I know, it’s been like forever. Truth is, not much urban exploring has been done lately. There were some small things but when I had the day off Illogical and I decided to head back to Beringen and see what was left of it. Seems they are turning a part into a museum with hiking/biking tracks all around the facility. It is not that closed off and easy to reach from these paths. These paths are not open yet I think so it might be that they’ll have some better fencing when they open. Might be an interesting trail to ride someday. The upper floors of the buildings can’t be reached anymore unless you bring a ladder. They cut down all the stairs. Probably safer anyway but not so much fun. We had a good time on the ground floors anyway.

One of those things that was on my photographic wish list was shooting the movement of the stars. (or the movement of the earth?) I recently got a batterygrip from Jenis which has a nice built in timer. This can be used for time-lapse or for really long shutterspeeds. It’s not that easy in use especially when you’re outside in the dark but once you figure it out it’s doable. So last weekend I was in a bungalow at centerparcs and this has the advantage that it’s away from civilization and away from light spill. It was a nice clear evening so I got my camera, hooked up the grip and started doing some test shots. I started with some short(ish) exposure times to dial in the aperture and then calculated an aperture for the longer shots. This worked pretty well. So I got shots up to 24 minutes. I must say that at that point things will become quite boring, it’s a long time to wait… But you get inside, turn on the tv and go out after half an hour. I could have used a remote control to keep the shutter open but here is a plus for the battery grip, with the remote you’d have to keep track of time and get back out there at the right time. One of the things I wondered when I got outside was if it was still recording or if it was done. Well, the red light on the back (at least on the 40D) shows that it’s still in recording mode: don’t pick it up! I also noticed that the display on top of the camera show the elapsed time in the part where you’d usually see the counter, pretty cool he? The next morning I got out very early (ain’t it nice to have kids?) and shot one more at 40 minutes. After that it got too light and there were clouds anyway.

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.

About time ;) After a laptop crash and reinstalling all software I finally got around to uploading these pictures from the strobist meet. Had a good time and looks like we got a Netherlands strobist meet coming up, organized by Illogical! Not too much comments in these pics (none), you can also check out my flickr gallery with more info on the lighting: My Flickr pics
(click the title to view the images)

I went to Brussel with Illogical to go to the “Brussel Strobist Meetup”. Got in the car at 7:00 am and without traffic jams we got there early. When we arrived at tour & taxis we noticed a smaller building (not surprisingly since tour & taxis is huge) on the side of the terrain. After parking the car we decided we couldn’t resist the urbex virus so I started the car again and drove to the small building which appeared to be a train station (or at least it was once).
After a walkabout around the building (inside was mostly overgrown) we also noticed some large halls (the sheds they call them I think) and took some more pictures there. In the end… we were a bit late for the Strobist meet but who’s counting… More stuff from the rest of the day will follow.