26.01.09
Photographing the urban environment
Words by Tom Sanderson
Human beings are instinctively curious creatures and we can’t resist exploring what’s around us. And as you’re reading this, this means you’ll want to do it with your camera.
As most of us live in towns and cities that urge to explore has an inevitable urban bias and the potential for pictures is massive. You might prefer to focus on people within their environment so you could take a reportage approach to your picture-taking, but here we concentrate on the urban landscape. Whether you’re attracted by the detritus of humanity, shiny new structures or abandoned buildings, there’s plenty to point your camera at.
Apart from the opportunity for great pictures, there’s also the social record aspect to consider. As regeneration and development in our towns and cities seem never-ending, your images could have a huge, long-term social value too.
You’ll find pictures wherever you go and need only walk around to see them. On a point of safety here, it’s a sad reflection of the times that in some less salubrious areas you might be advised to go with some like-minded friends and travel light.
Exploring your local town centre looking for graffiti and dilapidation is one level of urban photography, but there’s growing interest in urban exploration, often abbreviated to urbex, or ue. According to Wikipedia, this is “the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of human civilisation.”
Of course, there is plenty of urban and industrial decay that can be explored without going to places where people prefer you not to go, but climbing over the odd gate is part of the attraction to many explorers. To be honest, it’s not a form of photography that will appeal to everyone and many might not like the idea of it at all, but there’s little doubt that more and more people are doing it.
It’s important to stress that if you want to try urbex, you do it at your own risk and you must be responsible. Ensure you have appropriate equipment and look after your own safety and that of others. Not only that, but ue is about taking pictures, not about vandalism or burglary. The maxim for explorers is ‘take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.’
Safety is a top priority – yours and everyone else’s. It’s mostly common sense and about avoiding unnecessary risks. It’s also worth pointing out that with current security concerns and under the broad provisions of the latest anti-terrorism laws the police have an increased interest in anyone taking photographs in what are considered ‘sensitive’ areas. This is not specific to urban exploration photography but to photography in towns and cities as a whole.
Probably the most important item of equipment you need for ue is a pair of sturdy, thick-soled boots, preferably leather uppers with a metal mid-sole to protect you from nails, broken glass etc. Trainers are simply out of the question. You could end up getting dirty so old clothes are definitely the outfit to be seen in, plus you might want a pair of hard-wearing gloves, a hat and a torch.
The places urban explorers choose to visit fall into many different categories, ranging from ex-hospitals to abandoned theme parks and other derelict buildings.
If you are thinking of starting to explore the best option is to look around the area you live in. It is surprising how many potential structures you would not usually have noticed. Even abandoned garages and cafes could be worth a shot or three.
The Internet is a brilliant tool for locating possible sites and also to discover information about the history of places. Typing urban exploration into a search engine like Google will return many, many hundreds of sites and forums to consider. One forum I use is 28dayslater.com where fellow explorers post up possible locations, experiences and images. You can also arrange to meet fellow explorers too.
Aerial photography maps are another invaluable tool for locating sites. Look for rivers, canals, railways and motorways; they are all excellent starting points. Explorers take photographs of their visit so that they can look back and reference them for documentation purposes after the site has either been demolished or converted for another use.
Some explorers like to travel really light, taking just a camera phone. Others will opt for a small digital camera, again to avoid overloading themselves. The majority, though, use a bridge camera or DSLR.
If you take a DSLR I would strongly advise you only take the bare essentials as taking a huge bagful of lenses will weigh you down. I would also recommend that you keep your chosen lens on your camera at all times as changing lenses in this kind of environment could lead to your sensor getting dusty very quickly.
My favourite lens for this type of photography is the wide-angle. It’s extremely useful inside buildings when you want to capture as much as possible within a single frame. For example, I use the Sigma 10-20mm. It’s a lens designed for cameras with an APS-sized sensor. For my Canon EOS 350D with its crop factor of 1.6x, the 10-20mm gives an effective focal length of 16-32mm. Another advantage of the wide-angle is the extensive depth-of-field you get which means slight inaccuracies in focusing do not cause too much of a problem.
Telephoto lenses are also useful, although the narrow field-of-view makes it difficult to capture the sense of space. Also focusing must be precise, especially with large apertures. Long lenses are great for external photos of buildings, to pick out and isolate interesting architectural features.
Macro lenses are sometimes used by explorers, although usually on a return visit to record finer details after the initial site images have been captured. My advice would be to take a wide-angle lens on the first visit and then if you return to a site in the future, take a selection of lenses to capture the remaining shots.
For the true enthusiast a shift lens could also be of great use. This is an expensive specialist lens and takes some time to master. They are commonly used for architectural photography as they can be set to reduce converging verticals – the phenomenon of buildings bowing inwards in upright images.
Since you will be shooting in much lower than average light, with exposures often pushing above one second, it is essential the camera is perfectly still throughout the exposure. There is a multitude of different products available to help with this including beanbags, Gorillapods and, of course, the good old faithful tripod.
A full size tripod is the wisest choice and will offer the most stability and versatility. Beanbags and table pods have their uses, but not every location will provide a suitable stable site to use them.
ISO should ideally be set as low as possible to obtain a less noisy photograph with rich colour saturation. However, higher ISO speeds can be used to produce ‘grain’ to give the resulting photo a raw gritty style, although this can easily be created post-production in Photoshop. If shooting without a tripod the ISO can be set higher to give a faster shutter speed, therefore making it easier to capture a ‘shake’ free image.
Leaving the camera set for automatic white-balance is usually fine for the majority of situations. Carrying an 18 per cent grey card or using a white-balance gadget like the ExpoDisc can be useful to set the white-balance manually for the given lighting conditions. If you are shooting Raw files, it isn’t quite so imperative as white-balance can easily be corrected during the Raw conversion process.
Metering can sometimes prove difficult. This is because there is usually a large disparity between the light and dark areas within the frame. For instance, light streaming into a dark corridor can cause havoc with the camera’s on-board metering system. If your camera has a spot metering option, use this to take a reading from the main subject area within the frame.
If you have enough space on your card or sufficient film, bracket your exposures to obtain the ideal exposure. It may also be worth considering an exposure bracket to generate a High Dynamic Range image using one of the many HDR merging packages, such as Photomatix. I should say, however, that not all images suit this kind of treatment.
Focusing can also prove awkward in very low-light situations. However, this can be overcome by using a torch to light up the area, making focusing easier.
Another technique for pitch-black areas without resorting to flash is to ‘paint’ the scene with a torch. Try to keep the torch moving, distributing the light evenly. This can be a case of trial and error, but thankfully digital means that you can examine your results immediately.
The urban landscape might not be ‘pretty’ in the conventional sense but for me it’s easily as photographically challenging and infinitely more rewarding. If you haven’t tried it yet, perhaps now’s the time.
URBAN EXPLORERS AND THE LAW
In England and Wales, a person who enters onto private property without permission is committing a ‘trespass’ which is a civil wrong. In most cases, trespass is not a criminal offence although a person can be sued for damages by the landowners for trespass. However, it is a criminal offence if you trespass on some properties such as railways, aerodromes and military bases.
If you are trespassing, the best advice is to leave when asked. It’s worth noting that neither the property owners nor their employees have any right to confiscate or damage a photographer’s equipment.
The law is different in Scotland where the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 applies. This gives access rights to all land, inland waterways and foreshores for certain activities including photography, but does not include buildings and structures.
For more on the legal side of urban exploration, see sirimo.co.uk/ukpr.php and outdooraccess-scotland.com. Finally, PM cannot accept any responsibility for any actions taken by readers arising from this feature.
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