Photo Updates: London
 

mmmm..battersea.. so tasty :D

http://www.ninjito.com/dump/2006-07-...stbourne-1.jpg
http://www.ninjito.com/dump/2006-07-...illenium-1.jpg
http://www.ninjito.com/dump/2006-07-...attersea-1.jpg
http://www.ninjito.com/dump/2006-07-...attersea-2.jpg
http://www.ninjito.com/dump/2006-07-...attersea-3.jpg

amazing pics :thumbsup

so youre in London?

looks like where they got the inspiration for the cover from pink floyd animals..




http://www.gaudela.net/portugalprog/...Animals-1a.jpg

nice pics......

That's the one! Almost everyone in the UK is familiar with it - it's a landmark and lovely :D

Great pics

can you post the second one in wallpaper size please ? :)

Here you go.. about 1600xwhatever :D
http://ninjito.com/dump/2006-07-27/qx-huge-1.jpg

awesome thanks :thumbsup


and #3 would look good on my laptop :winkwink:

nice pics :thumbsup

sick :thumbsup

nice pics!! :thumbsup

I'm not sure what I like better..the quality of the pics or your skills at finding these locations. Since you do so much abandoned building stuff, do you have any "I surprised this homeless guy/crackhead satan worshipper's group etc" or "the security guard chased me for 20 minutes" type stories? :)

Nice shots:thumbsup

bump for the traveler! these are some of my favorites yet....

Not inspiration... they actually tethered the floating pig to the power station and it broke loose from its moorings, floated around London for a while and eventually landed somewhere in Kent.

great pics what camera and lens did you shoot it with

GREAT PICS!
really enjoyed them. thanks

awesome pics as always :thumbsup :thumbsup

"Thank you sir... can I have another?"

insane pictures

cool pics...Nice :thumbsup

interesting room? chamber ? to shoot a bondage set , with al lthe curved lines

Great looking pics

cool old buildings...but where are the girls in gogo boots etc......maybe I've been watching too much Austin Powers because I have a totally different view of london

nice pics! I love

http://www.ninjito.com/dump/2006-07-...attersea-3.jpg

the best... vintage debauchery is so delicious.

great pics -did you use a foto tripod?

great pics! What a London!

Amazing pics as usual. :thumbsup

Great pics...Just curious, how do you find these great locations every time?

Also, what camera and brand lens are you using?

Hey guys.. sorry for the delay in replying... let's see if I can cover everything :D

The photos were shot on a canon 1ds with a 17-40mm f4 lens (on a tripod- must have for night shots!)

Finding locations is about 30% knowing people, 10% luck and 60% going out and actively looking for things. It normally takes a lot of exploring to find great locations, and while you do that you meet people who have done cool stuff, and you end up having contacts that can show you around to some top spots :D

That said, I've always wanted to do battersea properly - it's amazing, and truley a work of art. It has huge 1920-style art-deco murals lining one section of the plant - marble and wooden staircases, carved french-style folding doors, and the control-rooms are immaculate, and resplendant in 1920 style furnishing.. it's mind blowing!

As for the drain, it's the river westbourne - running under hyde park in london. Aside from being a huge system of almost all redbrick, it also has a lot of sewer overflow into it, so some sections are nothing short of intensely turdy (replete with toilet paper islands, rats, the works etc)

If you're local in London, you can see one section of the drain pass over the tube line in Sloane Square station!

The particular picture was of a sewer overflow.


As for stories of weird and wonderful - the thousands of stranded tampons in the westbourne drain were slightly unsettling.. I've never really had much trouble with security or police - generally you just evade or don't get seen, or walk straight up to them and tell them what's going on - but a few months ago on the roof of a building in the city a chromer stumbled up and was walking on rusted tin over a 4-story fall and being a general dick; squatters also have a tendancy to get angry too!

