Without a doubt, photography becomes an adventure in many areas, especially for documenting the adventurer experienced. Just think of mountain tours, dives, balloon rides.

This is also especially true for Lost Places photography, or also known as Urbex photography, which has gained a lot of attention in recent years.

What is Urbex, or lost places photography?

"Take nothing but photos and leave nothing but footprints".

In the cities like São Paulo, millions of people live. Most people stay on the main streets. That's not enough for the urban explorer. They want to follow their nose into the back alleys as well. There is so much to see in the heart of the concrete jungle. There are secrets to uncover. Secrets to be discovered.

You can explore a city by following the main streets. You can see the famous landmarks. You can go to the biggest attractions. But that's not urban exploration.

Real urban exploration, often called "Urbex," is about getting off the beaten path. It's about finding those secret places in the urban jungle. Urbex photography is also referred to as "UE photography". UE is the abbreviation for Urban Exploration. Urbex photography is about searching for the abandoned and desolate. The Urbex photographer wants to find the urban detritus of a bygone era. They want to capture the long abandoned, decaying structures in all their glory!

Cities are full of abandoned buildings. The rise and fall of history have scarred cities around the world. There are thousands of abandoned hospitals, factories, apartment complexes and theme parks.

Urban exploration photography is all about finding these abandoned places. And, of course, taking amazing photos of them.

Urbex photography is not an easy endeavor. It has many dangers, and you can get into trouble. But for many photographers, that's part of the thrill. So Urbex or Urban Exploration is about going into abandoned buildings and disused places. It's about looking for forgotten places and dilapidated buildings.

Urban Exploration

Discover new worlds! Go in search of hidden treasures with your camera. Research things that are gladly kept quiet. Document what should be swept under the carpet. Go on an excursion into the unknown. It may be waiting for you around the next corner!

Exploring cities can be a real thrill in itself. But if you take your camera with you, you can start photographing urban explorations. Not only will you be able to visit these mysterious and haunted places, but you'll also be able to capture their mood and magic with your camera.

It's not uncommon for the most amazing locations to be off the beaten tourist path, often only accessible via trails, often hidden behind fences and walls. For the most part, you don't have to travel long distances to get there. It is not infrequently a special mixture of urban and architectural photography. So in the immediate vicinity.

What are these places? Think about it.

Some of the most beautiful cities in the world, like Vienna or Venice, owe their appeal mainly to their morbid charm. If the lagoon city had been lavishly renovated, secured and freshly painted, it would be nothing more than a colorful tourist trap without a soul. As it is, however, every picture of the Serenissima captures not only its glorious past, but also its impending doom.

Morbid motifs reflect transience. Mystical motifs, on the other hand, reflect the human longing for eternity.

Although locations that are said to have mystical flair do not necessarily have to be visually impressive, transcendence is often found in the existence of old walls and ancient beings whose existence in this world far exceeds our span of life and experience - for example, in ancient trees.

As is well known, beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. If one person sees a nasty scar in the orderly cityscape, a run-down shack, a rat hole that should be eliminated as soon as possible, another person sees there rather a hidden treasure in the sea of boring uniformity, an interesting photo motif, a promising location.

Actually, these are always secretive, forgotten, forbidden places that guarantee the greatest thrill, which the common philistine and order-loving official would prefer to wipe off the map.

Fortunately, this is often not so easy, so the objects are made as "invisible" as possible - notices removed, construction fences erected, the forest of signs reforested. Thus, in many places, rumors, horror stories and the progressive decay are paired with the allure of the forbidden.

Whether driven by the urge to explore, the addiction to the adrenaline rush, or the fun of a treasure hunt with a camera, to possibly cross borders and explore restricted or dangerous terrain. You should always be aware of what you are doing and the risks you are taking.

In ruins, you intensely feel the - sometimes quite foul-smelling - breath of the past, photographing not only surfaces, but the depth of time. Behind dusty doors and dull windows, photographers eager to explore hope for exciting locations and great motifs, despite the risk of ending up in doubt in a shabby dump that promised too much from the outside.

