A few months ago we organized a trip to South-East Germany to shoot some Urbex locations during a long weekend. We had several sites planned and because of the total distance we needed to keep more or less a tight schedule. It's not the ideal circumstance for a shoot IMO, I'm rather not bound by timing limits and rather see how it goes on the spot. But in this case we needed to make some compromise.

Our first stop was the Zeche Hugo, an abandoned mine which attracted me because it has a special Locker room system where the mine workers hoisted their clothes and shoes up to the ceiling inside small metal cages. Until now I had not had the opportunity to photograph such contraptions so off we went. Because of the timing constraints we just shot the locker and went off to the next location. From what I could gather from the rest of the building, there was not much interesting stuff anyway that I hadn't already seen in other mines and factories.

Next we went to Panacolor studio's, which is the name it is known by in the Urbex community. However right after entrance we were greeted by another 'party-of-5' of Dutch photographers. The studio is not that huge with small corridors and little editing rooms. So it was immediately way too crowded for my taste, sometimes having to wait in ones footsteps not to ruin the other guys shot. The 'abandoned' aspect was also a little lost, something I like in order to shoot in a different way. So to cut it short, it was a bit of a bummer but some nice keepers emerged anyway. We went back out pretty quickly because we needed to go to the next stop while the light was still good.

Arrival at Villa Victoria-Stift. Don't ask me where the name comes from, I have no clue. Tried to find some back ground on the place via my pall google, but didn't find much. I did manage to digg up an image from the time when it was used as a Sanatorium for children. Took mostly some HDR images which turned out pretty nice I think. Upon exit we were welcomed by a short and heavy rain-storm, good test for the camera bags. Not for us, we were all dressed in t-shirt :-p

After that straight to the hotel, already in the neighborhood for the next stop: a fun family day-out in Volklinger Hutte, a former [huge] steel factory, now converted to publicly accessible industrial museum. Not much "find the entrance" stuff here but I care about the picures and Volklingen Hutte certainly has much to offer here. It was a bright and sunny day, turned quite hot as well. So I left most of the heavy equipment like the Manfrotto tripod in the car and caried only my new belt bag without the top part. If you take your time to look carefully around for nice shots you might spend a whole day and more at this place, it is that huge. It is even safe to bring the kids along, give them a taste of what other places I go out shooting but which are way too dangerous for them to join!

All updates can be found in the Urbex > germany section...

So all in all we had a fun trip, good food and drinks along the way! Also check out the snapsshots in "urbex in action".

Didn’t have time to enter the main building so made some quick snaps from the outside, there weren’t that many photo’s and I had forgotten about them. That’s why I post them this late.

Fort 7

Yes, I [finally] put my galleries online of train graveyards. There are more train graveyards around then you would think, with people being able to fly easily with sites like Fly.com, there is becoming less use for some old train lines. Trains and trainstations still have that little bit of romantic nostalgia about them from the old days, think steam trains, Orient Express etc...
I visited two trainyards for the moment:

All updates in the Train Graveyards gallery

I made a revisit to Cheratte, a place took photographs of many years ago. The buildings haven’t changed but it’s not the same anymore. Cheratte must be one of those “landmark” urbex places that everyone “needs to have visited”. Surely I think thousands have been there by now. I still remember the very first time I entered the building in 2003. Not much graphitti or any other indication of recent visitors other than the people who last shut the door when they closed down the mine.
The contrast with today could not be bigger: many have left their markings on the walls, many artifacts I remember were gone and during the 4 hours we spent on site, we encountered 2 German photography groups, a Dutch photographer with 2 models, A bunch of kids with camera’s shooting in the mid tower and last but not least: about 15-20 fully combat dressed guys who were playing a wargame! It’s not the serene place to shoot pictures it once was
In a way this is a pity, but I still enjoyed the time spent there, although I realise for me it will be the last visit.

Because of the revisit, I decided the just redo the old gallery as well, removed some images and added the new ones.

Cheratte Harasd revisit

Yes, this is the original factory where they made the famous cristals from Val Saint Lambert. This old part is abandoned, but the rest of the plant is still in operation.

Val Saint Lambert

This place has served several purposes. It was a sanatorium for children back in the days and also served as sort of a big atelier for several artists. An old firetruck is parked in front. I have seldom seen so much crap dumped in a building. I didn’t take any pictures of it, it was a waste of megapixels

Preventorium Dolhain

Hugo is much like many other mines from that period. What interested me in particular in this place though was the locker rooms where workers used to hang their clothes on metal cages that were hoisted to the ceiling. One can only image the smell
I didn’t visit the rest of the site besides this locker because it photographically wasn’t much different from most ordinary abandoned factories [and we were also on a schedule...]

Zeche Hugo

This place seemed to be a sanatorium at a certain stage, but I don’t know much else about it. Much of the large villa is ceiled off and in the surrounding buildings there is not much to see anymore.

Villa Victoria Stift

Panacolor studio’s [as it is generally known] was a very sophisticated sound synchronisation studio build right after the second world war. The studio was also used for the voice-overs in German language of foreign films. It was abandoned in the late 90’s and to this day most of the equipment is still there!
Unfortunately when we arrived, there was already a “posse” of 5 people inside taking pictures. It was much too crowded for my taste so I didn’t get to shoot the pictures I was looking after. We cleared the area after about a bit more than 2 hours. I heard the other photographers stayed there all day.

Panacolor Studio's

A few years ago during the winter period I visited Volklinger Hutte. This former mamoth steel factory was build in the second half of the 19th century and I believe it must have been one of the biggest of its kind. The biggest part of the site is reconverted for public access and is now part of the industrial heritage. During the first visit we only shot the inside of the Boiler Room. During the second visit now we walked around public parts in the factory. Well only part of it actually, because the site is in fact too big to visit in detail in one day.

Volklinger Hutte Revisit

Went on a 2-day trip to Paris with my wife a few months ago during the winter period. Paris is too big to try and see in a mere 2 days so upfront we decided only to visit a few landmarks and interesting sites, not too much at all, guess what: we still did only half! Another trip’s begging, maybe now during the summer period... would be nice to have some contrast. For food and drinks Paris is cheap compared to where I live!!

Paris Trip 2008

On a trip trough the Liege area, we came across this abandoned castle. We saw the towers through the treeline from the distance and it looked really promising. But unfortunately it had been in decay for quite some time. Add the odd fire now and then...

Chateau de Seraing

I put some images online from a visit to Abbaye-de-Villers. An old abbey in the south of Belgium.

Abbaye-de-Villers

I visited the Centrale Thermique building at the Terre Rouge site during last winter. It was a great site, the pipe structures on the inside are really special, it resembles a giant metallic spagetti sometimes. In a certain way it was quite an urbex photographer’s heaven so I put quite some images online:

Terre Rouge gallery

I also was a festival photographer for the Dranouter folk festival. A lot of nice groups and a great athmospere. I took a lot of foto’s that weekend but put only a small selection of them online.
Unfortunately the weather Gods were not that friendly and the last day it was raining so hard that a lot of us got stuck in the mud while trying to get home from the farmer fields that they turned into temporary press parkings. Not a fun 45 minutes...

Go directly to the Concerts gallery

Put some images online from the Cemetery in Maastricht, Netherlands.

Go directly to the Cemetery gallery