Mark Blundell - South London Photographer

Italian Hospital A – Bedlam

Mark_Blundell — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:40:23 +0000

High up in the Alps in a small village thee is an abandoned hospital. There are two well known highlights of this location, one is the chapel which is very distinctive, the other is the fact that there are beds remaining in the wards. They’ve seen better days, but none the less its great to see them in situ like this.

It must have been a great place to convalesce, the view from up here was stunning looking down over a beautiful valley and lake.

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Hunting Lodge A – Kitchen

Mark_Blundell — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:48:04 +0000

There wasn’t very much left in this kitchen, a couple of sinks and that was about it. I liked the symmetry again and thought the varying textures and pastel shades on the walls would pop nicely when processed so took a bit of time with this one.

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I’m still finding it hard to write something substantial about my images at the moment, I have plenty of ideas when I am on my way home from work, or indeed on the way to work, however when I actually get around to posting (sometime near midnight on most days) all of my written creativity is gone. Working long hours at the moment and quite tired most of the time so that doesn’t really helkp matters. Hopefully I’ll come up with some interesting over the next week or two when I’m a bit more chilled out.

Hunting Lodge – Main Stairs

Mark_Blundell — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:58:44 +0000

After seeing where we were going on our day out I did a search to see what to expect and came across the stairs in the lodge. Pretty much everyone who goes here takes this picture and its hard to do something ‘different’ really so I just went with the flow and shot this.

I was trying to pay particular attention to the lines, getting everything as straight as I can and I hope I managed a decent job here.

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Hunting Lodge A – Guest WC

Mark_Blundell — Sun, 13 May 2012 18:43:50 +0000

A lot of urbex photographers have a thing about taking shots of the toilets in abandoned locations. I’m not quite sure of why this is, maybe because its sometimes the only furniture that is left as its attached to the walls. Maybe because the white porcelain is quite photogenic or that it sometimes dates a location well due to the style.

Here’s a small part of the WC at the hunting lodge, the whole room was pretty big with wardrobe and a bath with a fully tiled floor, quite impressive given the age of the building.

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This was a fairly straight forward image to process, the major difficulty that I had was trying to ensure that everything was parallel, the small square tiles really emphasised any small imperfection with the lens or me not having everything lined up very straight and central.

Abandoned Art – Senso – Fallen Angel

Mark_Blundell — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:43:42 +0000

In the warehouse somewhat hidden away was this fantastic piece by Senso, I really like this, the image really jumps out of the wall and the artist has used the environment well, the fallen angel sitting on the switches.

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New Forest Church

Mark_Blundell — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:01:33 +0000

This weekend I spent the Bank Holiday in The New Forest with my Mum, On Sunday we went for a lovely walk, about 8 miles. The weather was great and despite initially heading out with waterproofs we both ended up lightly dressed.

I wanted to shoot a couple of churches that I had been to before but not really had the time to do a pano. One wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped and the other is below. Its not my best pano I will admit, it was dark inside and light outside making the difference in light hard to judge. The camera also decided to change the white balance as I moved around which has made the whole thing quite hard to process. I’m fairly happy with the results though. I’ll probably go back and have another go at this in the future, I know I can do a better job of it.

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Balestrino Abandoned Village – External

Mark_Blundell — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:55:23 +0000

As you can see the weather was lovely in the village, blue skies and sun for a change. It was great to wander around without the worry of being quiet, getting caught or falling down any holes.

The village is mostly intact, nothing remains in the houses although the spaces are quite nice. Tiles left on the floor are the only remaining indication of individuality.

Balestrino – Abandoned Church

Mark_Blundell — Wed, 02 May 2012 23:05:39 +0000

The third day of our trip was a treat – an abandoned village on the side of a hill. After a little confusion we found the right place. RoamnyWG and I had different locations in mind, I’d found a different village to him!

The weather was great, lovely and sunny and the small village contained a lot of ruined houses. The highlight for me was this church, somewhat trashed but good for a panorama regardless. In 1953, the town was abandoned due to geological instability.

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The image is mage up of 18 sets of 7 images, 126 images in all. The images are processed with Photomatix and stitched with PTGui

Tilt Shift Testing at The Shard

Mark_Blundell — Tue, 01 May 2012 22:57:24 +0000

You should all know how I love my panoramas by now, well I am thinking about investing in a 17mm tilt-shift, so decided before making a (substantial) dip into Mr Visa’s pocket that I should probably try one out. Last weekend I got my hands on a TS-E 17mm F4 lens. There’s an excellent explanation of the tilt shift lens theory HERE.

First impressions were the it was a chunky piece of kit, solid in every way from the mount to the lens itself. A few test shots on the evening in my flat revealed great creative opportunity. On Saturday I ventured out to London to try it out for real. The weather was appalling so it was quite tough to find somewhere where I could shelter in the dry and still have a partially interesting vista. I shot about 200 images of varying types whilst trying to get to grips with how the lens actually worked.

Here’s a horizontal pano, three images stuck together using the shift function

Obviously unable to check out image quality on my camera fully I was excited to get home and see the full res versions. I was amazes ant the sharpness all around the image. There is a slight vignette at either corner of the fully shifted image, but this is totally forgiveable. Barrel distortion is virtually non existent, straight lines remain straight, and verticals remain upright. and CA is also very minimal. What struck me was the quality and sharpness. Those of you who know London will know this view and at least approximately where I took this from and how far away Strata is – around 1/4 of a mile I would imagine. The image below is a 100% crop from the centre of the above.

I reckon that’s pretty good for a wide angle. Unfortunately I didn’t take any comparison images with my 12-24 Sigma or 17-105 Canon.

In Summary -

Pros:

Awesome sharpness // Ability to take VERY wide angle images and stitch them together. // Funky miniature effects//

Cons:

It’s not a cheap toy by any means. // 17mm has the bulbous lens that could get damaged easily, especially for me as I shoot urbex. // No filter thread

Will I get one . . .well most likly. I’ve tasted the ‘L’ Cool Aid and that means its game over for lower spec glass. The decision os whether to go for the 24mm or 17. I like panoramas and interiors, so the 17 sounds like the best bet. Reading various groups the famboys seem equally split, the majority verdict seems to be – get one, then get the other!

Abandond Art – FRESH

Mark_Blundell — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:34:58 +0000

Another from the same location as the previous images. I think was the only piece we found by ABSOLUT here.