous stationnons dans l’hôpital, sortons du véhicule, ouvrons le coffre arrière pour nous saisir de notre matériel quand une fenêtre s’ouvre. Une homme passe son buste au travers de l’ouverture et nous interpelle : “Que venez vous faire ici? Avec vos sacs et trépieds, vous êtes des urbanexplorers ! Nous en avons marre de vous voir dans nos locaux. L’autre jour, j’en ai trouvé un dans ma salle de bain ! Fichez le camp !” Aprés quelques échanges polis et la promesse de rester en dehors des bâtiments, nous partons déambuler dans l’enceinte du complexe. Nous tiendrons notre promesse, même si telle n’était pas notre intention de départ! Toutes les entrées avaient été solidement obstruées ! Tan pis pour nous, tant mieux pour ces édifices en bon état général qui feront de très beaux appartements, mais décidément, le sort s’acharne. Nous ferons quelques clichés dans un pièce dédiée au lavage des morts avant inhumation…pas très gai tout cela.
Je ne vais pas tout décrire, mais le Vendredi *13 *(bbrrrrr….) se traduira pas un nouvel échec d’infiltration d’une sucrerie. L’après midi, le Luxembourg nous ouvrait ses portes et nous visitons “Terres Rouges”, un must de l’Urbex !
Le lendemain, nous rencontrons 2 explorateurs luxembourgeois.
1.500 kilomètres au compteur, 4 jours d’errance au travers du Benelux ont peut être marqué la fin d’un cycle ! Un point positif : pas de rencontre fortuite avec la police flamande.

Built in 1859, Fort III was part of the Brialmont fortification around the city of Antwerp. Construction works ended five years later, in 1864 revealing the fortress’ unique entrance to the reduit and unique capponières, which weren’t built in other forts of the second southern fortification belt.

When I saw this refrigerator, I knew right away it would be a great subject for HDR photography.  As I was processing the RAW photos to create this image, I saw the potential (mostly because of the cracked paint) to give this photo a bit of creative lighting.  I think I am getting closer and closer to developing my own style, especially when I look at this finished work together with the work titled “Come sit with me…if you dare!”  What do you think?  Is it a keeper?

I shot this back in 2006 as the final project for my MA in Documentary. It is a short documentary revisiting Whittingham Hospital, a huge derelict asylum. Featuring Ray Gosling, former Granada film-maker retracing his steps with the aid of a former patient and a team of dedicated urban explorers.

The original idea was to make a film about urban exploration, and to follow urban explorers entering abandoned buildings and locations across the country. The idea had to be refined and I chose to tell the story of Whittingham using urban exploration to make the film happen. In any other scenario this film could not have been made.

I had become an urban explorer myself, making new friends online and going on trips to all sorts of locations, such as derelict holiday camps, hotels, huge underground quarries and mysterious underground MOD sites. When exploring you feel like a time traveller, exploring a lost civilisation and trying to make sense of the artifacts left behind.

Through the help of one of the explorers called ‘Ste_Nova’, I managed to track down Ray Gosling giving a public talk in Wales. At the end of the talk we asked him about his film Whittingham and I asked if he would consider going back there for the film. I didnt expect him to be up for it but his enthusiasm for the project was unstoppable.

At 70+ he is full of life and up for adventure, he loved meeting the Urban Explorers, likening them to Urban Guerillas! On the day of the shoot, I was so worried we would get caught by security, would have to shelve the project, deal with the police and try to reassure my tutors what I was doing helping Ray Gosling scale a 6 foot security fence!

Luckily ‘Iansradios’ had the security aspect covered, being a former patient, he knew the place inside out (look out for him him barricading the doors at the start of the film!) With the real prospect of being caught, me and my camera operator Timo carried minimal kit and had to shoot it handheld with little time to stop and give direction, we just had to go with the flow and film the situation unfolding. It could have gone horribly wrong but Ray Gosling, with decades of television and radio presenting under his belt, knew exactly how to engage with the explorers and was not afraid to perform up to the camera when he felt the urge!

The original Granada documentary that features as archive footage in the film was one of Nick Broomfields early works for television, fresh from Film school, Nick and Ray were given a free reign to film whatever they liked while they lived at Whittingham for over a month. I think the approach was brilliant and gives one of the most authentic insights into life inside an institution such as Whittingham.

I always intended to make an unbiased film about the Hospital, so I included interviews with the staff and undertook a lot of research into the background of mental healthcare. I realised it is one of those sensitive topics that cant easily be written off as good or bad. Whittingham was a close-knit self-sufficient community where people were accepted for who they were. Society in those times had very dated views on mental illness, in todays world societies attitudes have improved but there is still some stigma attached to mental illness. That is something I wanted to challenge at the start of the film, to dispel the myths and stereotypes using the archive footage from Ray’s film to show the sort of people who lived there.

I have no doubt of the sincerity of the former staff nurses in the film, they cared for the patients like they were one big family, this is evident in their anger at the patient grave stones being removed from the cemetery. Perhaps it was theft, but it is quite something when graves go missing like that with no explanation. It seems that today’s society is not much more evolved than it was when we stuffed the mentally ill in workhouses and forgot about them. If those graves had belonged to anyone else there would be national uproar! Where are the newspaper headlines on the missing graves?

My commentary in the film is very minimal, so I hope the viewers can reflect on the topics and come to their own conclusions. I agree with Ray when he says it is a time that must not be forgotten. I think today’s society is trying to brush the history of mental health care under the carpet, like many other parts of our history. Anyhow, I will let you watch the film and make up your own mind.

