Windows

I asked on Facebook what my followers would like to see a blog post about, so the next few posts will be based on fan favorites and requested.  OBP Photography requested windows, so here ya go.  My very favorite windows:

Just for fun

Not an abandonment pic but this is my new favorite shot.

People in Abandoned Spaces

Today I want to touch on something a little different.  Photographing people in abandoned spaces, and using composite techniques to put previously shot portraits into abandoned spaces.

Photographing abandoned spaces is a love affair for me.  I find peace in the erie silence; and the untold stories of the people who lived, worked, and worshiped in these places sets my imagination on fire.  Recently an invite only gallery exhibit that I was asked to participate in, got me thinking more about portraits in abandoned spaces.  I'll admit it; between the insanity of my life and the cold weather outside, completing an entire exhibit of abandoned portraits was too much to take on.  But there are ways around that.

Lets start with the assumption that its not 6 degrees outside, babysitters are readily available, and my model shows up on time and ready.  Shooting people in abandoned places can be very complicated.  You have to worry 1st and foremost about legal aspects. Are you allowed to be there?  If not, well then you have to deal with the age old urbex talent of sneaking onto the property and this time, bringing a model with you.  Not always easy to do.  You have to worry about being caught...which means most times you can forget about strobes.  Nothing says "Someone is in here" like flashing lights being seen from the road.

You also have to deal with the issue of what the lighting situation is in the location.  Locations that are "mothballed" or closed up completely (bricked or boarded) are going to be very dark.  Other locations might be so open that they are brighter than what you want for your shoot.  Yup...it can get complicated quick.  That being said, it doesn't HAVE to be complicated.  A 5 way reflector can be a great investment if you don't already have one.  Strobes and slaves and soft boxes are great for certain types of shots but you can make amazing portraits without them too.

So lets get down to it.


I'll start you off easy.  Available lighting.  Available lighting can make dramatic portraits in a number of ways. Back-lighting has been and always will be a favorite for me.  In the two shots just below, the model was standing just a few feet inside a doorway.  The doorway was a large arched door (as you can see in the lower right corner of the shot.  The main doors were somewhat boarded up, basically had plywood propped against them.  The window structure at the top was wide open but the light was not coming directly in, so this created a nice soft light.

In the 1st image, I did nothing.  It was a straight on photograph.  I positioned her so the light was rimming her side just enough to give a glow to the mask and the curves of her torso...and bang.  Photo taken, done and done.  Now, my background is documentary work and I had a nazi of a prof in college (Doc Photo 1) that was a stickler for watching the edges of your frame.  In my world, cutting off the top of heads, points of elbows, or fingers/half of hands/feet is inexcusable and a sign of someone who is not experienced enough to focus on all aspects of what is in front of them.  There are times that you may choose to cut something out of a shot intentionally, but with models edges are important.  This doesn't just apply to the model themselves.  It also applies to the surroundings.  I like the darkness in the upper right corner.  In this first shot, the model was standing on the stairs.  It would have taken 2 seconds for me to walk up one step and avoid that darkness in the shot by reframing.  But I feel that in this shot, as dark as her face and body are but as light as the background is, the darkness of the hall above her and the slight darkness of the railing to the bottom left help to ground the subject (or tie her into the background more).

In this next shot, the model is down off the stairs standing just behind where she was in the above image.  The light bounced off the stair way and wall creating a natural soft box effect.  To add to the intensity that her facial expression, the cracked background, and the gas mask give, I used Photoshop to dodge her eyes just a touch to make them really pop and to add a little bit of a "zombie/creepy" look to them.

The next image is also shot with available lighting.  This shot was done in a church.  The light streaming in was coming from a very warm toned stained glass window (seen below the portrait).  The original portrait was very warm toned.  With a simple few steps in Photoshop (adjusting color balance and cutting down the contrast) I gave the model a cool tone that plays off the blue window behind her, and evens out the harsh shadows that the late day light was creating.  Use of a couple of layers helped with this process.

Window which provided light for the mask portrait above

So on we move to more fun stuff.  This is pretty self explanatory.  Its an exterior shot with an abandonment in the background (one of my favorite places...a historic home that is owned by a really cool guy who locals claim is a psycho...go figure I would make friends with a psycho).  I will be completely straight with you.  At the time that I shot this image, I was editing on my ipad.  My computer was on the fritz and my laptop was not with me.  This shot was edited using the app called Snapseed.  Bump on the saturation, blur the edges and darken.  Done and done.  Like I said, it doesnt have to be complicated.  

