A whole bunch’o’photos from the slog around Italy. Would it stop raining? Would it stop being 40 degrees centigrade? Who built a wall where I want to drive the car? All important questions, no logical answers.
Continue reading
It was 2012, it was a simpler time, full of Derps, Burps and Smirks….lessons learnt…don’t delete raw files. Its a dick move. Read on dear viewer….read on….
Continue reading
Standing all dark, reflective and shiny in-between Portsmouth’s Victoria Park and Commercial Road shopping misery is the former Zurich House building. Built in 1973 (designed by the Gollins, Melvin and Ward Partnership) and standing at roughly 60 meters it has been a prominent view point on the city’s skyline for some time now.
Continue reading
For most people a night on the town involves getting drunk at your local spoons and stumbling into a kebab shop at 2am. For some of us it means a night on the roof tops. For the past couple of weeks myself and a good buddy had been planning to have a look at a disused victorian underground reservoir simply because it looked like the Mines of Moria from Lord of the Rings. This plan was cut short when we found all the access points had been sealed shut by quarter of inch thick metal plates and anti-vandal nuts. So, I gave a friend a call to see what activities he was planning for the evening, and made a detour to Reading.
I make no secret of it, I love rooftops. The challenge and risk they can present getting on to them is half of the fun of a good urban exploration experience. The photography is simply a secondary activity most of the time. Our first port of call was just outside of one the car-parks in Reading Town centre. Access via some finely constructed scaffolding made the ascent easy. The climb up did highlight that I need to find a better tripod/bag solution to free up both hands as I had to put the tripod on the boards above me, climb up the ladder, pick up tripod and repeat which made for slow movement.
For most people a night on the town involves getting drunk at your local spoons and stumbling into a kebab shop at 2am. For some of us it means a night on the roof tops. For the past couple of weeks myself and a good buddy had been planning to have a look at a disused victorian underground reservoir simply because it looked like the Mines of Moria from Lord of the Rings. This plan was cut short when we found all the access points had been sealed shut by quarter of inch thick metal plates and anti-vandal nuts. So, I gave a friend a call to see what activities he was planning for the evening, and made a detour to Reading.
I make no secret of it, I love rooftops. The challenge and risk they can present getting on to them is half of the fun of a good urban exploration experience. The photography is simply a secondary activity most of the time. Our first port of call was just outside of one the car-parks in Reading Town centre. Access via some finely constructed scaffolding made the ascent easy. The climb up did highlight that I need to find a better tripod/bag solution to free up both hands as I had to put the tripod on the boards above me, climb up the ladder, pick up tripod and repeat which made for slow movement.
We spent about an hour up here, everyone grabbing a couple of shots and just enjoying the view for what it was. We then climbed back down to ground level and quickly headed to the nearest Tescos for some food (anyone passing through Bordon….dont buy a coffee at the machine in Tesco’s….warmed up crap!). We then darted around the corner, nipped down a side access road and hit the rooftops of the main high street. We walked, climbed and scrambled the length of the roofs for about 20 minutes before finding an open rooftop work room that provided some heat and a chance to dig my down jacket out.
About a year ago, I read an article about how to use ETTR (expose to the right) to photograph the Milky Way in a light polluted environment by Justin Ng. ETTR is a technique that involves exposing a frame so that most of the tones in an image sit towards the pure white range (right hand side) of the histogram without clipping the highlights. This gives you substantially more shadow data and allows you to bring details out during post that you could not otherwise see. Whilst your image may appear overexposed, as long as you have not clipped the highlights you can use a couple of editing techniques to bring the image back to a correct exposure but have sufficient data in the file to bring out the dark and shadow tones without too much noise being created. I used this technique on the shot below with the end result of my face looking like a beacon of glowing light. Good times.
