I travel around the UK for work quite a bit and sometimes I find myself in a hotel which is conveniently close to an urbex location on my "to do" list. One such place is this abandoned dairy factory in the south west of England.
To give myself more time to explore, I arrived a day earlier than my work meeting and booked a cheap hotel. The kind where the shower is a trickle and the lights don't work. I really should spend more on a hotel!
In the tradition of some unofficial urbexers' code, I don't reveal the location of the dairy factory but this one is well known and it would probably take the reader about 15 seconds to find out where I was! I read reports about a fire occurring here only a month or so ago. I wasn't sure this place would still be accessible after such an event. So I took a chance and it paid off.
On my explore around the site, I met a very nice local old chap walking his uber-aggressive dog who told me the reason for the fire was a disgruntled lorry driver who had dumped a load of hand wash on site. It wasn't long before someone came along and set the lot on fire!
The local chap also revealed the site belonged to a Far Eastern investment company and no effort has been made to secure the site since they took ownership.
I could rattle on all day about the stuff I found out about this place but what I didn't expect was to find the many great artworks painted on the walls. This post was originally going to be about the architecture and decay but ended up as a collection of fine graffiti!
The Way in
This photo will also probably give the viewer the location but today was a great day to explore somewhere new to me.
Android?
This was my favourite piece in the whole site. I have no idea who painted it but I was immediately drawn to this! Amazing!
Tagged
Unfortunately I see this quite a bit. An artist has planned this fine piece with co-ordinated colours and a great pose. Then some idiot applies two buck teeth!!
I have no clue what this is...
I'm not clued up on Marvel or DC comics but I'd be willing to bet someone will recognise what this is from.
Discombobulated
I know someone who vaguely resembles this face. I've sent it to him but have yet to receive a civil reply ;-)
Skull Eye Candy
I would have liked to see this being created. The bit where the artist flicks paint.
Mannequin
I had to ask myself the question as to why on earth would someone go to the trouble of acquiring a mannequin and then dumping it in a grimy location. Odd.
Blood soaked tears
Or maybe "graffiti to make your eyes bleed"
Flood
And now back to the urbex. Curiously some of the buildings in the complex had uneven floors where there were deliberate falls in floor levels. Here the water has nowhere to go.
Nature reclamation
Around the site are areas where nature is slowly winning the battle.
Light and shade
Today was a day to practice my light and shade exposures. I was drawn to this composition with the chair and the roof lights.
Stairway to darkness
Being normally a lightpainting photographer, I keep being drawn to stairs to use in a shot in the dark. This is more of a record shot if I ever managed to get back in here before the bulldozers arrive.
Sketchy
I feel like today I didn't shoot many photos of the actual buildings themselves. The answer to that would probably be because the structure was sketchy as hell and there isn't any possibility of me standing underneath an unstable looking beam!
Burnout
According to the local I met this building was used unofficially as a youth centre with great effort made to make a skate park for the local youth. As ever someone will always set fire to these places and now the building isn't quite as safe as it should be. Surprisingly to say the roof is blackened from fire, the window lights look clear. Strange.
Double dutch angle
I only took one lens in to this place, the Sony 20mm. I'd made my way in to the art deco offices and the angle of view just wasn't wide enough. Cue weird double dutch angle.
Allergy
It was just after I shot this that I reacted to the dust particles in the building. I started to feel like I was having a throat blockage and feeling the need to cough up my lungs. Or throw up, one or the other. I often find after an hour or two in a dusty environment I can't continue.
Game over.....
About me:
I don't like to be labelled as shooting one particular genre of photography but usually I specialise in shooting lightpainting images and occasionally dabble in urbex and artistic model photography.
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