Travel

Urban Exploration Photography: A Guide to Creating and Editing Images of Abandoned Places Paperback – 29 Dec. 2014By Todd Sipes 
Publisher: Peachpit Press;

ISBN-10: 0134007921

ISBN-13: 978-0134007922



Getting a compelling shot in an abandoned structure is what urban exploration—or UrbEx—photography is all about. But that’s much easier said than done. UrbEx photography is one of the most challenging genres to shoot due to the dark environments, unpredictable circumstances, and various threats to one’s safety. Preparation is key and time can be limited for pulling off great shots. In Urban Exploration Photography, photographer Todd Sipes walks you through everything you need to know about composing, shooting, and processing photos of abandoned places.

Hidden Cities: Travels to the Secret Corners of the World's Great Metropolises; A Memoir of Urban Exploration
by Moses Gates

In this fascinating glimpse into the world of urban exploration, Moses Gates describes his trespasses in some of the most illustrious cities in the world from Paris to Cairo to Moscow. Also, exclusive to this e-book, is the first-hand accounts from the author's fellow travelers and family. ..

Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration, Paperback – 25 July 2008
by Troy Paiva  (Author), Geoff Manaugh (Foreword)
Publisher: Chronicle Books; 01 edition
ISBN-10: 0811863387
ISBN-13: 978-0811863384


A booming underground subculture is rapidly rising in popularity and public attention: known as Urban Exploration, it involves sneaking into abandoned or off-limits places, simply to explore and absorb their atmosphere. UrbEx (as it's known to its devotees) practitioner Troy Paiva has created an astonishing body of photographic work in the course of his explorations. His use of long exposures and coloured lights gives his stunning, largely night-time, shots of decommissioned military bases, abandoned civic buildings, and airplane "bone yards," an eerie, almost dreamlike quality. Text by Paiva and an introduction by prominent hipster journalist Todd Lappin illuminates the UrbEx phenomenon and tells behind-the-scenes stories of break-ins, tactics, close calls, and remarkable discoveries.


Beauty in Decay II: Urbex Hardcover – 1 Oct. 2012
by Romany WG 
Publisher: Carpet Bombing Culture
ISBN-10: 1908211105
ISBN-13: 978-1908211101


Overgrown industrial complexes, disused asylums, abandoned palaces and monasteries feature in this latest incendiary book from Carpet Bombing Culture. Beauty in Decay - The Art of Urban Exploration broke new ground in depicting the global phenomenon of Urban Exploration (Urbex) when it published in 2010. Author RomanyWG has again tirelessly tracked down dozens of new locations to amaze viewers of Beauty in Decay II, a further peek behind the Urbex curtain. Urban explorers find the beauty layers of history, multi-hued peeling paint, antique objects, ancient initials in the dust and the other physical manifestations of memory that abandoned, impermanent urban spaces manifest. For Beauty in Decay RomanyWG has gone behind the lens to give us a further peak behind the Urbex curtain. This time the HDR is paired down and the spectacle ramped up.


Derelict London: All New Edition Paperback – 11 July 2019
by Paul Talling 
Publisher: Random House Books
ISBN-10: 1847948383
ISBN-13: 978-1847948380


THE LONDON THAT TOURISTS DON’T SEE

Look beyond Big Ben and past the skyscrapers of the Square Mile, and you will find another London. This is the land of long-forgotten tube stations, burnt-out mansions and gently decaying factories. Welcome to DERELICT LONDON: a realm whose secrets are all around us, visible to anyone who cares to look . . .
Paul Talling – our best-loved investigator of London’s underbelly – has spent over fifteen years uncovering the stories of this hidden world. Now, he brings together 100 of his favourite abandoned places from across the capital: many of them more magnificent, more beautiful and more evocative than you can imagine.
Covering everything from the overgrown stands of Leyton Stadium to the windswept alleys of the Aylesbury Estate, DERELICT LONDON reveals a side of the city you never knew existed.
It will change the way you see London.

Explore Everything- Bradley L Garrett

Bradley L Garrett is an ethnographic researcher who immersed himself in the Urbex scene in London (and later worldwide). In this book, he tells us the story of the working class in London. His fascinating explorations (including climbing the shard, entering Burlington's bunkers and underground stations and climbing Battersea lighthouse) are documented in this fascinating story. It also explores the culture, region and philosophies of the countryside, the nature of the country and the power we have in the country. His stories and political/geographic analysis are thought-provoking and powerful.
"Explore Everything" reclaims the city, reclaiming it as an endless destination... Bradley L. Garrett escaped the city's security to see the city beyond the limits of normal life. He calls this "hacking", the reorganization of the closed, secret, hidden and forgotten in the city of space. "

London: edited by Heather Reyes 

(Oxygen Books ISBN 978-0-9559700-5-4)

Subtitled “Perfect gems of city writing”, this book is in the city-pick series (originally known as city-lit). It is an anthology of writing about the most famous capital city in the world with contributions from Virginia Woolf to Peter Ackroyd and all points in between. The book is helpfully divided into ten sections with different themes. City-lit are a brilliant idea thought up by former teacher Heather Reyes who edits most of the series. Other titles include Paris; Venice; Berlin; Amsterdam; Venice and New York. Collect them and read them before, during and after your holiday! 

British Railways Atlas by M.G.Ball

(Ian Allan Publishing 1995; ISBN 0- 7110 2339 5)
This is the only book that I always carry with me when I travel on trains in Britain. The book does what it says in the title. It is a pocket guide to the railways of Great Britain and Ireland with clear black and white maps of the rail network. Ball manages to keep each map admirably uncluttered and, in major centres, has enlarged sections. Inevitably some of the tram details will be out of date, but on long journeys and, particularly unfamiliar ones, the book is invaluable for simply showing where you are going and which station follows which! At the end of the book is a full, alphabetical gazetteer of stations.

Richard Heaven

Saddled At Sea by Josie Dew (Sphere Books 2006; ISWBN 978-0-7515-3853-3)

Josie Dew is a seriously dedicated cycle traveller who has written books about her journeys in America and Japan. This is the first one of hers that I have read and, unusually for a cyclist, the book is set nearly all the time on a container ship. The Russian ship sails from Dunkirk in Northern France to New Zealand via the Panama Canal. Josie is one of only half a dozen passengers, all of whom she continually gossips about! I hope that she has changed their names because none of them would be ones you would like to meet, let alone be stuck for weeks on end with in the middle of an ocean. The writer conveys very well the sheer slowness of the ship’s voyage, not helped by engine trouble. When the ship stops at Tahiti and Josie can ride her bicycle for a few hours, the reader feels as relieved as the writer. I am definitely going to seek out her other books now.

Richard Heaven