Added another piece of gear to my collection: a simple monopod. Also for use as strobe on a rope at weddings. But, out of the box just doesn’t cut it for me. ;) So what to do with a monopod? Well, convert it to a flash / lightstand off course. Some more strobist action on the go! There are some really (really!) fancy mods out there but since I (no longer) have access to a machine park I figured something simpler. It starts with a beach shelter which sets you back for about 5 euro’s. Other than that only thing I purchased was some alloy tubes to strengthen the legs, without these the legs were to flexible and the whole thing would tumble. One of the fun things is that you can easily remove the extra legs if you want!

Rest of the “howto” is under the pictures if you view them full size.

Most important for you guys I think is the lessons learned: MDF and screws… not good. Let me know if you’re doing something with this diy howto.

One of the urban exploring friends organised a little trip to Doel in Belgium. What can I say, what a wierd town. It is sort of half abandoned, there are still people living there, also lots of squatters. Doel was supposed to be wiped of the charts for extension of the harbours but it never really gotten through. If you’d like to know more about what happend you can check the wiki on Doel. So this should be one of the easiest findable and accesible urban exploring locations. Also quit convenient is that the pub is still open :) Downside is that it actually get’s quite crowded especially during the summers. I even had to wait for 2 photographers from another group to notice me and be so kind to go out of my picture. Strange guys though… I was doing some strobist style shooting and one of the guys said: hey, there’s a lens lying here… So I replied: yeah that’s my FLASH and please leave it there, it’s there for a reason. :) Had a great time there, weather was perfect and we had a nice group of people moving about.