Now, as awesome as natural light and being there can be, the fact is that sometimes it doesn't go down like that.  There are many reasons that an abandoned/urbex photographer may not be able to get a model to an location for a portrait session.  We touched on some earlier...if you weren't paying attention, go back to the beginning and read this all again.  No.  Really...do it.  MOVING ON!

Using old images can often times work.  You have to be mindful of the strength, tone, color, and direction of light in both the portrait image and the background shot.  In the shot below, I placed the image of the girl into the background image because the color tones and lighting were so similar.

If you are using multiple images to create a composite, you have to remember not only the items already listed, but also your point of focus.  If your subject is against a wall that is blurry and she is sharp, you have an issue.  Thus my problem with the image above.  When finishing this shot, I DID go back and blur the line between her hair/back and the background...but I wanted to post THIS edit of it so I could point that out.  That line is TOO sharp and make her look obviously cut and pasted into this background.

This is the image with that line blurred to help her blend into the background and added a little shadow in.  NO the light isnt exactly perfect but this could easily have been lit by a reflector.

I will give you my tricks but I will also say right now that I JUST started learning and this is something that will have to be its own post in the near future.  For now, the round about of it is this:

My pre-pics:

The portrait was shot with natural lighting from a window to the left, and a strobe bounced off the white ceiling to fill.  By sectioning out the part of the portrait shot that I want to keep (in photoshop, using the lasso tool with a 3px feather) and doing a simple copy and paste you come up with this:

Again, in the next image, I simply chose 2 images that have similar light/similar directionality of the light and strength, and did lasso'd out the area I wanted to copy and paste.  In this shot, I made sure to darken (using the burn tool) the area behind the model to create a shadow that matches the lighting direction from the window in the background image.

Onto the last of the bits I want to cover in this post; using artificial lighting in urbex type locations. 

Now I will start this off by stating that the location of the next two images is NOT abandoned  It is a historic home, currently under renovation.  It's MY house.  Built in 1881, a beautiful big property...in the midst of having plaster and lath removed to replace it with new insulation and dry wall...WHICH does pain me but will be great for my utility bills.  This wall was intact before I shot this.  We decided that with my antique wheel chair and the subject matter we were going for, the wall needed to be demo'ed at least in part, to mimic the abandoned locations we love so much.  That said, we WOULD have gone out to a real abandoned place but its 16 degrees right now and well, look at how she's dressed.  I wouldn't as any model to get frost bite.  Lucky for me, I have a location that appears abandoned.

These images had 3 lighting sources to create the effect that I wanted.  To the left of the subject is a large but low window.  To the right and directly to my side was a tungsten hot light.  And my camera had an off camera strobe with a soft box on it that was directly above my camera to ensure a clean light on the model's face.  These two images came out exactly as I planned.  

The last image is from a very dark location with no natural light (below ground level).  This shot was done in almost no light using an off camera strobe.  Nothing fancy, just a typical flash strobe.  No Alien Bee, no $600 light set.  Then in Photoshop, I made the model black and white.  Easy Peasy!  

MINIMIZE for urbex locations.  Think in and out, thing hauling through holes of fences and down embankments.  Think subtle, easily movable, quick set up and tear down, and keeping moving at a high rate of speed.  Simple is best.  You do NOT have to be a professional photographer, have to own thousands in equipment, or have lots of experience to create great portraits in abandoned places.  Get out there, shoot and keep moving forward with your work and skills. And as ALWAYS...you are all welcome to message me for more info an help. I love helping other photo and urbex lovers take their art to the next level!

-A

All that and a box of crackers

Every explorer likes to dream of finding a virgin location, being the first one in, the first to photograph it, and the first to bring the images of a truly forgotten abandoned place to the rest of the world.  While this location has clearly had someone inside (there were signs of squatters in places) it is lacking the tell tale signs of a known abandoned building.  It is graffiti free.  It’s windows are mostly intact.  And best of all, you can Google & Flickr search its name and location till you’re blue in the face and will see nothing but exterior photographs.  Now that doesn’t mean that NO ONE has been in and photographed it…but it does mean that by most explorers’ standards, this location was fresh meat until last Saturday.

BOX OF CRACKERS

Along a river in central Illinois, this location boasts the types of things that make most of us excited enough to explode.  From rotting out rail road bridges to subterranean areas full of brick work arch ways; from exquisitely peeling paint to rusted heavy metal doors, this 3 building site of 220,000 sq ft stands tall in a small town…a reminder of jobs the community desperately needed.

The original bridge structure, which is part of the National Register of Historic Places, was constructed in the late 1800’s and provided an opportunity for the land between canals to be developed.  In the 1920’s the land was purchased and the main structure was built.  From water generated power to an electronic trolley car system within the plant; this location was at the forefront of technology in its prime.

