Above the Streets

Like I said in my recent post about climbing bridges, the photos don't always do much for me but the experience of accessing these places and seeing the world in a way that most people never will is what keeps me doing this. 

This particular night Brandon and I had actually planned on spending the night exploring tunnels under the city but when that fell through we decided to go in an entirely different direction. 

The first stop was an easy one that we both had done before but it had been years.

Our next location required a little more cunning and a modest vertical leap, followed by 234 stairs.

After a grabbing some much needed pizza at Edison's we went to our final location for the night, a jack knife lift bridge. The climb was shockingly easy, just exhausting especially after all of the stairs that we had already climbed that night.

I keep telling myself that I'm too old to be doing this stupid stuff. I try to talk myself into staying home and watching Netflix instead of climbing around on buildings and bridges all night, but the truth is that I have no good reason not to climb.

Photos taken with a Canon Mark III and Canon 60D, with a Canon 20mm f/2.8 and Rokinon 8mm Fisheye.

Home Sweet Home

I've been in all sorts of abandoned buildings and structures. Everything from breweries, asylums, factories, schools, and subway tunnels; but none of them illicit more emotion than abandoned houses. Houses are so easy to relate to. It's easy to image a family living there and I often try to build a picture in my head of what the people who lived there were like. 

The first house that Kaylah and I explored was a really beautiful home with large windows, a fireplace, and nice big living room. The outside of the house is almost completely hidden with overgrown trees and shrubs. 

Most of the house looks as if someone just moved out quickly and didn't bother to clean, the kitchen and upstairs bathroom however are showing all of the decay you would expect from a long abandoned house.

Expired canned goods litter the floor.

This bathroom would have been really nice at some point. 

A bubble bath and trashy romance novel?

The upstairs is full of clothes, board games, and romance novels. I assume the people who lived here were older, maybe grandparents, or maybe they just enjoyed playing board games together. Now the games are scattered across the hallway floor, while clothes still hang in closets.

The second house that we went to was much further gone. The back bedrooms looked more like caves and were falling in.

The best part of this house was all of the colors. 

Unlike the first house, this one actually still had most of the furniture in it.

The kitchen was extremely vintage.

An electric can opener covered in cobwebs. 

It was more difficult for me to image what the occupants of the second house were like. There was a screened in porch with a rabbit cage in it, an attic full of rolls of fabric, and one of the bedrooms was painted pink. Whoever lived here hadn't updated anything in at least fifty years. Books and personal items left behind lead me to believe that at least one of the people who lived here was younger, but I have no idea when or why they left. 

Houses are so much fun to explore. Houses hold mysteries and unanswered questions and I love to play detective and try to find the answers to these riddles from the clues left behind. 

Photos taken with a Canon Mark III and Canon 60D, using a Canon 35mm f/1.4, Canon 20mm f/2.8, and Rokinon 8mm Fisheye.

Steel

There is a huge trend in urban exploration, especially on Instagram, to take photos from places that are really high up. Honestly, these types of photos have never done much for me. They're cool and interesting, but they're mostly just shock value and not much more. Of course it's still fun to climb and try to gain access to places that offer incredible views that are otherwise unobtainable. In Cleveland we have so many bridges and they're all climbable, some just happen to be more accessible than others, but for the most part it's pretty easy to get up here so long as you're willing to disregard a few laws.

Even though heights offer such amazing views, my favorite places to explore will always been the underground spaces, but more on that soon...

Photos taken with a Canon 60D with a Canon 20mm f/2.8 and Rokinon 8mm Fisheye.

Painting With Light

When I first started taking photos with my old Canon point and shoot, I always let the camera do the work for me, by that I mean auto focus, auto exposure, auto everything. Then I saw some night photography and light painting, and that was one of the driving forces behind learning to use manual settings and understand how the camera really works. The truth is it's actually pretty easy. It's also a bit gimmicky but it's still fun to do.

For those of you who don't know how it's done let me break it down; tripod, long exposure, light source. Your light source can be anything from a cell phone or flashlight, to steel wool or a programable LED light bar.

For the first two photos we used the light bar that Jake built. It's a six foot tall strip of LEDs with a mini computer attached to it. After you upload an image to it from your phone you simply push a button and walk through the frame. The LEDs light up in sequence while you walk which results in an image.

The next technique we often use, which has become tremendously popular, is spinning steel wool.

The light bar is a great way to make ghosts.

Photos taken with a Canon Mark III, and Canon 60D with a Canon 20mm f/2.8 and Rokinon 8mm Fisheye.