Shooting URBEX in old abandoned buildings is always an adventure, especially when you shoot alone, like I do. I don’t think there has been a time yet that I have not had a weird feeling come over me when in some of these dark, forgotten places. While shooting this image, for example, a door slammed behind me (there was no wind). A few seconds later, a bunch of paint fell down from the ceiling on top of me, or at least I thought it was the ceiling. I looked up and the ceiling was painted a completely different color from the white flecks sprinkled all over me; and, there were no signs of missing paint on the ceiling in any case. After so many visits to places like this, I have learned to ignore the strange goings-on around me, focusing instead on my photography.
For those interested in technical details, I shot this one with my Nikon D700 coupled to one of my favorite lenses, the Nikkor 24mm f/3.5 PC-E (that’s tilt/shift for you Canon types). I used the fantastic Promote Control to trigger the brackets I needed, which made shooting exposures longer than 30 seconds a snap. Ready for a confession? This shot could have been much better (better exposed average exposure as a base), but I had somehow forgotten to check my camera’s settings and discovered later that I had left the camera set to +5EV (doh!!). It was not until the third set of brackets of the day that I realized and corrected the error, but I think this still worked out. Guess the weird noises and falling paint did rattle me after all.
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