After some more running around across icy roof tops we headed over to the highest peak in Reading. My friends previous attempts at access proved to be a fine balancing act on empty barrels before clambering over the main fence on to a staircase. This time round access was easier and a bit more fun, weaving in and out of walkways and car parks before making the hefty climb up what felt like 1,000,000 steps. I stopped off on a few floors and each was the same, trashed and dismantled with most signs of previous use removed in prep for demolition.. Had I not been so tired I would have grabbed a couple of shots, but it was the shot of Reading train station from an elevation I was after. On the way out we attracted attention of a NCP carparking attendant, not that it mattered, but it did make leaving a bit more rushed.
Urban Exploration is nothing new, its been around a long time and has developed into a subculture itself over the past decade. For the uninitiated urban exploration (UE or urbex are other names) is the activity of exploring abandoned, disused or off limits places. After many successful scaling of the old Zurich Building I turned my focus to the former Odeon Cinema in the North End area of Portsmouth.
A brief history of the building from cinematreasures.org
“The Portsmouth Odeon opened on 14th December 1936 with Sydney Howard in “Chick”. It was the largest and most expensive Andrew Mather designed Odeon of that year. Total seating was provided for 1,824, with 1,224 in stalls and 600 in balcony. It has an impressive monolithic tower frontage in cream faience with vertical green bands and a roof of red Spanish tiles. The auditorium’s ornate decoration included tall murals on side walls depicting film subjects. In 2007 the Freehold on the building was sold by Odeon Theatres Ltd. and after a few false rumours of closure, the final performances were held on 10th January 2008.”
So one evening a couple of us found ourselves darting through the side access of an empty house, jumping the wall in the back garden and starting what has turned out to be a rather nice little mini project.
Initially I thought it wasn’t going to be much visually, after all it was just a cinema. But Odeon built their cinemas differently. The main building itself has two points of access.
The lower screen you access by climbing up a small wall with the help of a gridded fence and jumping through a window. This screen is flooded as are the toilets next to the screen making the water rank with sewage. When you walk on the main stage, which is made of wood, you can see water seeping through as the wood has rotted after being submerged in water for years. The below shots were taken whilst standing on the vents as they are metal and solid.
The below image highlights perfectly why the building became abandoned.
After exiting the way we entered, we made our way into the main section which is accessed down an alley to the side of the building. The first two smaller screens are about 10 seconds from the door, the one below is the left hand one which had a ton of debris blocking the doorway.
Along one side of the room were a few man sized holes. These led into an access corridor which ran the length of the room. At one end was a projector room which serviced both ground floor cinema screens.
There is no worthwhile equipment in these rooms now but there is plenty of film reel scattered around the floor. The floor itself is slowly going south, so be careful in here.
The main screen IS the main draw. It is a shining example of the retro style cinema screens odean theatres were modelled on: a beautiful curved symmetrical room. The first visit here I didn’t have time to shoot what I had in mind, so the shots below were from trips number two and three. I used two different flash trigger systems with my camera mounted on my tripod so I could overlay the shots in photoshop.
As we explored the screen we found a small access hole high off the ground behind the projection screen. Being curious we climbed up to and through the hole which led into a large cavity ceiling high above the hall below. This area contained wooden walkways and a cooling system.
At the far end of the roof cavity is a small hatch, and with some encouragement it came open. This hatch led out onto the exterior roof which had a small balcony area with a wooden seat.
Whilst I love the adventure that urbex projects bring, it is a crying shame that such a wonderful building has been left to rot from the ground up. The cost of restoring the building itself would be in the millions and can imagine that demolishing it wouldn’t be much cheaper.
As with all explores if you do ever fancy a trip into this echo of an art deco past then do exercise caution. Exploring abandoned buildings comes with significant risks and ones that you must accept should something go wrong.
All long term abandoned buildings have their structural faults in the shape of loose walls and dodgy floors. If you do try to access the roof make sure you are strong enough for the climb as it hangs about 8 feet over some steel work that will cause you injury if you fall. When you do get in through the access hole keep your weight over the girders until you get onto the walkway as it is a long way down to the cinema floor. Buildings like this after often secure, so it as at your own risk how you access them.
