Abandonments!

[roadie]

Gen, great shots. Those all look like fascinating places.

I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Do you have a link to your website. I'd love to see your work.

[Quebec Gen]

Gen, great shots. Those all look like fascinating places. I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Thanks roadie. Here are some more:





Note : this was red paint not blood!!






This is me wearing my "trendy" and much too large hip-waders.:) I call this "drain chic".








This is the moonlight coming through a manhole cover as seen from the underground...I call it the under-cover disco ball effect! lol

A drain fountain.




As you can see, I love diversity. I enjoy industrial, institutional, drains, bridges, tunnels, water towers, active, semi-active, abandoned locations...So if anything comes to your mind, please share!:)

Cheeries!
Gen

[roadie]

Fantastic work!

I've been interested in shooting these types of places. I'm just starting
to learn about this type of exploration.

Seems very secretive.

Keep up the awesome work.

[Quebec Gen]

Thanks again roadie. Yes that is indeed a very secretive hobby. There's a fine line between what you can and cannot say, the information you can and cannot share. Urban explorers are mostly a trust-based community that will share some locations if you do the same, they are very strict about certain issues (no vandalism, no theft, no b&e). Within the community you'll often find "sub-groups" such as drainers (ppl who are interested in drains and sewers), miners, people who only do industrial or residential, etc. There's a guy in Montreal who has been walking under the same interchange for years, documenting it, taking pictures, sharing thoughts. A friend of mine is a 50 year old professional flamenco dancer and pianist who gets her kick out of visiting drains and sewers throughout the world. All kinds of people! I know for a fact, there is an active UE community in Cali and I guess the best way to reach them is to use the website you mentioned.

As far as photography goes, since you typically will be visiting dark places, you need a great source of light (headlamps are great because both of your hands are free), a back-up light (better be safe than sorry) and gloves (basic equipment). I mostly use light painting techniques (no colouring yet, I'm still a rookie) with a tripod but you can also use a strong flash and make the shot look better or softer with PS or another software. I only discovered PS recently so now I think my older pics suck:) I just began to use Redynamix (a feature that can be added to PS) which simulates HDR without the hassle of having to take 2-3 pics with the same exact frame. I'm not a professional photographer nor do I want to become one. The technical aspect bores me to tears. I just want to document locations (history, vocation, situation in space, how things work, etc.) and find beauty in details, in decay...if I can add an artsy twist to it, it can only get better!;-)

To me it's all about curiosity and getting out there to learn about my environment...and having fun of course! I know of a very few other hobbies that involve or might involve that many aspects: history, culture, architecture, photography, climbing, hiking, urbanism, speleology, research, caving, diving, fine dining, fireworks watching, dancing (raves in abandoned buildings/tunnels), swimming, rafting, movie projections (don't ask me how they managed to get power!:), sociology, the art of squeezing in a tight spot, social ''engineering'', etc. For a great preview, I suggest you buy or rent the movie Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness by Melody Gilbert. You can watch the first two minutes here.

[AZBuck]

Many years ago, far more than I care to admit to at any rate, I took some courses in photojournalism and your discussion of your own photographic exploits reminded me of the two major principles that were hammered home time and again.

(1) Compose, edit, etc. in the camera. Sure you can take the film back to the darkroom and crop, dodge, burn in (this was decades before Photoshop®), but the image is captured at the time you release the shutter and that's where 99% of your effort should go. We were forced to do this by working in the medium of black and white slides where the film that went through the camera went directly to the mount and projector with no manipulation in between. Gen, your work shows an incredible eye. Please don't get enamored of image processing after the fact to the detriment of that.

(2) It's easy to take pretty pictures of pretty things, the trick is to learn to take compelling pictures of what would normally be passed by as ugly. Has anyone ever taken a bad picture of the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls? Well, probably, but such items would be rare. To capture the images you do of the places you do is a tribute again to your eye and artistic sensibility. In class, we would be given specific but vague assignments, such as to tell a story in 4 successive frames so that you could simply make a contact print of those frames, mount it, and have something very similar to a cartoon strip. Or to go to a landfill and shoot 'symmetry'. I forget what the assignment was for the image I got the most kudos for, but the picture was of a dead cat by the side of a road shot by the light from my car's headlights. (No, I did not run over the cat, just found it.)

Anyway, the point of these ramblings is that to become a photographer of the caliber of Gen does not require fancy equipment or extensive alterations to images after they are taken, but rather practice, thought, and as Gen says - curiosity. I realize this harkens back to my film days, but if I get 1 image in 36 or so that I'm truly happy with, I feel I'm doing a good job. For me the beauty of digital photography is not that it makes 'enhancing' my pictures easier, but that it lets me take hundreds of pictures and work on making each one better.

AZBuck

[Quebec Gen]

Thanks for these pearls of widsom Buck.:-) I never was what you might call a "visual" person. Photography and urbex helped me with that but I still have lots of work to do. Are you still practicing photojournalism?

[AZBuck]

I took those courses while I was floundering around looking for a career after flunking out of college. The only time I actually practiced photojournalism, I managed to get myself 'detained' by the British Army in Northern Ireland during the Troubles for taking pictures of things I shouldn't have. Actually that worked out well, because in order to keep an eye on me for a while, they insisted (by retaining my passport) that I accompany their troops through the streets of Belfast. Got some great pictures, but the bug to be a photojournalist or even a photographer full time never really took hold. Still, I learned to recognize good art and to strive to make my own 'holiday snaps' better.

AZBuck

[Southwest Dave]

Hi Gen,

I just had to say, I am blown away by your pictures and how well you have captured them, brilliant !

Dave.

[roadie]

Thanks for the tips Gen. I put "Urban Explorers" in my Netflix queue, but
they don't have it available immediately.

Your friend has some great photos too.

It's interesting exploration for sure.

[Quebec Gen]

@Buck : your story reminded me of one of my friends who took pictures of the MI6, not knowing what it was. With their cameras they saw her poking down manholes and, of course, they thought she was a terrorist. She was interrogated for many hours and they even went to her hotel a few days after that to ask her a few more questions.:-)

I thought about you this weekend: we spent 2 days in Maine. We stayed in York in a very nice bed & breakfast, walked on the beach by ways of Marginal Way, had great food and wine (Union Bluff, Blue Sky, Napoli), took a few pictures of Nubble Light, etc. Now I'm back in the snow and the cold:P

@Dave : thanks for the comments.

@Roadie : You might have trouble finding it as it is now a "commercial movie", it is more like a documentary that'll never reach a broad audience.