Some locations are easy and some are hard to find. I even called the manufacturer of the rides and asked them for help, as I noticed many water parks use the same types. It took me six months to find the exact location scanning the internet for clues and spending hours on satellite maps. Let me give you an example: there was this one abandoned water park somewhere in China I tried to find I can’t even remember how I found out about it in the first place. How do you find out about new locations? This is one of the most common things people ask me on Instagram or on the podcast, and there is no one answer to this question. I’m not that into close-up shots like many Chinese explorers – I like big scale. Can I show the scale of abandonment in this building? How unique is this place? Have I seen this type of picture before? What do you look for in a photograph? It isn’t something specific it is all about locations. Greg operating his drone in an abadoned train station. If there is a chance to take one, I can’t resist it. I love flying my drone and taking drone pictures. If I crash it, I buy a new one the same day (this has actually happened too many times). I love my camera, but I also can’t explore without my drone. I love an overgrown corridor with paint coming off the walls as much as the next guy, but recently I’ve tried my best to find more unique locations. How do you choose where to shoot? I have shot hundreds of different locations and, without sounding like a snob, nowadays I try to find places that make you go, “Wow!” Explorers don’t break explorers don’t steal – vandals do. It is not yours, even if it is left in an abandoned place. Most likely someone still owns it.ĭo not steal! Some places have stuff left behind. Never damage property! Just because it is abandoned, it doesn’t give the right to do anything you want. Tell us about the UrbEx Code? “Take only pictures, leave nothing but footprints,” might seem like a cheesy slogan, but I always say that “even pirates had their code,” hence we should also follow some guidelines: Once I was in China, I realized I had stumbled across an ‘UrbEx gold mine,’ and the rest was history. I used social media as motivation to keep going. Subsequently, I learned about UrbEx, a sub-category of urban exploring – going to abandoned places. Some feature-hub accounts used my pictures, and from there I realized that there are other people who go to abandoned places and use specific hashtags to share their findings with the community.
How did you get into photography? After Chernobyl, I started to share my pictures on Instragram and received a positive reaction. Everything made sense from that light switch moment.Īn abandoned warehouse hosting various dinosaurs. Standing on top of buildings in the abandoned city of Pripyat, looking down at the site Mother Nature had reclaimed was a moment that will stay with me for the rest of my life.Īt that moment, I knew this was what I wanted to do. One day, my friend and I decided to visit Chernobyl he was relocating to Spain and I figured this would be a memorable visit for us, as we wouldn’t be able to see each other that often anymore.Ĭhernobyl changed my life. There is something mesmerizing about the end of civilization that drives my imagination. I was blown away after reading Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road and The Wool Trilogy. I’m half-joking, of course, but the divorce was a major event in my life that made me realize many things, and one of them was that I should try new things that I haven’t done prior.Īround the same time as the divorce, I met a guy at work who shared a similar attraction towards apocalyptic themes – we both like the Mad Max movies and The Book of Eli. When and why did your fascination with abandoned spaces come about? I have to thank my ex-wife for divorcing me, as that was the catalyst for the decisions I made afterward.
#Urban explorer site movie#
Intrigued, we sought out this capturer of apocalyptic images to find out what makes him tick.Ībandoned armoured train found on the movie of The Hundreds Regiments Offensive (2015) In 2018, Greg moved to China – an ‘UrbEx gold mine’ – amassing over 100,000 followers on his Instagram He also hosts the Chasing Bandos UrbEx Podcast, as well as compiling an Abandoned China book trilogy. There are people who get off the beaten track in China, and then there is Greg Abandoned.īorn in Poland, before moving to the UK, divorce from his wife led to a trip to Chernobyl that changed his life – one he now dedicates to UrbEx, the exploration of abandoned spaces.
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