Adventurous voyages of discovery into unknown, sometimes even dangerous worlds are possible everywhere. So you don't have to start expeditions to distant lands to take grandiose pictures, just open your eyes and take a look at domestic corners that you've overlooked or simply ignored so far.

Morbid, ramshackle and mystical things can often be found behind high walls, ugly building fences, dense hedges, and often in the middle of the forest. The search for suitable motifs is just as exciting as the actual shooting and the subsequent image processing.

Megapolis São Paulo, Brazil

Abandoned remnants of former industrial production can probably be found in every major city. Insolvency, relocation, modernization, speculation and subsidy rip-offs leave ruins everywhere that can only be given a new purpose here and there.

Often, entire complexes stand empty for years and decades until nature reclaims the area or the wrecking ball comes. For photographers, discarded industrial complexes are an El Dorado of great motifs, from monumental halls to enormous machines to tools that have been left behind to be eaten by rust.

In São Paulo, the old industrial districts, the megacity's founding zones, where rapid development proceeded so quickly that forgotten places were suddenly left behind even in the middle of the city.

The industrial age, which is nearing its end, has brought to ruin not only former factories, but also former arteries and means of transportation.

Railroad facilities and repair plants that are no longer needed, disused bridges, dead airfields, withered harbor facilities and junked automobiles are all gathering dust towards nirvana in many places.

Dilapidated railroad sites

Railroad sites guarantee a high probability of finding dilapidated structures. Often, however, people prefer to invest a lot of money in elaborate fencing systems in order to close off areas that could almost have been renovated and preserved for similar amounts of money. Old signal boxes, stations, depots, water towers, engine sheds, and whatever else is left over from the "good old days" are still accessible in many places - at your own risk, of course.

Photogenic vehicle wrecks

Hard to find are photogenic vehicle wrecks. With a little luck, you can find old locomotives on overgrown sidings. Old cars are more likely to be found on the sites of insolvent car dealers or former gas stations and garages. But they can also be found in the middle of São Paulo, where 100 years ago looms were still producing textiles for the emerging nation.

A word of advice: If you spot such a vehicle, take a photo of it as soon as possible, before it ends up in the next scrap press like so many other car bodies.

Concrete corpses

Not every vacant lot is a lost place. Some investors just have to be patient for a few years until a tenant moves into an empty office building or warehouse, or the unfinished condominium in a luxury residential area finally finds a new investor. Until then, however, you can stage the building as a symbol of decline, as long as you don't violate the owner's house and property rights in the process.

Especially in dynamic metropolitan areas like São Paulo, a company for which the previous domicile has become too small or not chic enough quickly moves on to a larger, nicer, more modern neighborhood. Often affected are concrete castles from the founding era that have become unattractive or were never particularly attractive. The transition from vacancy to lost place then usually takes place gradually and is a question of definition. If the owner is still looking for a buyer or a new tenant, it is vacant; if the owner is just waiting for the shack to collapse, it is a lost place.

Cool setting

Morbid, ramshackle and mystical sites make charming backdrops for portraits, record covers and nudes. Racy automobiles and great motorcycles also fit perfectly into rocked-out locations. The surreal mood of an extraordinary environment allows artistic exaggerations even beyond reality.

Equipment and photographic technique

For indoor and outdoor architectural photography - which also includes photography in dilapidated buildings - aperture values between f/9 and f/11 tend to be preferred in order to keep the subjects as sharp as possible from foreground to background. Bokehs are rarely called for in architectural photography; even most Urbexers refrain from deliberately blurring the painstakingly searched for and boarded building, which would immediately dissolve the morbid touch into blurriness.

If at all possible, the camera's optimal sensitivity range should be maintained, which also prevents the ISO values from being screwed up to absurd heights. However, this inevitably results in exposure times that can no longer be achieved by hand. So you need a tripod.

In the old buildings, some photos have to be exposed for up to 30 seconds. Without a stable tripod, a rock-solid tripod head and a release cable, you would quickly be lost.

What drives you to the topic of Lost Places/Urbex?

Only one thing: curiosity, that is, with the attraction of the unknown, which many hopefully still know from childhood. The breathtaking change of the city of São Paulo also produces a lot of vacancy and decay in all regions. Even when iManagementBrazil visits clients in vacant industrial buildings, one necessarily just takes the camera along.

