My continued revisiting of my old urban exploration images continues. This set has been particularly tough to edit as i did the idiot thing of deleting the RAW files from the HDR composites as at the time i needed the hard drive space but could not afford a new hard drive. DONT DELETE YOUR RAW FILES…ITS A DICK MOVE FOR YOUR FUTURE SELF.
Either way, despite the somewhat limited editing options that processed and partial ruined photographs present….I still like some of these shots. They serve more as a memento of the trip than any worthwhile artistic endeavour. They also remind that my editing has developed a small amount. Moving away from HDR to Tone Compression has improved image quality. HDR has its look, but for me it makes a photo’s tone and colour look a little too fake. I’ve tried multiple pieces of software over the years and nowadays I either use Photomatix’s Tone Compression algorithm or just edit from one file.
Anyway, I digress. This trip was the first time I slept rough in an abandoned building as everyone else (Gina Soden, Mike Deere and Chris Swindells) were veterans of the sport of finding urbex digs and getting a solid night’s sleep. Also, it was my first actual Urbex road trip. As the sole driver I consumed huge amounts of coffee during the long drives between spots. In total we covered around 2000 miles and visited about 25 odd locations.
The first nights explorers were all pretty much failures with the buildings being locked up tight but the days after were full of clambering over fences, pushing through fields of stinging nettles and rushing off crowded streets to climb through small windows into a former doctor’s surgery. Ahh, memories of the partially legal kind. This place is the home to the infamous preserved human organs. The abandoned mine with the hanging cages is probably one of the more haunting places I’ve visited. I had also wanted to shoot an upward spiral staircase shot and managed to find two places with such a staircase.
Below is a selection of shots from the urban exploration road trip that hopefully do the job of showing off some of the more forgotten areas of Germany. If you take the time to scroll through them then I thank you in advance.
