Back from Berlin, recovered from the flu, dreaming and scheming of something new, new, new.The But first, I worked on some images from the Bärenquell Brauerei, an abandoned brewery in former East Berlin. I found out about the place from Abandoned Berlin, a blog devoted to urbex in this fabulous European city. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the place is like an urbex mecca, fabulous graffiti, old but not so old that it has fallen apart. I had a wonderful time there running around with my Cinevate Atlat FLT slider shooting video with my VG10 for the video poetry project with Bobby Cuevas.
Interesting. There are places here, old plants, old settlements, abandoned facilities, but they are all behind locked fences, probably due to liability issues, and it's trespassing to go into them.
Are these places you so ably captured just open so anyone can wander into them?
Well, technically it’s probably trespassing, but the place is basically open for anyone to look around. Sort of like the Packard plant in Detroit, but much safer since the building is still in very good shape. I wish they would turn these places into something like a national park, where you can go in and explore, but it would be protected and people who destroy things would be fined.
These days here I would be concerned about disturbing homeless people (or worse). I don't mean that as a joke.
There are a couple of steel plants in Pueblo (40 miles south from where I live) that look abandoned, but they are locked down pretty good. I don't see a way in unless I want to scale fences, as in multiple.
One other thing . . . most of those shots are very well exposed (few shadows). Are those HDR composites? Did you use extra lighting?
Yeah, it all depends on the area. Summer can be good for squatters or homeless folks to live in the abandoned places, and more recent buildings might still be technically owned by someone who keeps them locked up. The normal urbex honor code is that you only enter places that are open and not destroy or take anything from the building.
The images are all HDR (it was pretty dark in most of the rooms and it was cloudy that day) using Photomatix Pro, I think about 25 images were processed together for each single picture. I try to keep the HDR feeling low and retain a natural feeling with just a bit of hyper-reality. The program is great for shooting interiors, just need a tripod, set the aperture and then change the shutter speed:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/americanpeyote/6205200168/