What is so special about it?

Lost Places are about special places with their own atmosphere, which form a kind of counter-world to the glass facades of our rapidly changing city of São Paulo.

Since we almost never get to see human-abandoned places in normal life, they always seem somehow unreal, like a human world "out of order."

And then there's this romantic note, in which longing and fantasy resonate. And then there are also childhood memories of adventure, the hunting instinct and exciting discoveries overlaid with the allure of the forbidden, because in such places one could also gain insights into private lives.

Many of the Lost Places are real time capsules with traces of previous inhabitants and full of history and stories, imagined and real. So there is also something of voyages of discovery.

And there are, of course, the sensual impressions, but these are not always only pleasant: photos, fortunately, can not transport smells.

But in decay, sometimes incredible colors and textures come to light, or hidden layers are uncovered. There is also an aesthetic appeal to crumbling walls, peeling paint, cracked walls and abandoned hallways, to structures of algae, lichen and moss, to patterns that form in the chaos of collapse. Decay can be pure beauty.

How do you find the motifs?

The key is to keep your eyes and ears open, to look where there are buildings and ruins. The Internet is a good source of information. But often you just drive by such places in your surroundings.

Which shooting techniques, which focal lengths?

You should take exposure series from a tripod, that is, a series of about five pictures with a spread of two f-stops.

It is advisable to start with the largest possible wide-angle, usually 14 mm. Of course, the fixed focal lengths 50 and 85 mm should always be in the backpack as well. With these, freehand cropping of objects and/or open-aperture photography is always very successful.

What should you always have with you as an Urbexer?

Flashlight and cell phone. And of course tripod and camera. Gloves against dirt are also an advantage.

Alone or in company?

If possible, you should never travel alone. In old buildings it can be quite dangerous, ceilings can collapse. You never know what will happen, and it is always better to be accompanied. Besides, it's just more entertaining with company.

Essential equipment for Urbex photography

Urban exploration photography in the city can be a difficult form of photography. Before venturing into the concrete jungle, you need to be prepared.

Having the right equipment is an important part of Urbex photography. You need to have the right equipment with you when you head out. Once you are on location, you can't just run home to change your equipment.

When you set out on an urban expedition, preparation is key. And that doesn't just apply to your camera and lens. Your backpack needs to be filled with the right gear.

The very first thing you need is a good bag. A shoulder bag is a good option, but a backpack is better. It will leave your hands free and you can fit a lot in it. You should make sure that the colors blend in with the cityscape.

The best option for a tripod is a good travel tripod. A flashlight is essential. Most abandoned buildings have a lot of dark spots. Sometimes an abandoned building is full of broken glass and rusty metal. Therefore, good quality gloves belong in your backpack. Also, really don't forget to include a basic first aid kit in your backpack.

Best lenses for Urbex photography

Choosing the right lens is as important as choosing the right camera. But there's so much information out there about lenses that it can be difficult to get your head around.

Three fixed focal length lenses are great for Urbex photography: wide angle, normal lens, and a light telephoto lens.

A zoom lens is not absolutely necessary, but it can have its advantages. Sometimes there are places you can't get to. With a zoom lens you can then take these particularly difficult shots.

Be sure to consider the aperture range of the lens! A low aperture is necessary in low light conditions so you don't have to rely on a slow shutter speed. It also gives you more latitude when it comes to depth of field.

We have minted a first collection of a distant but simple Lost Places object on the NFT trading platform OpenSea. It is the Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord on the site of a former iron and steel works.

Link OpenSea.io

In the coming months, Lost Places and Urbex projects will be regularly minted by us as NFTs.

Conclusion

Abandoned places are great for exploring and photographing. But never go on an Urbex expedition unprepared.

Always pack the right equipment for Urban Exploration.

The first thing you need to prepare is your attitude. Think about safety first, then the rest of the equipment will be logical. Of course, you will need your camera.

But a large part of your backpack will be dedicated to health and safety.

Once you have your bag packed, you can head out to the forgotten places in the city and capture some stunning Urbex images.

