I can’t see…

…”woah! What the hell is that?” I said. “Looks like it could be interesting” came my fellow’s reply. I gaze out the car window and have a spot that I’d only seen through the borrowed eyes of Google Street View and I instantly know we’re in for a good night. “Shit man, find us a park I really wanna check this out closer”.

Five minutes later, I’m walking the perimeter of this enormous land parcel – trying to find a way in, partner in tow. We’re strolling along side a rather long fence that has had the top remodelled into a jagged nightmare of testicle destroying proportions – clearly we aren’t climbing fences tonight. However, it’s dark and it’s quiet out, so we’re in no rush to find a way in; the graffiti on the inside is always a loud statement saying “YES THERE IS AN EASY WAY IN”. I love graffers.

Eventually we find that one of the two metre high, serrated topped fence panels has been removed by unknown angels. We don’t fuck around and make a quick entrance. As always, there’s a certain low-dose of adrenalin that hits the system, my brains way of telling me that it too can’t wait to see what we find. It’s dark and I can’t see. The worst part is we spotted lights on, somewhere on the other side of the… space between here and there so torches are a no-no. We’re not doing anything wrong or have any bad intentions, but scaring the shit out of some poor security guy at three in the morning (or whatever time it is) is a horrible way to make new friends. Better to leave him to his own devices.

Almost straight away, our we are rewarded. We come across an amazing old train carriage that looks like a prop from a 1950’s Disney movie. Lucky for us, it was sans circus animals. The lighting on the horizon was amazing and a few minutes of exposure later, we were ready to keep moving.

We find more amazing old train carriages; this time with bars and extra rot for additional aesthetic extravagance – I was impressed and gave them a lot of my camera’s time.

So here I am happily snooping about snapping off shots like an idiot tourist in wonderland, when a shadowy, yet very companion-shaped figure bolts past me whispering something along the lines of “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiit”. I instantly pack up my tripod, power off my camera and run for the nearest dark place I can see in a manner far more dexterous than you’d think possible if you saw my intense photo making face peering into the viewfinder some whole two seconds earlier. Turns out our buddy the security guard was awake and looking for something to do. Luckily for us, he had a very apathetic attitude towards his job (fight the power brother!) and was gone five seconds later. Onward! I chanted silently in my head (note; I didn’t actually chant that, or anything for that matter).

Now we were in super-hyper-mega alert mode. Which entails a whole lot of really unnecessary and rather ridiculous crawling about and waiting for long periods of time for nothing to happen. Oh well, better than making new friends right? We crept up to some amazing old buildings that we’d spotted from across the way and were very impressed by their wonderful old architecture and only semi-dilapidated state.

So, believe it or not, everything up until now has taken about two hours. Long exposures plus security scares plus almost total darkness aren’t exactly conductive to a cheetah’s pace you see – but we were having a (quiet and slow) blast regardless. Yay! Although, it was now starting to get really late and my feet were sore and we had to get back home quick because dramas found us via the wonders of modern technology (stupid phones) and, and, well, you don’t want to hear me whine. Needless to say, it was time to go home. We took a few more shots of some… stuff, such as this amazing old brick portal, and make our merry way home.

What a night!