Voici un peu de nouveauté du côté de mes occupations dominicales, nous sommes allés dans un lieu assez connu de la Belgique, pas mal visité, mais hélas une partie n’était pas accessible ce jour là, dommage et tant pis pour moi… Mais bon j’ai quand même trouvé quelques petits recoins sympathiques malgré la destruction et l’obscurité… Je commencerai avec ces deux premières de la série pour ce bâtiment.

Lors de cette session je réfléchissais aussi à comment photographier la friche sans que ceci ne tombe dans le “vu et revu” sempiternelle phrase à laquelle j’ai droit de mon côté. Je comprends parfaitement, mais en même temps il n’est pas aisé de trouver la façon qu’il me convient de prendre en photo ce genre d’endroits, tout du moins pas tant que j’apprécierai y aller car je ne peux faire quelque chose de froid en parcourant ces lieux. Enfin même si avec le temps la façon d’appréhender les lieux change, je pense que la photographie de friches et de ruines est loin d’être une chose facile et qu’il n’est pas bon d’empêcher les gens de travailler à changer cela… Mes recherches avancent donc très lentement, mais je suis patiente même si c’est au péril d’autres choses…

Here is another shot from the sanitorium at Beelitz, near Berlin. I was after a more somber mood here, so a bit less “cartooney” if you will, and of course…darker. Some of the rooms in these buildings are pretty darn creepy! This one is best viewed large, so click on into the phot and find the largest version over on flickr.

La desindustrialisation de notre vieille Europe a laissé des traces dans le paysage urbain. Même si l’essentiel des grands complexes sidérurgiques furent démantelés, quelques vestiges témoignent encore de ce passé.

Véritable cathédrale de métal, les haut-fourneaux se dressent encore fièrement ça et là. Pénétrer à l’intérieur de ces labyrinthes de tuyaux et de couloirs sombres constitue une expérience étrange. Chaque pas porte un peu plus loin l’envie d’imaginer ce que la “vie” pouvait être à l’intérieur de cet enfer et pourquoi tout à coup, tout s’est arrêté.

A Clabecq, le site est en cours de démontage, la ville semble désormais endormie…

Vue aérienne

]]> http://gnondpomme.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/des-escaliers-pour-le-paradis-stairway-to-heaven/ Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:49:25 +0000 gnondpomme http://gnondpomme.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/des-escaliers-pour-le-paradis-stairway-to-heaven/

Sortie hôpital abandonné avec Marco

Here are a few more shots from my visit to Beelitz-Heilstätten, which is  home to a large hospital complex of about 60 buildings erected from around 1898.  The complex was originally designed as a sanitorium by the Berlin workers’ health insurance corporation.  From the beginning of World War I the facility served as a military hospital of the Imperial German Army.  Interestingly, during October and November 1916, Adolf Hitler recuperated at Beelitz-Heilstätten after being wounded in the leg at the Battle of the Somme. In 1945, Beelitz-Heilstätten was occupied by Soviet forces, and the complex remained a Soviet military hospital until 1995, well after the Herman reunification. In December 1990, Erich Honecker was admitted to Beelitz-Heilstätten after being forced to resign as the head of the East German government.

Much of the complex, including the surgery, the psychiatric ward, and a rifle range, was abandoned in 2000.  As of 2007, none of the abandoned hospital buildings or the surrounding area were secured, giving the area the feel of a ghost town.  I was in the psychiatric ward shooting after sundown tonight and I can tell you it was eerie.

This textile bleaching factory was built in 1879. In 1978, the factory went bankrupt. Sobelta bought the factory grounds and sold them to Artifex in 1990, who used the sheds for storage. Unfortunately, at this time, some parts of the protected steam engine were stolen, surrendering the factory into a downward spiral. After Artifex abandoned the building, vandalism and theft increased, rendering the factory into a ruin. Today reconversion plan started; demolishing the most decayed parts of the buildings and redeveloping the best preserved ones into social housing.

First shot from a late morning drive to Beelitz-Heilstätten. Lots of buildings to explore, so I will certainly have to head back there again soon. My girls were amazingly patient with me, allowing me to do a good bit of exploration and HDR shooting. Trust me though, they were well rewarded afterward.

I have to admit that I think I went a bit crazy with the processing on this one, so I’ll tone things down a bit with the next shot I process and upload. Hope folks enjoy it, in any case.

Here is another from the abandoned building in Berlin. I could shoot in places like this all day! I really like the way things just fall apart when we do not intervene. What I need to do now is to try to find something REALLY interesting to shoot in, like an abandoned insane asylum or prison. Off I go to do some research. I imagine I will be able to find something along those lines here in Berlin, or elsewhere in former East Germany.

Feeling like I am on a roll here. Just processed another shot from the abandoned building, this one of the sinks in what must have been the public sinks, though no toilet or urinals anywhere to be found. It could have been locker room of some sort, since there was a shower stall in there as well. As a matter of fact, to get this shot I had to position my body in the shower, while kneeling behind my tripod. I had the tripod with one of its legs in the shower, and the other two just outside it. That allowed me to fit in all the goodness you see here. Enjoy!

Here is another shot from the abandoned building I explored the other day here in Berlin.  As one might imagine, there are a lot of abandoned places to see in former East Germany.  I have been told by a friend that there are some very creative ways to visit some of the more interesting of those place, so that is my new quest.  After shooting these the yesterday, I am hooked on what is often known as URBEX or URBANEX (Urban Exploration).  Look for more cool shots here in the future.  Until then, check this shot out.