Posts tagged urban exploration
Photography on the Dark Side - the Gateway to Urban Nightscape Photography

This was a shared evening with our colleagues of Sheffield Photographic Society projected into the Academy by Zoom.

 Peter describes himself as a 'very keen urban nightscape photographer' and the tone and delivery of his presentation certainly bore out this enthusiasm and commitment to night-time image capture.

 Peter began with a short history of photography beginning in the nineteenth century up to the present moment and he tied this history into the lives of his family in Germany from his Great Grandparents through to himself today. He described his kit of tripos, camera and lenses and how he bracketed shots and made much use of luminosity masks in Photoshop.

 After this technical information he took us on a tour of London. Beginning with the Pool of London. He said that September to April was the best period to take these kinds of images and he explained how he used Google Street View not only to give him a taste of viewpoints but also as a way of choosing safe places to be.

 We saw stunning night -time views of Tower Bridge, the Shard, the Tower of London and St. Paul's Cathedral before he ushered us down to the West End. His top tips were to drive to Mile End Road, station car park and use public transport from then on, and making sure that the Thames was at slack water with no craft spoiling the reflections.

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Urban Exploration to Fine Art - Viveca Koh's Photographic Journey

Yesterday evening Viveca Koh presented the second special presentation of the season. This was an evening unlike any other, a wide ranging collection of images and explanations, a journey into the world of Viveca road mapped by her photography.

She began with an explanation of how she was a self-taught photographer and told us of her different cameras including her iphone. Her qualifications are impressive; LRPS, ARPS and FRPS and FIPF which clearly show that she is an outstanding photographer.

She immediately moved into the area that is her speciality - UrbEx, urban exploration. She led us through several abandoned mental hospitals and abandoned mortuaries. Crumbling buildings falling into decay and suffering the ravages of weather and time but nevertheless offering opportunities for Viveca to feature her love of the smaller elements she came across and making photographs of these in her, almost trademark, square format. These pictures, always beautifully framed and composed, had the power to induce some unease in the viewer’s mind. So, for example, the carefully photographed body of the desiccated squirrel and the photograph of a fully made bed on an iron bedstead brought the audience up with a start.

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