Hi everyone. Today we got our first interview for Focal Riders about urbex (Urban Exploration)! Here we go !! 1- How did you get into this? Urbex photography is fascinating because you get something pretty unique. Also you can find some strong emotion from such places and to me photography is all about that. 2- What drew you to it? I saw some very nice urbex photography on Internet and then I wanted to see it for myself. Régis, a friend of mine was really into this and he found an awesome spot in an old sanatorium around Paris and we started from there. From there, we very recently set-up our common website to share pictures (focal-riders) 3- What kind of stuff do you bring with you on your adventures? Firstly you need to have some kind of backpack because urbex spots are usually difficult to reach. You also MUST have a tripod because even if you have a good full-frame camera that can do high iso you are most of the time lacking light. I personally attach the tripod to the backpack so that I can have my 2 hands free. 4- Whats your favorite place youve ever explored? To be honest I didnt went to a lot of places since I am really into photography for not a very long time. The first urbex spot I went too with Régis is as of today my favorite (see focal-riders/photography/dark-room-i/). If you consider a tube station as urbex, I also really love such places (focal-riders/photography/ghost-train/). You can also find some nice spots simply by walking in the street ( focal-riders/photography/watching-the-time-goes-by/ ) 5- Have you ever gotten in trouble with the law for snooping around in these places? Not at all. There is actually quite a lot of thing and places you can go to without getting trouble with the law. In Paris for example as long as you dont use a tripod in a public place you dont get trouble. Worst case scenario you get a warning. 6- Have you ever run into any danger on your adventures? Well what is dangerous is more that when you are taking photos and really into it you trend to dont really care about what is around especially in the street. I had some good fright there, much more than in some dark, dirty urbex spots where you can fall if you are not careful (because at this time you are careful!) 7- Any cool stories? Ahah. I was with Régis doing some urbex shot in an abandoned hospital early in the morning. The place were extremely creepy and we even found a half burned doll (like in the movies). At some point I was shooting in a very long corridor and while looking into the lens I saw a dog running at us 100m away! I yield Régis about it to be careful and to pack our stuff. When I looked again a few seconds after, the dog disappeared. We got so freaked out for nothing and laughed a lot about it. 8- How many people usually come with you on your adventures? Do you prefer to go alone, or with a group? Its not recommended AT ALL to go alone to urbex spots. What is dangerous is especially other people (with real dogs this time), junkie or broken places where its strongly recommended to be at least 2 if something bad happen. On the other side if you are too many it could be too noisy. In addition you need to rotate on some specifics areas for taking pictures and you have the feeling to loose creativity. Ideally I would say 2 people taking photos and 1 people for lighting and setting. Once day we will try some urbex shooting with model and in the case you would need to be more. 9- Anything Ive missed? What would you like people to know about this stuff? First thing first, before going to urbex spot I would say that it is good to improve skills in normal places. For example getting used to the manual mode so how to deal with ISO/Aperture/Speed manually in a sec depending on the situation is recommended. Its also good to work on long exposure because you will get a better quality by doing a 10 secs exposure at 100 iso than a 1/2 sec exposure at 1600 iso. Also using HDR is highly recommended. Taking a few different exposures of the exact same place could be very useful. 10- What kind of person makes a good urban explorer? Do you mean the kind of personnality? Difficult to say since I dont consider myself as a good urban explorer (yet I hope!) but I would say mostly curiosity, creativity and determination. - Xavier -
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 10:38:40 +0000
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