Hey! the second shot is Millenium Mills in east London - I live right next door! Did you get inside the building? The place gets used all the time for movie productions but has some big time security going on. Landrover patrols at all times of the day. Currently the building has a huge poster up one whole side promoting a car launch.

beautiful imagery as always outta you :thumbsup

beautiful websites you have - do you shoot the content yourself?

thanks for sharing those awesome pictures :)

*Blushes* I do. One of the reasons I'm a very infrequent poster is that keeping up with the shoots is a full time job, then theres the webmastering bit (at which I trully suck) which doesn't leave a great deal of time for seeing what everyone else is up to and talking about.

Wow that is an expensive camera:) 9000USD here :)

But the quality is there, good luck

Hey mate :)
Yeah, we did get in - it wasn't too much bother at all :)
Sunset from the roof there would be amazing, you should check it out :D

They're certainly awesome :)

RE: the expense of the camera - I've seen much better shots taken on much 'lower grade' cameras - to an extent, cameras are cameras :D

A lot of people don't realize that more than a dozen old rivers still run under London, alongside or part of the sewer system. Names like Westbourne, Ravensbourne, Peck, and Stamford Brook are reminders, as is Fleet Street, named after the biggest of these rivers, that was up to 200 yards wide in Roman times. Another, the Effra, was used by Vikings to attack London a thousand years ago, but today flows underground from Crystal Palace and empties into the Thames near Kennington.

Brunel (Avon suspension bridge, SS Great Britain, etc) built the first underground sewer London in the mid 19th century after a particularly malodorous summer in which Londoners left the city in thousands and the windows of parliament had to be draped with chemical-soaked sheets to minimize the stink from open drains and cess pits. Queen Victoria was so impressed with the tunnel under the Thames that she toured it and the tunnel became a fashionable walkway, complete with street vendors :)

Sadly there are no organized tours of London's sewers any more (which does not stop some people exploring), but take a look at this site http://www.crossness.org.uk/sites/20020715PJK/index.htm to get an idea of the kind of architecture and design which went into the early structures.

One of these days you are going to shoot a photo, and there is going to be something in it, that you just can not explain. Like a ghost.

Great info. :thumbsup

I worked in the East End for a few years building Murdoch's plant at Wapping

We used to find old coins from the 1700s and lots of tobacco pipes while digging. One of my cockney coworkers had to climb down one of the sewers there and returned to report that "I saw this rat as big as a fucking cat. I threw a brick at it and it just stood there looking at me, as if to say "is that the best you've got?" "

Another guy I knew used to prospect for mercury in the sewers all over London. Kind of an urban gold prospector I guess. A very dirty and quite dangerous job but apparently worth it to him. :Oh crap

You've got savage skills as a photographer for the type of photography you shoot.

I look forward to your posts, actually, and will even go so far to say "I celebrate" your posts, much like one of the Bobs celebrates Michael Bolton.

damn, some nice shots in there :thumbsup

There are rumors, true or not, I have no idea, that people live down there. There are abandoned war-time vaults, old tube stations, all sorts underground, as well as the sewers themselves.

And certainly many people "prospect" the sewers. Apart from money, watches and all the smaller valuables you would expect, even motorcycles have turned up. A live grenade once if I remember correctly :)

Jayeff, is there anything you don't know? LOL :winkwink: :thumbsup

got more info about it and the underground rivers?

As for quantum-x outstanding job as usual, your photos are simply amazing, one of the few things these days that makes me go "wooohh" :)

I would have to research to be sure of getting the details right. I'm blessed (or cursed) with an excellent memory and my mother used to drum it into me that when I ever heard anyone mention something about which I knew nothing, I should learn, so that it only happened once.

Between the two things, I have collected an enormous amount of trivia over the years, but mostly broad strokes rather than all the small details. If I do look into something I tend to recall more, but for the sake of accuracy I only trust my memory so far :)

I wanna go

Apparently "Exploring Underground London" by Heritage Magazine has a very detailed map but seems to be unavailable.