I have a great admiration for Urban Explorers who document old abandoned buildings, they have great skills in finding the places and often more importantly getting in and keeping safe in often dangerous locations. While I like the decay in these places I prefer my locations to be a bit easier to access, so I was very pleased when the superb model Marmalade contacted me about a location shoot that had been organised by the very resourceful Jan Cottrell in an old building that was due for refurbishment.
Marmalade is an excellent model, and when I show her my composition and we’ve worked out where the best light is she produces numerous excellent poses. This was a rather rickety platform for her to pose on, but it had quite interesting top lighting.
It was cloudy outside so I was abel to capture detail both inside and outside with a single exposure, Marmalade produced a great pose looking good while precariously hanging from parts of the window. The left hand bannister is a flip of the right-hand one, at the suggestion of a photographic friend when I first posted the image, and I feel the symmetry works very well.
Marmalade is used to rather more hardcore urbex than I am, so was in her element with a mouldy wall and a floor covered in rubble. The low viewpoint gives a sense of the decay.
During the lunch break we spotted this fireplace, so when the other photographers had finished lunch she got on top of the lovely fireplace.
Great backlighting in this rather narrow room.
And I;m always amazed at the high ISO ability of modern cameras, producing images in what is almost pitch black. The angled view was necessitated by something in front of the window, but I think it worked well.
The roof was, shall we say, rather cold, but that didn’t stop Marmalade as there was some super light and a great reflection.
And this was actually the first set, with the rather lovely arch and doorway.
Many thanks to Marmalade for an extremely enjoyable and very productive shoot, there’s many more images to come from this shoot, and if you’re looking for a location model then Marmalade is one of the best :)
Comment
A highly imaginative set of I,ages. Well done both of you.