Sick Britain

This is another personal site by Matt Smith, a photographer from the South-East of England but deserves it’s spot in the “community” section as it’s a great place to look for inspiration (either photographic or location scouting). The site contains excellent collections of photos from site visits with brief notes on the site and occasional history, please check it out…

http://standingquiet.fotopic.net/

Popularity: 1% [?]

I heard about this site along time ago and despite the fact that we here at Sick Britain are meant to be all about UK Urbex I thought I’d break tradition from (a) posting articles about forums, and (b) post a quality site from the good old United States of America.  Opacity has been around since 2002 and is a personal site detailing the urban exploration of one man – Tom Kirsch (or Mr. Motts), the site is beautifully put together (all hand-coded by the site’s owner) and contains an amazing amount of stunning photography, site reports and even a forum (though the emphasis of the site is clearly on the reports).  I can’t stress more, if you’re into urbex you have to look at this site: http://www.opacity.us/.

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’d been following Paul Osborne‘s photostream on Flickr (under the name Compound Eye) for some time before he released his book on Blurb and given that all of the photos are available online under Creative Commons you might ask why I’d buy the book in the first place. The answer is that books are nice, especially photography books – it’s just nice to have the book to leaf through, somehow it gives you a better sense of the photograph to see it there in the page and explore it with your eyes without feeling the need to click on anything.

The book is titled In a Landscape and aside from brief introduction it contains no significant text, there are over 100 individual shots broken into chapters by site. The book is printed and published by the print-to-order service Blurb and the price isn’t cheap (starting at £31.95) but the quality you get for the money is extremely good and there’s little to distinguish this from a commercially produced book as far as I can tell.

One of the main reasons I decided to purchase the book is that a lot of people I know just don’t ‘get’ what urban exploration is and what I mean when say that there’s beauty to be found in decay, I think being able to show them a copy of Paul’s book and they’ll instantly see what I mean. So if you fancy splashing out on a treat for yourself, or maybe for someone you know who’s into Urban Exploration then I recommend In a Landscape, I’ll leave you with a few of my favourite shots from the book…

Popularity: 3% [?]

If you want to read site reports, browse some good photos, find inspiration and get ideas for locations you need look no further than derelicte.co.uk.  The site is based loosely around East Anglia but some of the site reports come from diverse places ranging from the West Country to Tyne & Wear, the one thing all of the reports seem to have in common is good solid photography and there’s often some quality historical information to go with it.  I’ve personally been put onto a couple of great ideas by derelicte.co.uk and I’m sure that when I’m looking for a day out it’ll be one of my first places to turn for inspiration.

Popularity: 2% [?]

When I was just staring out in Urbex I spent a good amount of time Googling around the subject and I consistently came across Simon Cornwell‘s site, it’s a brilliant resource and showcases some of his explorations (including great photos). I’m particularly impressed with the Portfolio section where Simon lists the contributions he’s made to the Urbex community through talking to the media, including the BBC, Wired, Digital Camera Magazine, The Sun and a whole host of local newspapers and other publications.

Definitely check him out, if you’re new to the sport I think you’ll find Simon’s approach easy to understand and I think he really gets across the fun of the hobby.

http://www.simoncornwell.com/urbex/

Popularity: 2% [?]