Hi I'm Doug McKinlay
and you're watching AdoramaTV,.
Now for today's episode we're
going to look at decay but unlike
a previous episode on detritus where we
used found items and natural stuff,
what we're going to look at today is more
man-made structures that we put together;
buildings, cars, roads etc anything passed
its prime that's what we're going to look at.
I love taking these kind of pictures.
I kind of liken them to landscape pictures,
whether the certain amount of calmness
and the whole process.
You've really got time here to investigate
what you're trying to achieve.
All the angles.
It's a fantastic way of taking pictures.
Now don't get bogged down too much and
finding the perfect building
or structure especially for starting.
Anything will do;
an old post office, an old pub,
disused government buildings,
an old wreck of a car even.
Now right away though we have to think about safety
so make sure you're legally able to go
into one of these places and make sure it's
sound. You don't want to go into the old
building with the floors dodgy and you
fall through it.
Now for our purposes today
we've chosen the Leake street
graffiti tunnel under Waterloo station
in central London. Now it's a pretty hip
place now, but not too long ago it was
quite a little bit dodgy perhaps, you
know, you get all these great taggers,
coming in here but it's perfect for our
needs because it does show a little bit
of urban decay and just so happens
there's lots of would-be Banksy’s.
Now most cities will have their fair
share of urban decay but it's not just
in your back garden where you should be
looking versus when traveling you're
going to kind of come across some heritage stuff
castles and ruins etc. Now when I'm
working overseas I'm always looking for
these things. I can't think of anything
better than crawling around inside an
old ruin for a day taking photographs
but it comes down to planning
and in research again
so troll through the
internet when you're going to go
overseas and find these really great
places where you can spend some time
and get some quality pictures.
Once your locations are chosen
and you've had a real good look around,
it's time to set the plans to action.
Now for me I begin with pre-visualization,
I want to know in my head at least
how the picture might look
when it's all done.
After that, that's when I can think about
lens choices, times a day,
points of view etc
and it's all mitigated by being safe
and making sure I get access to a site that's legal.
Okay the gear now it doesn't really matter
what you use. You can use a camera phone
and DSLR, a compact camera, a media format,
it doesn't really matter. Whatever floats
your boat but what does matter though is
the finished product. If you're happy
with it so if you're getting good
quality pictures that suit you
out of a camera phone then go for it.
Now as I use
DSLRs that's the kind of thing
I'm thinking about here today.
Now for lens choice,
it kind of gets dictated by the the surroundings
that I'm in perhaps so,
if it's a small surrounding with lots of detail,
I might go down to a macro.
If it's a bigger cavernous building
or structure then I'm going to go for the
wide-angle lens
and then I'll use all the lenses
in between. There's no real
rule here except trying to keep that
finished product in your head, what you
want it to look like?
Now the last thing I'm going to talk about
here is one thing I've been
going on about for years now
is tripods, make sure you use a tripod
keeping everything nice and still.
So apart from your equipment another
crucial thing you think about is light.
Now what I mean by that is if you're
shooting your structures inside
or outside.
Inside is a bit of a no-brainer,
you're going to use a tripod.
That's as simple as that.
Outside though you're going to have
to think about things like angles of light,
times of day, even the time of year.
Now getting that light right
can mean the difference between
a mediocre shot and a real keeper.
Apart from the real close-ups like
macros for instance,
I think the general rules of landscape photography
should serve you really well.
Wide-angle lenses using maximum depth of field
with using a hyper focal distance
and finding a good point of view.
Also I find that returning to these places
more than once,
I often get better pictures each time.
Difficult I know if you're traveling.
One last thing I want to say with these kind
of pictures now because this kind
of photography lands on
the Arts end of the spectrum,
there's no real need to try and show
some realistic depiction of life.
Have some fun with it.
Use that software that's out there
whether it's Photoshop or Lightroom
or any of the plugins.
Have a real go at making a whole different look.
Thanks for watching,
I'm Doug McKinlay for AdoramaTV
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