Urbex and relevant photos

I have a decent amount of friends from home who used to skate but have recently been branching off to find thrill in a different activity. Urbex. Short for Urban Exploring which wikipedia defines as "the exploration of man-made structures, usually abandoned ruins or not seen components of the man-made environment." Basically you go explore abandoned buildings, and you often get to see really cool stuff.

Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to go on these adventures with my friends, but they have gotten extremely good at taking photographs that allow their audience to experience the adventure from behind a computer.

They've been able to take places that people have viewed for so long as run down, useless, abandoned buildings, and turned them into beautiful works of art. They've had many encounters with police, security guards, and even the homeless. Taking these photos requires them to travel light, because to get to these locations you often have to run, jump, climb etc. This most often means one camera body, one lens, and no lights. 

Something that started out as an after school past-time has turned into future careers for my friends. They started just going and exploring these old buildings because they thought it was cool. Soon they started taking pictures to document the places they go. Now they are studying photography in school and have had art shows in Philadelphia featuring their work. 

The first three photos were taken by Andrew Collins. More work can be seen here: instagram.com/andrewcollinssk8

The last photo was taken by Jon Sevik. More work can be seen here: instagram.com/jonsevik and flickr.com/photos/sevik

The Power of Time-Lapse and Tilt-Shift

A few years ago I found a time-lapse video online that I watched at 2am and I was struck by so much awe and beauty I bookmarked the video and it's been on the top of my browser ever since.  Give it a quick look... I promise you'll feel calmer in about 15 seconds:

The soundtrack is what I think really sells it. Even without the visual, the piano is so calming it makes me want to melt away like warm butter into a soft and beautiful sleep. Okay enough of this poetry-mush... let's get down to business. The first question is how do they get these beautiful steady shots over a period of time? For that, let us turn to the magical world of the internet, also known as the largest free education database in existence:

Okay, so now we all know how to create a stunning time-lapse videos. Good. But photographer Keith Loutit has taken it a step further and added another element to his time-lapse videos: tilt-shift. 

Tilt-shift, for those less aware, is a stylistic type of blurring that can make large landscape pictures look like little miniature models. I grabbed these two pictures as examples... and even though these are normal real-life shots taken over a large area, this simple blurring effect makes them look very small. 

So what happens when you combine this effect with a time-lapse video? Cool looking shit, that's what. 

Check out Loutit's time-lapse over the skyline of Shanghai: