Urbex one; a late night trip to the opera house
Sunday, February 21, 2010 at 05:46PM Feel free to take a look at the photo album from the expedition.
There is a white cubic abandoned building not very far away from the brand new Opera house that now dominates the harbour area of Oslo. It's commonly called the "sugar cube".
I wanted to visit it in the evning to be able to test out HDR, and I also wanted to shoot the new opera house, looking through the windows of the abandoned building.
The location is also excellent to get a good "oslo sky line" shot after dark.
The building was used by the Norwegian harbour authoroties until the beginning of the 1970's.
It's also obvious that there are people in the building from time to time. I saw a lot of paper plates, empty bottles, grafitti and writing on the walls etc. At one point I heard heard something and was pretty sure that there was someone in the building with me. I went in the direction of the sound and found an open window.
A Pair of white women's shoes, is among the more bizarre things that can be found lying around. There are also one open safe, and two closed ones on the second floor. I wonder what's inside?! :-)
A bit of urban exploration Spain summer 2009
Saturday, January 2, 2010 at 03:49PM Surfing the web, aimlessly, I just came upon a hobby called urban exploration. Quoting wikipedia: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_exploration )
Urban exploration is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities.[1] Urban exploration is also commonly referred to as infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more closely associated with the exploration of active or inhabited sites. It may also be referred to as "draining" (when exploring drains) "urban spelunking", "urban caving", or "building hacking".
Some of the sites I stumbled upon;
- http://uexplorer.wordpress.com/
- Twitter search on #urbex yielded a lot of cool results
- http://www.jornmark.se/
Without knowing about the concept I did a "light version" of this myself this summer in Spain. There is a lot of abandoned countryside houses that must have been magnificent places when people lived there. This house was not very far away from the main road and was begging for a visit. My girlfriend go a little annoyed as I didn't tell her how long I was planning to explore, and got a bit worried after 30 minutes.
I did of course not break anything to enter, take or leave anything during my visit.
Urbex Kirkenes in monochrome
Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 05:33PM Grense Jakobselv
The fog washed out any contrast between sky and sea. Perfect conditions to try out my ND(x8) filter and monochrome photography. Not much colour to capture anyhow.
The pier
Canon 18-55mm Kit lens @ 18mm. Exposure 1/4 sec. Neutral Density filter (x8). ISO 100 RAW
A dead man under the rocks and his shoes in the stream (do you see it?)
Canon 18-55mm Kit lens @ 18mm. Exposure 0.5". Neutral Density filter (x8). ISO 100 RAW
Anybody home?
Canon 18-55mm Kit lens @ 18mm. Exposure 1/3 sec. Neutral Density filter (x8). ISO 100 RAW
Wet photo- and hiking trip to Bjønnåsen (Bear hill)
Monday, July 27, 2009 at 04:24PM One of the benefits of taking photos in bad weather is that things slow down a bit. In these photos I have played around with slow shutter speeds. Raindrops and water also looks nice close up, so I also got to test out the macro option of my poor second hand 20-80mm Sigma lens.
Please feel free to comment on the bottom, and to give constructive feedback!
Stream
The red hue of the water and the wet stones caught mye eye. I placed my tripod in the stream, and did a limbo dance like never before to adjust the angle. Unfortunately It looks like I have raindrops on my lens. It's nice to know that I always can go back and redo the shot another day if I want.
Canon 18mm-55mm Kit lens @ 18mm. f/22. Exposure 30". ISO 100 RAW.
Falling rain drops
I sometimes play with my second hand Sigma 80mm lens. This time I wanted to capture falling rain drops, or water dripping from the leaves of these plants. I caught some, and some interesting patterns of drops on top of the leaves. I wanted the entire plant sharp and the background blurred. Due to the overcast weather it was not possible to do that without lowering the shutter speed more than I wanted.
Sigma 20mm-80mm lens @ 80mm. f/5.5. Exposure 1/15. ISO 100 RAW
Forest
Running water and slow shutter speeds is maybe a cliche, but I still like it. I was again fascinated by the red colour of the water and all the green. The background sky is a bit washed out, I guess the contrasts in the image is just too much for the camera. HDR next time maybe? (Not that there is much detail in the sky to pull out....)
Canon 18mm-55mm Kit lens @18mm. f/22. Exposure 8". ISO 100 RAW
More rusty red water
... Nice drops of rain in the grass. The reflection is a bit annoying, a polarizing filter is added to my wish list :-)
Canon 18mm-55mm Kit lens @ 24mm. Exposure 8". ISO 100 RAW.