At first scout, this looked like an easy in kinda place.  Walk the bridge, walk up to the building, find entry point.  Yeah, right!  It’s always the easy looking ones that give you the most shit.  This place required scaling down a rock wall, which I did very poorly…and have the bruises to prove it.  The wall was followed by a river.  Ok, maybe a really wide stream.  Not too deep but with muddy (and I mean, sink to your ankles and beyond muddy) banks no less than 8’ wide which stopped at 12’ tall sea walls.  I could see this would be fun.

SUBTERRANEAN

After hopping rock to rock to log to brick, and traversing the 20’ wide “river” (which of course, resulted in me having mud to my knees, slipping more times than I can count, and LOTS of cussing…we came to a dead end.  Awesome.  To one side was a 60 degree incline of loose dirt, sparse small trees, and rocks.  Dead ahead was a wall.  Not just a wall, the exterior wall of a freakin’ factory.  Yeah, not scaling this…this is NOT the Candy Shop (you’ll see later, keep coming back).  To the other side was a subterranean level of beautiful arch ways made of bricks and a tunnel with water running out of it.  This required investigation.

Upon learning that it was a go-nowhere subterranean (yes, I like using that word) area, we opted for a climb up the 60 degree incline which admittedly was lots of fun.  Up top it was high fives, Momma jumping up and down and a “let’s get inside” newly refreshed sense of adventure.  The humidity was a killer but at least we were up out of the bugs that the river bed had floating in swarms.  A quick trip around the exterior proved only one entrance.  I looked at PIC (aka afisher) Seriously!?!?!  A trash compactor?!?!  Yeah, these are the things we do to get into these places.  Do NOT try this at home, or without an experienced explorer with you.  We are trained to check for power and other sources that could cause serious injury or death on these sites.  I’m not joking, no way I would recommend some random person climb into this place without some knowledge of abandoned places.

THROUGH THE COMPACTOR

The interior spaces were amazing.  Each floor was almost completely open.  Some levels boasted huge breathtaking areas accessible to the floors above and cranes that would have been used to move rolls of paper/cardboard from section to section.  The walls were amazingly devoid of graffiti, windows were mostly intact, even light fixtures and the always popular to smash fluorescent bulbs were seemingly untouched.  The most shocking thing was finding that things were intact right down to the convex mirrors still hanging from the ceiling.  Usually places that are in this condition are referred to as “mothballed” or completely sealed up.  This also means those places are dark and hard to navigate much less photograph; but this location was filled with light on every floor.

INTERIOR

INTERIOR CRANE AREA

Top to bottom is the way we roll, always finding the stairs and heading as far up as we can get.  Then we work our way clockwise through each floor of the building to make sure we don’t miss anything.  Yes, its very systematic thanks to afisher who keeps my firework mind on track.  Floor after floor we crunched across peeled paint on the floor, stepped over and around the remnants of machinery, and ducked in and out of offices/bathrooms/and mechanical rooms.  This location had a different type of empty feeling.  In some locations, when you stand still and are really quiet, you can almost hear the buzz and feel the movement that once occurred within the space.  Other locations leave you feeling as though they’ve begun a new life; a life filled with street artists, junkies, squatters, and photographers.  This place felt untouched.  Like the motion in the place had just stopped and the structure was all alone, totally forgotten.

DOORS

UNDAMAGED

Fire extinguishers were laying about lazily.  Knobs and cranks that once were used to the point of metal hand holds being as shiny as the top of the Chrystler building were now beginning to rust through, and as with most abandoned places, the remains of animals who inhabited the building long after people had moved on, were scattered about every so often.  In a few corners were small stacks or a few boxes of product that was never shipped, a reminder that when humans are done with something…they’re REALLY done with it.

UNDAMAGED

In the basement light streamed through from areas above.  Around the entire wall about 18” in, was a canal built to keep water controlled if and when it got in because of the outside power generating rivers and canals.  The last place to explore was the loading stations where the electric tolley cars would have brought product to and from the building.

1ST FLOOR

HEADING OUT

After 4 ½ hours of exploration, my partner in crime and I stood looking one last time at the beast we had just conquered.  There is a sense of satisfaction in what we do which is multiplied when it is a place that we have never seen photographs of.  This series of stairs and halls and wide open levels that once packaged for one of the largest companies in the world, was like so many other buildings…serves reminder to the community of the industry that moved on, but represents possibility and the hope that someday the building will be filled with work for locals yet again.

*EXIT*

~Momma