When I explore I taken stack loads of pictures, but also like to take video. The video is taken on my digital camera and so is frankly rather shaky and also relatively low resolution at 640×480. Here’s a remarkable bit of research that looks to combine both to improve the resulting video with remarkable results! It’s all rather geeky but watch the video to be amazed, and also to grin at the repeated reference to the “spacetime fusion algorithm”. Doc Brown eat your heart out :-).
One of the big reasons I’ve never moved away from using a bridge camera and gone the DSLR path is because I like having a single device I can shoot pictures and video footage on when I’m exploring. DLSRs have historically be far to snooty to do video … until now! I’ve always preferred the colour balance on Nikon’s too since it matches the vivid style that my eyes (and my current Sony) see things in too.
The press like writing about Urban Explorers because we’re a cheap target. Often a local rag will use loaded inflammatory phrases like “breaking in” and “thrill seeker” to write about a site in their readerships’ locale and then ask the site owner to comment. Frequently they’ll steal pictures off our websites and use them in the article, even though the copyright theft they practice is a criminal offence, vs. the purely civil act of trespass I undertake when exploring a site.
Anyhow, the local paper in Croydon likes writing about their own local mecca of exploration … Cane Hill Hospital. This time the article was about videos of it being explored on YouTube, and of course I like making videos and putting them on YouTube. Indeed my directorial genius and clever soundtrack choice means I’m now famous ;-).
Here’s the article on the Croydon Advertiser’s site and here’s a direct link to the video in question.
… I’m going medium format baby for my next trusty exploring camera!
So this blog has been embarrassingly quiet of late. No particular reason beyond being busy with other stuff.
However, to wake things up I present to you a bit of absolutely quality celebrity location exploring!
So first I saw this I thought … “haha, that so must be a prank”. Then I starting worrying that it might actually be true! So for those mad explorers who go only equipped with their crappy camera ‘phones … you can now starting bring some quality to your blurry shots ;-).
Personally I reckon two for every day of the week seems like a polite balance ;-). I love retrotastic watches and must admit I’m rather taken by these new G-Shocks from Casio. Anyone want to buy me a nice green one for when I’m out exploring, though some of the places I go to get so little light the solar panel will never have a chance to do its stuff!
When I’m out exploring there are the sorts of hazards you might expect. Rotten floors … you learn to check things out first and walk on the joists where you can. Heights … just be sensible and anything serious should use some sort of fall arrester. Glass and other sharp nasties … good shoes and a pair of leather palmed kevlar work gloves. Absestos … a P3-rated half mask. Security guards with dogs with sharp pointy teeth … stealth, cunning, and a fast pair of legs. All things I’m prepared for and carry gear to handle in my exploring pack, along with first aid kit, multi-tool, and a multitude of torches.
However, there is one hazard you can’t really prepare for … other people! Using the current UK vernacular, the groups of feral “chav” kids, and the gangs of “pikeys” stealing all the metal work they can rip out of a building with their stilsons, crowbars and gas cutting gear. A lone explorer with an expensive camera is an easy target for anybody given to aggression and theft, hence why they are the hazard I fear most and the one that I’m very careful to avoid at all cost!
Not that I’m in anyway advocating a more armed response but the following torches unsurprisingly caught my eye …
Here it is … a snip at 159 bucks!
#1 - stick it in your gob.
#2 - use it for looking down the FSM tube on ROC posts when out exploring.
#3 - #101 - far to rude or disgusting to mention ;-).
The other evening I caught the last 10 minutes of Tommy showing late night on TV. I’ve seen it various times when I was younger, but not since I’ve been quite so “attuned” to my environment courtesy of my exploring. Hence, the thing I immediately noticed was that Tommy’s holiday camp was at one of the Portsdown forts, and a quick Google turned up this interesting site. As it turns out the vast majority of the film was shot around Pompey!
So interesting fact #1 - I was right, and it was Fort Purbrook.
Interesting fact #2 - at the end of the film there is a short bit of footage of a pier really on fire. I’d assumed it was some stock footage of perhaps one of the Brighton piers. However it was in fact South Parade Pier in Southsea! It turns out the the pier that we’ve regularly walked down is very different now to how it used to be courtesy of a couple of fires around the era of Tommy. The first destroyed the theatre, and the second was actually the result of an accident whilst filming Tommy which did for the rest of the pier. So the footage is real, and the pier now is a much less grand version rebuilt after the Tommy accident.
And interesting fact #3 - the end of the film with lots of large silver balls was filmed at the (infamous) Pounds Scrapyard. Ironically I was talking about Pounds just last night. Over the years the amount of cool things you could see at Pounds as you head across the M275 into Pompey have reduced, but it’s still an interesting target for exploration. However, the owners have a reputation for not “welcoming” visitors, though activity on the site has now greatly reduced ahead of (very lucrative) redevelopment.
Anyhow, time for me to get a copy of Tommy, and watch it with renewed interest!