Photographer
So as mentioned before, the initial reason for going was to see all the graffiti. There is too much to show everything as this post would go on for ages, so here is a small selection of my favourite pieces. Some are straight shots and some have been tweaked, such as giving a cross processed look.
There is quite a number I didn’t post today, perhaps sometime in the future. I think I’ll wrap up this series on Hellingly hospital in the next post. Thanks for looking.
Fancy a bath? I thought not. I can’t explain what it is, but there is something strangely alluring about a disgusting rotten old bath, a least to my mind. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Perhaps I should see a doctor.
For the most part I tend to work in colour, sometimes muted or combined with a mono layer, but every now an again I find that certain images work better having the colour taken away (left). Colours can be distracting at times and by removing it you simplify the scene helping the viewer concentrate on the main feature, as well as giving it that timeless quality that mono images seem to produce.
It is always good to get in close and concentrate on the small details too. Something I always have to push myself to remember.
The corridors in Hellingly were fantastic, after years of neglect the weather had taken its toll leaving them in a terrible state, some with the roofs caved in and with plenty of detritus over the floors. Navigating them was a real challenge on the first couple of visits, they were like a maze and we’d often find ourselves going round in circles.
Corridor beside the main hall.
The shot above was taken in a darkened section as I wanted to get a view through the broken window to use it to act as a natural frame. I had to use the cameras pop-up flash set to low power to illuminate the door as my first attempt didn’t show it at all. The flash also helped pick out the edges of the glass.
Always nice to find a prop to use as a focal point, moved slightly into position by yours truly.
So I think I’ll leave this post here as there is a lot more to go through and I don’t want this post to go on forever. Next time I’ll show you some more of the great graffiti that was to be found.
I’m taking a trip down memory lane as we take a look back at the now virtually demolished Hellingly Hospital.
Having seen a couple of recent blog posts from my Twitter and Flickr friends Mark and Viveca about their recent visit back to Hellingly hospital, and their reports on how it has now been virtually demolished, I thought I’d start a short series of posts looking back at the photos I got throughout my four or five visits to Hell.
Here is a brief description from Wikipedia:
“Hellingly Hospital was a large mental hospital in the village of Hellingly, east of Hailsham, in East Sussex, England. The hospital, also known as East Sussex County Asylum or just Hellingly, was opened in 1903. Its architect was G T Hine, one of the great asylum architects of the era.
The hospital boasted its own railway line, the Hellingly Hospital Railway, used principally for transport of coal. This branch line led from the main line to the boilerhouse. The hospital also had a vast laundry, ball room, patients’ shop, sewing rooms, nurses home, extensive grounds, and an advanced utilities network for its time, including a large boilerhouse and a water tower. It followed the compact arrow plan for the main hospital, with separate villas surrounding this.
The majority of the hospital closed throughout 1994, however, and to this day much of the 25.4 hectare site stands derelict and extremely run down, after suffering repeated vandalism and multiple arson attacks.”
Someone will have to edit this very soon.
View through a corridor window looking across to the water tower towards the lower block.
It was my friend and work colleague Rob that first had an interest in going as he was looking for something new to photograph. After doing some research on Google, he found that a bunch of local graffiti artists had ventured in and set about doing their thing. When he told me about this a visit was inevitable. This was back in early 2008 and up until that time I was concentrating mostly on landscape and nature photography, urban exploration was new to me and I didn’t realise it would have such an effect on me, taking my photography in a whole new direction. It was in mid March of 2008 that both of us ventured onto the site (although I believe Rob had taken a trip in once already), and with no signs of permanent security we just drove up and parked up opposite the admin block, which was nothing but a burned out shell. A quick scan of the perimeter fence and we were in, my eyes lit up, I was like a kid in a candy shop. Photographic Heaven in the bowels of Hell!
And so began my journey into the world of UrBex photography.
All the pics that I’ll be posting were taken between March 2008 and December 2009, in fact on our last visit where I did some fun Xmas pics we both got rumbled by security upon our exit. Sadly I did not get the opportunity to visit during 2010 and it seems like it is now too late for me to get back before it’s all gone.
One of my favourite corridors. Most were empty but the baths found in this one had a haunting feel to me.
Some hate graffiti but I personally love it. I think the combination of art and dereliction tend to compliment each other very well. This room was so damp that even after just a couple months this work was already in a bad state.
More work to come. Thanks for stopping by.
It certainly does.
Loved the difference between the freshly painted colours and the old brickwork. The reflection in the water left from a recent downpour was a nice bonus too.
(By adding a mono layer to your image you can give your shot a whole new look)
Over the past year I have become know in photography circles for being something of a HDR chap, and for the most part the bulk of my work during 2010 was indeed processed using HDR software. It hasn’t always been that way, in fact I didn’t have any HDR software until January of 2010…Since then I’ve caught the bug and haven’t regretted it one bit. Prior to 2010 I used a different method of giving my Urban exploration work that ‘grunge’ look by blending both colour and mono layers together in Photoshop.
There can be a lot of fiddling about with getting the tones and levels right but the basic idea is this: Open your picture into Photoshop (I’m using Elements) and duplicate the layer, then set the blend mode on the new layer to ‘Screen’, this will lighten the photo. Then right click on that layer and select ‘Merge layer’, you will be back to one layer. Duplicate this layer and convert the new layer to mono using your preferred method. If you use the ‘Convert to Back and white’ tool you will see a range of presets that give different mono looks, such as infra-red, landscape, portrait etc Play around with these and see how the colours react (though you will be seeing black and white). e.g For the picture above I chose to use the infra-red as it darkened the blues and brightened the green areas. Now you have both a colour and mono layer in the layers pallet. With the mono layer still selected, change the blend mono to ‘Multiply’. What you should now see is a much more contrasty and dirty looking picture and if you’re happy with the way it looks then flatten the layers and save. I find that for the most part additional adjustments are required but these vary from picture to picture, usually I’ll change the opacity of the mono layer or use adjustment layers to change the brightness and contrast for each layer. Sometimes I will flatten the layers and use the highlight/shadow tool to balance the image.
As you can see it is not an exact science, but with a little Photoshop know-how you can give your shots that dirty grungy look that some derelict places seem to benefit from, at least in my opinion.
Here is a shot I did a couple of years back using the same method.
Just a short post today. Taken behind the public library and probably one of the few places left where CCTV hasn’t been installed, hence a great place to perfect your graffiti talents.
This is a similar view to a shot in a previous post, but this time taken much further back. For this one I explored various angles in an attempt to come up with something a little different to what I had taken before. I quite like the bin as a dominant object to use in the foreground and the low angle to try and make the perspective that little bit more interesting.
Dave Wares 