The Dictionary of Urban Exploration Terms

There are many terms you can use in Urbex photography. To help you out, we've divided this list into several categories.

Urban Exploration Locations

• Access – This means gaining entry to a location.

• Admin – This is where the administration, and often security, is in the building.

• ARTS – This stands for abandoned rapid transport station, the last S can also mean system.

• Cracking – This means gaining access to a location that most people or even no one else has explored before.

• Bricked up – An access point that someone has blocked using bricks and cement

• Crash bar – You will find these installed on exits. Opening one of these often triggers an alarm. Their everyday use would be to exit the building in an emergency.

• The Fresh – Another word to describe raw sewage. You will encounter this if you explore sewage systems.

• Holy Grail – A location that’s difficult to access, but is desirable to enter.

• Hot – A location that has higher levels of security because someone was caught urbexing there.

• Infiltration – Gaining access to a site that you should otherwise not have access to.

• Picked – This means someone has already accessed a place using lockpicks.

• Portal – A portal is an entrance point to something like a subway system. This point would be where that system goes from overground to underground.

• Recce – Exploring a place before going there to photograph it. This involves looking for places to enter, where security is, and if there are any security cameras.

• Rinsed – This refers to a place that has already been well explored and photographed.

• Sniping – In most photography, this means taking a photo from a distance, like a sniper. In urbex photography, this refers to cutting through a fence or breaking a lock to gain entry.

• TOADS – This is an acronym for temporary, obsolete and derelict spaces

Urbex Photographer Types

• Prohobo – Someone who camps at an abandoned place using expensive camping equipment.

• Asylum Seeker – A photographer who visits abandoned asylums. Of course, these asylums are now not in active use.

• Catophiles – Photographers who enjoy exploring the underground catacombs of Paris.

• Rooftopper – A photographer who enjoys gaining access to the top of tall buildings. This type often involves climbing fire escapes.

• Buildering – Those who climb the sides of buildings to gain access to them.

• Drainer – This is someone who enjoys exploring the sewers and drain networks that run under a city.

• Lift Surfer – A person who stands on the roof of a lift while it’s moving, think almost any action movie and you get the idea.

• Ninja – Someone good at avoiding detection. Ninjas are often good at breaking into a location by climbing over walls.

• Noob – This is short for a newbie, somebody who is new to urbex photography.

• Trojan Horse – A person who enters a building, with clothes that allow them to fit in there. They then let other people into the building.

Urbex Photography Terms

• Backlighting – This refers to a light source that is behind your main subject. Hence the main subject is backlit. When used in portrait photography, this is sometimes called rim lighting.

• Chimping – The practice of reviewing your photos on the LCD display of your camera. Most photographers aim to avoid doing this too much. It’s better to be taking photos rather than looking at them.

• Hero Shot – This can refer to two things. The first is a great photo, the one that will turn heads when shown later. The other refers to a picture of a pleased urbex explorer who has gained access to a location.

• Light Painting – Using a light source such as a torch to light a section that you are photographing. Light painting needs a long exposure, so you’ll require a tripod.

• Dirty Shot – This type of photo involves pushing up the ISO to maximum levels and using a wide-angle lens. It’s known as dirty because of the digital noise this will cause in the photo.

General Urbex Terms

• Back Cabbing – This means riding on the last wagon of a train. This gives you a higher chance that it’s empty, allowing more photography opportunities.

• Base Jumping – This isn’t just for photography, and will get you spotted and in trouble. It involves rooftopping and then jumping from the roof with a parachute.

• Bait – This involves someone creating a distraction, to bait the security. While the security is not looking, people can enter the location.

• Blagging – Using the power of persuasion to seem like you have a legitimate reason to be somewhere when you do not.

• Buildering – Climbing up buildings using techniques you’d usually use for rock climbing.

• The Bill – The police force.

• Christmas – In urbex photography, Christmas is when a location becomes unguarded. A difficult to access site can become easier to enter, which is a gift for urbex photographers.

• Masking Up – To avoid identification by a security camera, you put a mask on before you approach.

• Usufruct – A legal term, which you can use to justify entering someone else’s property. The condition is that nothing becomes damaged or moved.